An aircraft emergency ended in a safe landing when a commercial flight was diverted to University Park Airport Wednesday morning.
A Level II aircraft emergency was reported at about 9:30 a.m. at the airport for a passenger aircraft descending with strange motion at a high rate of speed. Four fire companies and six EMS units were called, but the plane landed without incident and no one was injured.
The plane was en route from Philadelphia to Milwaukee when it began to experience rudder issues.
‘The flight was diverted to University Park Airport after reporting rudder issues,’ Penn State spokesperson Heather Robbins said. ‘It landed around 9:45 a.m. It was an Air Wisconsin flight from Philadelphia to Milwaukee with 22 people on board. No one is being taken to the hospital.’
The airport saw two aircraft emergencies, one of which was fatal, last June.
On the morning of June 16, 2016, a twin-engine Piper Navajo traveling from Washington, Pa., to University Park crashed in a wooded area 1 mile northeast of the airport, killing pilot Gary Orner of White Oak, Pa., and Dr Robert Arffa of Pittsburgh, an eye surgeon who frequently traveled from the Pittsburgh area to State College to perform LASIK surgery for Nittany Eye Associates.
Eight days earlier, a fixed-wing single engine plane crash landed when the pilot had difficulty compensating for wind and bounced off the runway. The pilot was not injured and was the only person on board.
