Landing gear incident briefly disrupts Cherry Capital Airport flights
A Beechcraft Baron landed without its gear down at Cherry Capital Airport, delaying and diverting flights for about 90 minutes Wednesday morning. No one was hurt, including the pilot’s dog.
Flights in and out of Cherry Capital Airport were delayed or diverted for about 90 minutes Wednesday morning after a Beechcraft Baron landed around 11 a.m. without its landing gear down. The airport’s normal pace in Traverse City stopped briefly while crews handled the aircraft and got operations moving again.
Airport CEO Kevin Kline said the most important detail was that the pilot and the pilot’s dog walked away unhurt. By the time the disruption ended, the airport had returned to service the same day, limiting the incident to an operational headache rather than a longer shutdown.
For passengers, even a short pause at Cherry Capital can ripple quickly through summer travel plans. Arrivals and departures were affected during the airport’s busiest season, when visitors, seasonal workers and local residents are all moving through the terminal on tight schedules. A delay or diversion at a regional airport can also force airlines to reshuffle aircraft, push back ground transportation and complicate connections for travelers heading beyond Northern Michigan.
The incident also came at a time when Cherry Capital is handling record traffic. The airport said it served 935,816 passengers in 2025, the busiest year in its history and 19% above the previous record of 787,114. Cherry Capital has described itself as the gateway to Northern Michigan and says it has provided passenger air service since 1938.
That growth is one reason the airport’s ongoing terminal addition work has become such a central part of its planning. The Northwest Regional Airport Authority is pursuing design, development and funding to improve the airport and passenger experience, including a project that adds a new Concourse B with four additional gates, along with renovations and circulation improvements. Airport planning documents say the expansion is intended to improve capacity and the passenger experience for decades to come.
Wednesday’s landing-gear incident showed how quickly a single mechanical problem can interrupt that system, even when no one is injured. It also showed the value of a fast recovery at Cherry Capital, where keeping the runway open matters not just to travelers, but to the county’s wider summer economy.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
