Plane lands safely at RDU without landing gear, no injuries reported

A small general-aviation plane landed safely at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Friday afternoon even though it had no working landing gear, and the airport kept its main runway open as crews secured the aircraft.

The plane touched down around 2:40 p.m. on runway 5R-23L, RDU’s secondary runway. No one on board was injured, and responders from RDU Fire-Rescue and airport operations moved quickly to contain the incident and clear the airfield.

What could have become a major disruption stayed contained. RDU said its primary commercial runway, 5L-23R, remained open while the landing gear emergency was handled, allowing flights to continue landing and taking off normally. For an airport that serves Raleigh, Morrisville and the broader Research Triangle area, that meant the incident did not trigger the kind of cascading delays that can ripple through a busy travel day.

The landing also highlighted the way RDU is set up to handle rare emergencies. The airport says it has two primary runways, 5R-23L and 5L-23R, plus a third general-aviation runway, 14-32. Runway 5R-23L is 7,500 feet long and 150 feet wide, while the main commercial runway, 5L-23R, stretches 10,000 feet and is also 150 feet wide. RDU Fire-Rescue is staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

RDU’s emergency-information protocol puts initial incident confirmation in the hands of the Airport Authority, while the National Transportation Safety Board becomes responsible for determining the cause of an aircraft incident once it arrives on site. That structure is built for exactly this kind of situation, when a mechanical failure can unfold quickly but the airport still has to keep the rest of the operation moving.

The episode came as RDU continues a major expansion push. Transform RDU, the airport’s 10-year capital program, carries a $2.5 billion price tag. The airport has also been handling rising traffic, projecting 15.5 million passengers in 2025 after reporting 14.5 million travelers in 2023.

Friday’s landing followed two other small-plane incidents at RDU in March 2026, including one plane that skidded off a runway and another that returned after a tire blew just after takeoff. None of those incidents reported injuries, but together they show how often airport crews must respond to sudden problems involving smaller aircraft without letting them spill into a larger operational breakdown.