Plane Emergency Landing

The news I heard clearly stated that they were watching it all on TV...as it happened. They interviewed one guy and he said 10 minutes after takeoff they were alerted to the problem.

I have to give kudos to that pilot. Engineers and experts can give you a plan, but executing it under stress is the hard part.

I can't imagine what the moments before landing were like, when they said they were going to "attempt" a landing. The words "attempt" and "landing" are not two words I want to see near each other.
 
My family and I were watching the landing...we cheered when it landed! The pilots made a perfect landing for such a situation...I hope the passengers had free drinks for the 3 hours they got to think about the landing!
 
I have never flown, much less landed, a plane but I would imagine that there are far worse scenarios for landing gear problems. My guess would be that the big fear would be the strut simply snapping off and the nose dropping to the tarmac. I would have been far more concerned if one of the wing landing gear was faulty as a landing with a faulty wing gear would have potentially disasterous effects.

I'm not taking anything away from the pilot as it was certainly a great landing or from the passengers. I'm sure I would have been pretty nervous as a passenger on that plane. I wonder though, if the cameras hadn't been there, if the news crews weren't notified three hours before the landing, would this have been more than a 30 second spot on the news?
 
tomm10 said:
II wonder though, if the cameras hadn't been there, if the news crews weren't notified three hours before the landing, would this have been more than a 30 second spot on the news?

LOL - Thats the problem with 24 hour "news" - you gotta fill it up!
 
One news update on things after the plane landed had the pilot jokeingly apologizeing that he landed the plane 6" over from the centerline on the runway. In that same writing a passenger said it was the smoothest landing he has ever been in.
 
Kas - I do believe they threw that rule out the window. Passengers reported using their cell phones to call people and to answer people calling to see if they're okay. On guy said he was using his Blackberry. In a situation like that, they sometimes do let things slide...
 
this is why i don't ride in airplanes! ,,fortunatly this turned out alright ,,i bet those people are extra nice to all those people they usually ignore....somebody musta thought they needed a reality check! ...but all that aside, i don't go anywhere unless i can get there by walking, driving, boating skiing, sledding..any thing except for flying...
You have bigger chances of getting killed walking, driving, boating, skiing, sledding than you do flying on a plane...
 
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