Last night as I was talking to my parents on the phone, they asked me if I had heard the breaking news about a JetBlue airplane that was preparing to make an emergency landing at LAX. As you know I’m an airline nut, so after we got off the phone, I followed the story and was later relieved to find out that flight 292 had landed safely.
Apparently, not only was the landing gear not retracting, but the front wheel had become stuck sideways 90 degrees. After circling for a few hours to burn off fuel–what’s sort of surreal is that via the in-seat satellite TV, passengers were able to watch TV news coverage of their flight up until a few minutes before landing–the pilot guided the plane to a perfect landing, and though there were some intermittent flames and smoke as the front wheel scraped along the runway, all the passengers and crew are all right.
It got me to trying to remember if I have been in any kind of airline emergency. I’ve had my share of turbulence and delays, but no emergencies, fortunately. There was this one very minor incident a few years ago, which I can now look back upon with amusement, on a Continental wide-body jet from Houston to LAX: having been upgraded, I was sitting in what was essentially “BusinessFirst” class, and as the plane touched down at LAX and continued down the runway, the rumbling caused a panel above me to dislodge. So there it was hanging over my head. I rang the call button, and a flight attendant came and popped it back into place. There was not a word from him or any of the other passengers, as if nothing happened. I wanted to be like, “Did anyone else just see that?”
Anyone have any interesting inflight stories to share?
4 replies on “Happy landing”
i’m flying JetBlue to Vegas tomorrow and this story did not make me feel good!
Hello. Yep, I’ve got a couple of stories. Our blogs have diverged in content and I haven’t commented much, but I read and enjoy your stuff.
Quite a few years ago, I flew on a regular Malaysian Airlines Fokker Friendship flight from Tawau on the east of Sabah to the Kota Kinabalu on the west coast, at night, over the mountains and directly through heavy tropical storm. The forward part of the passenger compartment was full of cargo, lashed down with a netting. The flight was so bumpy that there was no cabin service – the stewards were strapped into their seats, holding on tight like the rest of us. Landing at night without airport nav aids was interesting – Basically keep flying toward the ground until you see the lights. It was all perfectly safe, but moderately exciting nonetheless!
My near miss such story relates to the hijacking on 4 December 1977 of Malaysia Airlines Flight 653 from Penang to Kuala Lumpur, a Boeing 737 aircraft (9M-MBD). The aircraft descended from an altitude of 21,000 feet to a few thousand feet before leveling off and apparently continuing on autopilot. It eventually plunged into a swamp 50 km southwest of Johor Baharu, some hundreds of kilometres beyond Kuala Lumpur. All 93 passengers and 7 crew were killed. Investigations later found that both pilots had been shot.
I left Penang for Kuala Lumpur on the same day. But at the last minute I decided to go by road and rail, so that I could see the sights on the way.
Actually, I am surprised I don’t have any airline emergency stories, even though I travel quite a bit for work. My father, however, is a retired airline pilot, and once during take off, parts started falling off/out of an engine. The plane behind him on the runway noticed this, but Air Traffic did not tell him until he was airborne. He shut the engine off (when safe), and proceded to perform a safe landing.
I was flying to vegas to meet friends and 10 minutes into the flight we lost hydraulic pressure. Instead of turning back to JFK we were diverted to Columbus Ohio where the airline had a hub. The staff was fantastic and handled everything so well. I got to Vegas 12 hours later and had 2 friends waiting for me who had no clue what I went through. I also had the hotel in my name so they couldnt check in. Needless to say we made sure it was a fun trip.