Jet With 2 Blown Tires Lands Safely

A private jet that had blown two tires during takeoff at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey made a safe emergency landing hours later at Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, New York.

The Gulfstream IV, with 16 people on board, took off from Teterboro, headed for London Luton Airport in Luton, England, around 10:50 a.m. Tuesday. Shortly after takeoff, the pilot realized that the tires had blown. The pilot began circling the airport for about 30 minutes before the jet was diverted.

The plane originally was to attempt an emergency landing at Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport in Massachusetts, said Eric Billowitz, manager of Westfield-Barnes, because there is a Gulfstream service center there and because the airport has “one of the longest runways in the Northeast” at 9,000 feet, but the plane was then diverted to Stewart, about 70 miles north of New York City, where it landed just before 4:00 p.m.

Stewart’s signature feature is a nearly 12,000-foot runway, long enough to handle the fat-bodied C-5A Galaxy planes laden with supplies and better for such emergencies.