Los Angeles – A JetBlue airline flight with 145 passengers and crew members made an emergency landing Wednesday at Los Angeles International Airport after a malfunction turned the front landing gear sideways after takeoff and forced the pilot to abort a transcontinental flight.
The safe landing at 6:20 p.m. local time ended the drama that had viewers riveted to televisions for more than two hours.
The plane came in and the pilot balanced it on its rear landing gear, keeping the damaged front gear above the ground. The front gear, its wheels stuck at a 90-degree angle to the plane, touched down last.
Then the front tires shredded and the twisted wheels gave off a plume of bright sparks as they scraped along the concrete.
But the plane held true, and moments later, the Airbus 320 stopped on the runway as emergency vehicles approached.
Within minutes, passengers left, walking down a mobile ramp to the runway to board buses. No injuries were immediately reported, fire officials said.
More than 100 Los Angeles firefighters and paramedics had positioned themselves near the south side of the airport in preparation for the emergency landing on Runway 25 Left, an auxiliary runway set apart from the main terminals, said Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Jim Wells.
Earlier, officials described the emergency maneuver.
“The pilot will try to land the plane and remain with the nose aloft as long as possible,” said Tom Winfrey, an airport spokesman.
The idea, he said, was to use the two main landing gear toward the rear of the aircraft and keep the front one in the nose off the ground until the plane was going so slowly that the nose could come to the ground without harm.
“It is like a tricycle, and he will try to keep (the nose) up as long as possible,” Winfrey said.
Flight 292 left Bob Hope Airport in Burbank at 3:17 p.m. en route to JFK International Airport in New York City, according to Bryan Baldwin, a spokesman for JetBlue.
There were 139 passengers aboard and a crew of six, according to JetBlue spokeswoman Jenny Dervin.
“Shortly after the plane left, the pilot discovered he may have a problem with the landing gear,” FAA spokesman Donn Walker said in a telephone interview.
After it left Burbank, the flight was diverted to Long Beach Airport, where the plane circled.
Stew Sawyer, a Long Beach resident who lives two blocks from the airport, said he was listening to the control tower radio when he heard controllers discussing the problem with the JetBlue pilot.
“I heard the pilot asking for emergency equipment,” Sawyer said. “The tower told him to go back up and burn off fuel. The pilot asked for a flyby so that the tower could check his landing gear. He did a flyby real low, and the tower said, ‘Your landing gear is 90 degrees the wrong way.”‘
JetBlue, based in Forest Hills, N.Y., is a 5-year-old low-fare airline with 286 flights a day and destinations in 13 states and the Caribbean. It operates a fleet of 81 Airbus 320s.
