Ask the pilot

Why JetBlue's heroic LAX landing was anything but.

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Airplanes, Airlines, Business, Airports, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

Sept. 30, 2005 | "What is it that commercial flying needs and misses more than anything?" I pondered in this space only a week ago. "The answer, I believe, is a hero."

With that, as if on cue, came the strange odyssey of JetBlue flight 292, an Airbus A320 bound from Burbank, Calif., to New York's JFK International.

For better or worse, almost everybody in America knows what I'm talking about: Moments after liftoff on Sept. 21, cockpit indications revealed flight 292's forward landing gear had not properly retracted. A low-level fly-by of the control tower at Long Beach Municipal Airport confirmed that the front tire assembly was cocked at 90 degrees. Unable to realign the twisted gear, the crew would be forced to make an emergency landing with the tires stuck sideways.

The pilots and JetBlue's dispatch team agreed to a diversion to Los Angeles, primarily to take advantage of LAX's long runways. But first came the matter of the plane's gross weight, which was several thousand pounds above its maximum allowable heft for touchdown. As reviewed here in the past, a jetliner's takeoff weight routinely exceeds its landing limit, necessitating the extra kerosene to be burned off or jettisoned. (Only in the most urgent situations will a crew opt for an overweight touchdown, which puts a high level of stress on the gear and other components.) The A320, like other small, limited-capacity jetliners, does not have fuel-dump capability. This meant about three hours of leisure flying over the Pacific until the poundage was down to the appropriate amount.

Those three hours, of course, are what allowed this relative nonevent to be catapulted into full-blown network spectacle. The California news outlets, out and about in search of the usual car chases and traffic accidents, had only to tip their cameras upward to catch the hapless Airbus as it circled. On board, 146 souls readied for what some people hoped might be, and were teased into believing could be, a devastating crash.

"There was a big buildup that I'm sure turned into a letdown for the talking heads," said Doug [last name withheld by request], an Airbus A320 pilot for a major airline. You'd better believe the producers at CNN, Fox and MSNBC were, on some level, wishing for a catastrophe."

When flight 292 finally emerged out of the haze and commenced its approach, those of us who knew better saw exactly what we expected to see: the plane touching down smoothly on its main tires; the nose gently falling as speed bled away until the wayward forward gear, unable to defy gravity any longer, scraped sideways into the pavement, decelerating the jet in a rooster tail of sparks and smoke. Once it came to a stop, the doors were opened and crew and passengers were escorted uneventfully away. There were no injuries.

As if the live-action saga hadn't been enough, the media spent the next three days showing slow-motion replays, interviewing passengers, and generally giving JetBlue, the 5-year-old New York-based discount carrier, all the free advertising it could possibly hope for.

Next page: Grown men were weeping in the passenger seats, but I would have just read a magazine