I was on UA 5879 yesterday, CMH-ORD and experienced a first (flightaware: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/S...53Z/KCMH/KORD). We were about half-way through the trip in our CRJ-700 and all of the sudden we slowed down and descended. This didn't strike me as all that odd because you often start descending for ORD fairly early. But then we slowed down a lot, as in you could physically feel the plane slow and slow until it felt like we were barely moving.

Then, all of the sudden, we hear a loud noise and it is the familiar sound of the landing gear coming down! It came down, there was a lot of noise (wind resistance?), and then it went up again. The gear was probably down for about a minute or so.

The captain came on shortly afterward to explain that there was an indication in the cockpit that the "brakes were hot" and the procedure was to slow down and descend, lower the gear to cool it off, and then retract the gear. He said they did that, the warning light went off and so we're going to continue on to ORD. He reassured everyone that there was nothing wrong with the plane.

Anyone have this before? My question is: why would the brakes get hot in air? If they were hot wouldn't this have been indicated on the ground?? I mean he certainly didn't do any breaking from the time the takeoff roll started to when they were in the air...

Thoughts?