Passengers describe terror on board crippled plane
Terrified passengers on board a plane crippled in mid-air prepared for the worst last night, and one taped a farewell message to his girlfriend.
The JetBlue flight was stranded in the California skies when its front wheels jammed at a 90-degree angle after takeoff.
Frantic, many of the 140 passengers could do little but watch their plight unfold on live television, making desperate calls to relatives.
David Reinitz, a comedian travelling to New York to make a documentary, used his video camera to film his last goodbye.
“We had live coverage up until about 10 minutes before we landed,” he said. “That was the scary part, when they cut it off.”
Flight 292 left Burbank yesterday afternoon, headed for New York. But shortly after takeoff, the pilot radioed ground control to say he could not retract the landing gear.
He was diverted to Long Beach, conducting urgent exchanges with officials and asking for emergency equipment. The plane was forced to circle the skies for three hours burning fuel before making an emergency landing in Los Angeles on its rear wheels.
More than 100 firefighters and paramedics lined the runway to witness the plane skid on to the tarmac amid billowing white smoke and flames. No one was hurt.
Passenger Alexandra Jacobs, who is six months pregnant, said the worst part was the fear that her husband and parents might be watching on television.
“It was insane. The sight of the plane from the outside just aroused this feeling that we were going to watch our own demise,” she said.
“It was very scary. The flight attendants were shouting: ’Brace, brace, brace.’ It was like a prayer, and then we smelled burning rubber and the plane stopped and a big cheer went up.”
Christiana Lund said no one was screaming, but many were crying and praying.
When they were told to brace themselves for impact, she said: “That’s when it really hit me that this could be it. I didn’t know if I was going to live or die.”
Lisa Schiff, 34, of Los Angeles, sent a text message to her mother saying: “I love you. Don’t worry about me. If something happens, know that I am watching you and Daddy and (her brother) David.”
A similar problem happened on a flight from Newark, New Jersey in 1999, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. The pilots were able to land the plane in Ohio before it was evacuated.
The Federal Aviation Administration said malfunctioning landing gear was not uncommon.
“Aircraft do have landing gear problems,” spokesman Donn Walker said.
“What is extremely rare is when you have television cameras aimed at the plane. There were a lot of people in our office that were really stunned about how perfect that landing looked.”
An Airbus spokesman said the plane did not have a manual mechanism to move the front wheel into alignment. A more common problem is when the landing gear fails to drop properly and lock into position.
Ann Decrozals, a company spokeswoman at the aircraft manufacturer’s headquarters in France, said the A320 was designed to be able to land with front-wheel problems.
The FAA and US National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident.
JetBlue is a budget airline based in New York. It operates 286 flights a day in the US and has a fleet of 81 A320s.
