A Piper Navajo Chieftain aircraft owned by Ontario's Superior Airways sits on the tarmac. No one was hurt when a similar plane owned by the company made a belly landing on Friday in Manitoba. (superiorairways.com)

A survivor of a potentially tragic air crash in Manitoba says the hand of God helped safely land the plane in which he and 12 other passengers were travelling after the pilot forgot to put down the landing gear.

Conrad Pascal said he was seated in the cockpit of a small, twin-propeller aircraft that made a belly landing at the Bloodvein First Nation airstrip at about 4:30 p.m. CT on Friday.

All was calm as the plane made its approach to the gravel runway, Pascal said, but as it touched down, there was a terrible noise.

'Everybody was pretty calm.'—Conrad Pascal, crash survivor

"I noticed the propellers were starting bending," Pascal said. "It was so close to the ground. I don't know.

"Somebody was there with us," he said.

The Piper Navajo Chieftain airplane was ferrying nine adults and four children from the northern Ontario community of Pikangikum to Bloodvein for a religious retreat.

Pascal, 23, said it was a miracle that nobody onboard was hurt, but the plane was severely damaged.

"It was a smooth landing. Stopped right away," he said. "It was sitting on its belly, not sideways or anything. Everybody was pretty calm."

Pascal said the pilot checked to see if everyone was OK, but didn't offer an apology for landing with the wheels up.

The passengers were interviewed by RCMP and then allowed to leave the airfield.

Pilot suspended: reports

The Transportation Safety Board (TSB) continues to investigate what happened.

However, RCMP said initial indications were that the crash was caused by pilot error.

Media reports said on Sunday that the pilot has been suspended from flying while the TSB investigates.

Mike Misurka, the president of Superior Airways — the Red Lake, Ont., company that owns the plane — was quoted in a Winnipeg newspaper as saying the plane is the only one in the company's fleet that doesn't have a warning indicator to alert pilots that the landing gear isn't deployed.

Bloodvein First Nation is about 250 kilometres north of Winnipeg.