An Iowa Air National Guard KC-135 Stratotanker landed on its nose Wednesday at the Sioux City Gateway Airport when the nose gear did not come down. Airport manager Mike Collett says it happened around 2:30 p.m. during training for “touch and go” landings.
“It landed in the proximity of the intersection of both runways, so that caused us to not have any operations for a period of time from mid afternoon till approximately ten last night,” Collett says. He says no commercial flights were missed at the airport. Collett says the airport staff helped the 185th Wing take care of the aircraft.
“It was mostly a military incident and operation, but those people really know what they’re doing in an emergency situation and they were able to clear the aircraft in time for us to open up,” Collett says. So we’re required to notify certain entities when these things happen. We notified NTSB and the FAA and got further direction from them based on the severity of the incident which it wasn’t very severe. Thankfully.” A spokesman for the 185th Air Refueling wing says there were five crewmembers on board and no one was injured. There was some damage to the nose of the aircraft.
The 185th is investigating why the nose gear did not come down.
(By Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City)