Jet Blue Deverts to LAX
It was about 5 PM and I was at Petco buying foot for Andy and Teddy, when the cell phone rang. It was Pam, my girlfriend in LA who lives near LAX. She wanted to know if I'd seen the news-- which wasn't likely since Doug and I had been out for about 2 hours running errands. While I finished shopping for the boys, she brought me up to date on a problem with Jet Blue Flight 292. It appeared that the landing gear had flipped 90 degrees around and was hanging sideways off the nose of the plane. Within minutes everyone in the store was talking about it, like a real life blog. Doug was picking up the news from the other people, I was talking to Pam.
Having grown up with a few pilots in my family, as well as fire and rescue people, I knew if there was any place that could handle the emergency, it was LAX. So we finished shopping and hit the road for home with the radio on KABC 790AM. About 1 minute into the trip Al Rantel comes on to announce that the plane had landed safely and all 145 passengers and crew were fine. Thank God.
When we got home the local news in LA, who normally treats a freeway car chase with more coverage than a political campaign, was giving us the instant replay in nearly every imaginable camera angle of the landing, while they waited for the plane to unload the passengers and crew on the tarmac to the awaiting buses.
As a someone who's watched more plane land and take off in my lifetime than most traffic controllers have, the pilot did a stellar professional job. He used what was left of the front landing gear to act as a ski, and flared the tail of the plane to take the brunt of the landing and slowed the plane in a perfectly controlled landing. Congradulations Captain and your Co-pilot. I'd be honored to fly on your aircraft anytime.
The wierd thing is the passengers via Jet Blue's in-cabin television system got to watch a good portion of their flight making the news. Talk about being wierd.
