A NetJets business jet touched down without its nose landing gear at an Ohio airport and rolled to a stop with no injuries to the two pilots aboard. The crew had spent time circling to troubleshoot the malfunction before setting the aircraft down carefully on its main wheels and easing the nose onto the runway. The controlled landing, captured on video by witnesses, turned a potentially dangerous mechanical failure into a routine outcome.
The gear-up landing at Akron-Canton
The incident involved a Cessna Citation Longitude, a large-cabin business jet, registered N803QS and operated by the fractional-ownership company NetJets. The aircraft was flying from Washington Dulles International Airport to Akron-Canton Airport in northeast Ohio when the crew discovered that the nose gear would not extend. Details logged by the Aviation Safety Network place the event on August 18, 2026, and identify the flight and airframe. The main landing gear extended normally, leaving only the nose wheel retracted.
Faced with a nose gear that would not lock down, the pilots did what emergency checklists call for: they bought time. The jet circled near the airport while the crew worked through troubleshooting steps in an attempt to lower or confirm the gear. When those efforts did not resolve the problem, they committed to a landing with the nose gear up.
How the crew set the aircraft down
The technique for a nose-gear-up landing is to protect the front of the airframe for as long as possible. The pilots touched down on the main wheels first, then used aerodynamic control to hold the nose off the pavement while the jet decelerated. As the aircraft slowed and lost the airflow needed to keep the nose up, the front of the fuselage settled onto the runway and slid until the jet came to rest. Local coverage from Fox 8 in Cleveland included witness accounts and video of the aircraft grinding to a halt on its nose.
Executed correctly, this maneuver minimizes damage and, more importantly, keeps everyone aboard safe. The two pilots were the only occupants; no passengers were on the flight. Both exited without injury. The aircraft sustained damage to its nose and lower fuselage where it contacted the runway, but the outcome was otherwise clean.
What the Citation Longitude is
The Citation Longitude is a super-midsize business jet built by Textron Aviation’s Cessna division. It is designed for transcontinental business travel, typically carrying a small group of passengers in a stand-up cabin, and it is a common type in the fleets of fractional operators. NetJets, which markets shared ownership of business aircraft, operates one of the largest private-jet fleets in the world, and the Longitude is among the newer large-cabin types it flies. Technical specifications for the model are published by the manufacturer, Textron Aviation.
Because business jets like the Longitude land routinely at regional airports, an emergency at a field such as Akron-Canton draws quick response from airport fire and rescue crews, who typically pre-position along the runway for a known gear malfunction. That preparation is one reason gear-up landings, while dramatic, so often end without injury.
Why the investigation matters
Landing-gear failures on transport-category aircraft are investigated to determine whether the fault was isolated to one airframe or points to a broader maintenance or design issue. In the United States, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration examine such events, reviewing the aircraft’s maintenance history and the specific gear components that failed. Federal aviation incident reporting and oversight fall under the Federal Aviation Administration, which sets airworthiness standards for the fleet.
For a nose gear that fails to extend, investigators typically look at the hydraulic actuation system, the mechanical down-lock, and the electrical signaling that commands the gear. A finding on one aircraft can lead to inspections across a type if a common part is implicated. In this case, the safe outcome does not lessen the value of that review, since the goal is to prevent the next crew from facing the same malfunction.
A well-managed emergency
The Akron-Canton landing is a textbook example of crew resource management under pressure: identify the fault, use available time to attempt a fix, and when that fails, execute a practiced procedure that prioritizes the safety of everyone aboard. The visible damage to the jet’s nose is the kind of consequence operators accept in exchange for a landing in which no one is hurt. The aircraft can be repaired or written off; the pilots walked away.
Emergency landings of this kind also draw an outsized public reaction precisely because they are rare and dramatic to watch. A large business jet grinding to a halt on its nose, sparks trailing from the fuselage, makes for arresting video, and bystander footage of the Akron-Canton landing spread quickly. But the spectacle can obscure how methodical the response actually is. From the moment the crew declared the problem, air traffic controllers cleared the airspace, the airport’s rescue crews staged along the runway, and the pilots followed a checklist refined over decades of similar events. The result was not luck but the product of training, procedure, and equipment all working as intended.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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