Gilford police help jet confirm safe landing to FAA

GILFORD — Police were called to confirm the safe arrival of a private jet at the Laconia Municipal Airport on Tuesday evening.

Police were called at 8:32 p.m. by the FAA facility in Merrimack to confirm whether a Challenger jet had landed at the airport, Lt. Adam VanSteensburg said Wednesday.

He said the pilot reported “electrical issues” while in flight, but that the business jet landed without incident.

“It was not an emergency landing. The plane was flying up here anyway,” VanSteensburg said.

Laconia Airport Manager Marvin Everson said normally, the pilot would have radioed the FAA in Merrimack to report the plane was on the ground. However, the electrical problem made the radio inoperable, and so that information was made via a phone call instead.

“I guess they must have used the wrong phone number, and so [the local air traffic control] didn’t get the word that they had landed,” Everson said.

The manager said the FAA would usually call the airport to verify a landing, but for some reason that did not happen Tuesday.

He said the plane belongs to NetJets, a private business jet charter company, whose aircraft fly in and out of the airport regularly.

Requests from the FAA for the police department to check on safe arrival of planes at the airport are fairly common.

“We get maybe a half dozen to a dozen calls a year from the FAA,” VanSteensburg said.