Free Republic

The body of an Afghan so desperate to escape the country hours after Kabul fell to the Taliban was found in the landing gear of an American C-17 transport aircraft hours after it hastily took off from Hamid Karzai International Airport, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The body in the aircraft’s landing gear has made it temporarily inoperable, the sources said. The U.S. resumed operations out of the airport late Monday, allowing C-17s carrying Marines and soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division to land in the country, according to Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, the Joint Staff’s deputy...

Two pilots have been suspended from duty after their aircraft, carrying 99 passengers, nearly ran out of fuel because they forgot to retract the landing gear after take-off. Air India Flight AI676 was en route to Mumbai from Kolkata on July 22 but was forced to divert to Nagpur when the crew became alarmed by the speed at which the aircraft was losing fuel thanks to the additional drag created by the extended wheels. An unidentified source told the Times of India that the “brand new Airbus A320”, one of the most fuel efficient aircraft in existence, had struggled to...

A piece of landing gear believed to be from one of the planes destroyed in the Sept 11 attacks has been discovered wedged between the infamous "Ground Zero Mosque" and another New York building. The part includes a clearly visible Boeing identification number, New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said. The twisted, rusted metal part has cables and levers on it and is about 5 feet tall, 3 feet wide and 1.5 feet deep. The piece was discovered Wednesday by surveyors inspecting a lower Manhattan Islamic community centre on behalf of the building's owner. The spokesman said the inspectors...

The problems with JetBlue Flight 292 marked at least the seventh time that the front landing gear of an Airbus jet has locked at a 90-degree angle, forcing pilots to land commercial airliners under emergency conditions, according to federal records. No one has been injured in the incidents, which span about a decade. There are more than 2,500 planes from the Airbus 320 family, which includes the Airbus 318, 319 and 321 models, in operation worldwide. Aviation safety officials Thursday said the planes have a good safety record. In the most recent case, JetBlue's flight from Burbank to New York's...

...The landing gear had not retracted, the pilot said. ... The back of each seat on a JetBlue plane is equipped with a small television set. As passengers watched, live, in-flight broadcasts of MSNBC and Fox News began to show their airplane. Ash glanced at the television of the passenger next to him: "At first I just thought, 'Of course, Fox News,' " he said, discounting the story as sensationalized. "But then it was on MSNBC." ... But his humor faded as he listened to television commentators talking about the flight. "One guy was saying, 'You know, I'm just speculating,...

WASHINGTON -- There have been at least seven cases in which the front wheels on Airbus A320s became stuck in a sideways position, forcing pilots to make emergency landings. No one was hurt in any of the landings, the latest of which occurred Wednesday night in front of a national television audience when a JetBlue plane touched down in Los Angeles amid smoke and sparks as the front tires disintegrated. The incidents, unnerving to be sure, are nonetheless considered anomalies and have not prompted federal authorities to take action beyond ordering airlines to follow Airbus instructions for replacing rubber seals...

LOS ANGELES – A JetBlue airliner with faulty landing gear touched down safely Wednesday evening at Los Angeles International Airport after circling the region for three hours with its front wheels turned sideways and unable to retract into the plane. As passengers inside the plane watched the drama unfold on television sets in the cabin, the pilot landed using the back wheels first and then easing onto the front tires. The front wheels smoked, popped and sparked as the plane rolled to a stop on an auxiliary runway set apart from the main terminals. No one was hurt. "We all...

A Jet Blue aircraft just did a low altitude flyby of Long Beach airport after reporting some concern with their forward gear. The television helicopter caught an image of it - the gear is turned sideways and tilted. Aircraft is heading out towards the ocean to drop fuel, will turn around, and attempt a 'soft field' landing, keeping the nose up as long as possible.

Jeep, Doing 80MPH, Drives Under Plane To Fix Landing Gear UPDATED: 5:16 pm EDT September 16, 2005 NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. -- It was a literal fix on the fly at the New Smyrna Beach Airport. Three men in a jeep drove within feet of a small plane to fix its landing gear while it was still in the air. The jeep had to go just about as fast as it could go down the runway, and the small Cessna had to slow to almost stalling speed for it to work. "It's not something, from a safety standpoint, we would...

Chinese boy falls from plane May 26, 2005 15:59 IST China today launched a high-level probe into the death of a boy who fell from the landing gear of a passenger plane during take off yesterday at the Dunhuang Airport in northwest China. A joint group of officials dispatched by the Northwest China Bureau of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) arrived in Dunhuang Airport and started an investigation on the circumstances leading to the accident. Business at the airport of Dunhuang, a well-known tourist resort known for its Buddhist grottoes, remained unaffected by the incident, said the airport...

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - A plane carrying three U.S. senators bound for a campaign event in Missouri landed in Alabama after pilots reported problems with the landing gear, a Republican official said. Ann Wagner, co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and the Missouri Republican chairwoman, said late Monday that a plane carrying Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Sens. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Ill., and Rick Santorum, R-Pa., reported problems with its landing gear and landed at Mobile. A police report at Mobile Regional Airport indicated that a Challenger 250 landed safely Monday at 3:28 p.m. CST after reporting its landing...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - For the second time in a week, an apparent stowaway was found dead in a wheel well of a passenger jet that landed at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, raising airport security concerns, officials said on Wednesday. The body of a man believed to be in his 30s was discovered on Tuesday night during a maintenance inspection of British Airways flight 177 from London's Heathrow Airport, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said. On Christmas Eve, JFK airport maintenance crews found the body of a stowaway in a...