WARSAW, Poland — Hailed as a hero for his smooth emergency landing of a Boeing jet, a Polish pilot said he felt a “huge relief” once his passengers evacuated the plane.
Capt. Tadeusz Wrona, 54, softly placed the LOT airlines plane carrying 231 people from Newark, N.J., on its belly at Warsaw airport Tuesday after the landing gear failed to open, gaining instant hero status in Poland. Some attributed his gentle landing to his years of experience as a glider pilot.
At a news conference Wednesday in Warsaw, Wrona appeared uncomfortable with all the accolades, insisting that calling him a hero was “exaggerated.”
“I am absolutely sure that each of us would have done it the same way and that the result would have been the same,” Wrona said. “We tried to put the plane down as gently as we could, and we were successful.”
But he added that he kept playing the landing over and over again in his mind, imagining whether he might have executed it better.
Passengers described Tuesday’s landing as so smooth they thought they had landed on wheels. The Associated Press
