No one was injured after a mishap at Langley Regional Airport Tuesday afternoon.
Langley Township deputy fire chief Bruce Ferguson said when firefighters arrived, a Sopwith Pup replica belonging to the Canadian Museum of Flight was on its back on the airport runway, and the pilot was uninjured.
“For some reason, either dragging brakes or improper trim or something, the tail of the plane wouldn’t settle when it landed,” explained museum general manager Dave Arnold.
“And with that gear, you’ve got all that weight up high.
“Once you get leaning too far forward, it just keeps going. You can’t stop it.”
Subsequently, the plane rolled over on its prop, then its nose, and wound up on its back.
“There’s little damage, really, other than the prop and the nose bowl, a little cosmetic scuff here and there,” Arnold said.
“It does mean that we have to take the engine out, and open it up and have a look at it, and make sure there’s nothing bent.”
Arnold said this is an “extremely slow” aircraft, which helped minimize the damage.
“When it went over he probably wasn’t doing more than about 15, 20 mph,” Arnold said.