Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 15, 1994 TAG: 9403150030
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GREENSBORO, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
No one was hurt in the emergency landing.
Labonte's twin-engine Beechcraft Baron 58, piloted by 34-year-old Billy Simpson of Charlotte, skidded and scraped to a stop on runway 33 at Smith-Reynolds Airport in Winston-Salem at 9:33 p.m. Sunday after its landing gear wouldn't extend.
"It wasn't a very big deal," the 29-year-old Trinity, N.C., driver told team publicist John Close. "The plane landed just like it should have. There was no fire, just a big scraping noise for about five seconds. Heck, it was smoother than some of the landings we've had with the wheels down."
The plane, which Labonte bought in February, 1993, was carrying Simpson, Labonte and the driver's 27-year-old wife, Donna, who is expecting their first child April 23. It was flying to the Winston-Salem Airport from Tara Airport, a private airstrip next to Atlanta Motor Speedway, where Labonte competed in the Purolator 500 Sunday, finishing 15th.
"When we took off in Atlanta, the landing gear made a weird noise" when it was retracting, Labonte said. "We didn't have any concern at the time. Later, we tried to get the gear down but it wouldn't function. We tried to get it down by cranking it manually, but it wouldn't work."
Before landing, the plane made several passes over an airport in Lexington, N.C., where Labonte's brother, Terry, had landed.
Terry had finished one spot ahead of his younger brother in Sunday's race and, like most of the drivers, flew home Sunday night in his private plane.
In the air, Terry's plane was just ahead of Bobby's. After he landed, Terry was able to tell his brother the gear had not come down when his plane passed over the Lexington airport.
"They couldn't get the landing gear down so they flew around . . . working with it," Terry Labonte told the Associated Press. "The backup system apparently failed because they couldn't get it down either."
"We worked on it for about an hour and a half in the air before we had to come down because we were low on fuel," Bobby said.
"After they decided to land, it just sat down and skidded to a stop," Terry said. "There wasn't hardly any sparks, but they stopped real quick."
"It was fortunate we had all the right ingredients," Bobby said. "Billy did his job and everything went smoothly. We all stayed cool. Everybody is OK and the airplane wasn't that badly damaged. I'm sure we'll have it fixed in three or four weeks."
The emergency landing came as stock car racing approaches the first anniversary of the April 1, 1993, death of 1992 Winston Cup champion Alan Kulwicki, who was killed with three others when his plane crashed in Blountville, Tenn.
Also, 1992 Daytona 500 champion Davey Allison died last year after the helicopter he was piloting crashed July 12 while landing at Talladega Superspeedway.
The last chapters of those accidents have yet to be written. On Monday, National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Michael Benson told the AP the federal agency's report on the cause of Kulwicki's accident should be released later this week or next week.
"It has not yet cleared all the hurdles," Benson said. He said the staff report must be approved by the five members of the NTSB before it can be released. The report on Allison's crash also has not been completed.
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB