Watch: Training plane’s front wheel collapses during emergency landing at Hawke’s Bay Airport

A flight instructor and student escaped without injury after their plane’s front wheel collapsed during a landing at Hawke’s Bay Airport.

An ambulance and fire truck raced onto the runway after the “controlled emergency landing” at 10.17am on Tuesday.

Video footage appears to show the plane’s nose scraping along the runway before the aircraft stops.

Hawke’s Bay Airport chief executive Nick Flack said the plane’s two occupants were uninjured.

The damaged plane sat on the runway for about 45 minutes before being towed away.

The plane after it came to a stop on the runway. Photo / Supplied

The incident led to at least two Air NZ flights being cancelled and disruptions for other flights.

Air Hawke’s Bay is a flight school that operates at Hawke’s Bay Airport and Hastings Aerodrome.

Air Hawke’s Bay chief executive Nicholas Angus said the incident happened during flight training, and involved a flight instructor and a student.

He said an investigation was underway.

A damaged light plane is removed from the Hawke's Bay Airport runway after landing with broken landing gear. Photos / Gary Hamilton-Irvine

Early reports suggested the aircraft “obtained a heavy landing on its nose wheel” during its first landing attempt, he said.

“It appears the heavy landing has occurred, the aircraft has bounced back up in the air, [and has been provided] full power again and gone around.”

He said while the pilot remained airborne for about five minutes, the airport fire brigade and air traffic control advised the nose wheel had suffered damage during the landing attempt.

“So the pilot has performed a precautionary controlled emergency landing back on the runway.”

He said the emergency landing was controlled well.

The plane sits at Hawke's Bay Airport, with landing gear damage visible after being towed. Photo / Gary Hamilton-Irvine

“They tried to ease it on the nose wheel as much as possible, but obviously it gave way, and resulted in the nose wheel collapsing.”

Angus said the main thing was no one was injured.

“That’s the main thing at the end of the day, that everyone returns safely to their families.”

The plane will be out of action for a few months while it is repaired.

A damaged light plane is removed from the Hawke's Bay Airport runway after landing with broken landing gear. Photos / Gary Hamilton-Irvine

A witness, who did not want to be named, saw the first landing from the airport’s terminal building and thought it was simply a “rough landing” - with the aircraft appearing to take a slight bounce after touching the runway.

He said, like most others in the airport, he was unaware it was an emergency landing and didn’t pay afurther attention until he saw the fire truck out on the runway.

The plane was removed from the runway just after 11am.

A Fire and Emergency New Zealand spokeswoman said Hawke’s Bay Airport had called its crews.

There had been no fire, but firefighters helped clean a fuel spill and left at 10.34am, she said.