UAL Flight lands at DEN with total hydraulic failure

[lupine]

Everyone ok, towed to gate. Flight came from San Diego shortly before noon.

Weirdest note in the article was that the airport declared an Amber Alert , which must have a different meaning in the aviation context.

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13609730

[MStieb]

This was a very strange article indeed. Contradicts itself or rather sources do. And I too am confused about an "Amber Alert" concerning a distressed plane. "Amber Alerts" are for missing or abducted children... So I thought.

[lupine]

I think they're editing it (poorly) on the fly. They did change the headline, which originally said that a plane landed at DIA "Under Duress", which was what first caught my eye.

I'm not sure how serious this situation was, and whether this hydraulics loss was soon before landing or much earlier in the flight. (Though I'm thinking that it must have been late because otherwise they could have either gone back to San Diego (though that might be a particularly challenging airport given the approach), one of the other Southland airports, PHX, ABQ, or even Vegas.

But such is the status of reporting in the single newspaper Denver world. An old wooden tourist mall burned in Estes Park (near the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park) on Monday, and the paper calmly reported that BATF was flying in 21 national investigators to add to the 6 ATF investigators already at the site. No injuries to speak of, and not much questioning of why ATF was deploying 27 investigators plus the Colorado State investigators plus dogs to look into a fire in a structure that was all of (perhaps) 12,000 square feet.

[sbm12]

Originally Posted by lupine

I'm not sure how serious this situation was, and whether this hydraulics loss was soon before landing or much earlier in the flight. (Though I'm thinking that it must have been late because otherwise they could have either gone back to San Diego (though that might be a particularly challenging airport given the approach), one of the other Southland airports, PHX, ABQ, or even Vegas.

Given the length of the runway, the relative isolation and the presence of MX facilities at DEN I'd actually be rather surprised if they diverted unless it is actually an emergency.

I was on an IAH-AUS flight that had landing gear issues and we actually returned to IAH because CO has their hub there. We were actually below 10K feet on approach into AUS before climbing back up and returning.