Mybutthurts

Yikes AD. I guess you mean UX too. You mean you don't feel warm and fuzzy when you see those kids in the cockpit? Getting pretty hard to avoid UX.

ualdenver

Today's event is one of the reasons why I'm very proud to be flying United.

CApreppie

The A320 series has had nose landing gear issues in the past, but haven't heard about the dual main landing gear having recurring issues.

Will be interesting to see the cause. Hope it is not shoddy maintenance on UA's part.

To another poster, I don't worry about flying major foreign carriers with good safety records. It's the small and obscure regional carriers that are dicey.

I think there are many excellent regional pilots, but generally they don't have the same experience as the mainline and the working and oversight environment of the some regionals isn't optimal, i.e. Continental Express accident in Buffalo.

aluminumdriver

Yeah, I avoid them, but that's my personal view. If I do fly UX, or any express carrier, I always chat with the pilots to ge

jujube

More on NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/ny...1plane.html?hp

And one from the WSJ on the training levels of regional airlines and the bigger outfits like UA:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...747511810.html

UAAAPeter

Interesting - they don't mess around deciding to come down with no wheels. I could have imagined they'd circle trying to get the wheels down and getting rid of gas. They must have it all figured out which is good to know.

RichG

The New York Times story is interesting. The photo shows the International Arrivals area of Terminal B in the background. The New Jersey Turnpike runs parallel to Runways 4L and 4R, so the picture was likely taken by pulling off the Southbound local lanes of the Turnpike and using a long lens (the foreshortening in the photo... i.e. the apparent proximity of the aircraft and the terminal... is evidence of the focal length.) The A.P. photographer who is credited would only have had a minute or two to get this shot before being chased away so I credit her with a nice job getting the best shot I've seen today.

I can't be as kind to the writers of the article, who repeatedly mistake "wheels" for "landing gear". I'm not sure how many tires the nose gear has on an A319, but each main gear appears to have 2, based on the undercarriage photo from airliners.net.

JCDennis

Nice to see the happy ending here.

Re: using the slides -- I'd want out fast. Having gone down the slides twice (another story), I can say it wasn't bad at all. Fast and intimidating, but painless (although I felt it the next day in my almost nonexistent abs).

axl

I'm assuming that the 30 minutes of holding was probably used by the crew to prepare for the landing. They of course had to run checklists which would attempt to get the landing gear down, and if that failed there would be more checklists for the abnormal landing configuration. I would also spend as much time as I could to allow the airport authorities and fire department to prepare for the landing! At the same time the pilots would have to communicate with the flight attendants in order to get the cabin and pax prepared for the landing and subsequent evacuation. This would be the wrong time for the '2 minute offense'. Looks like the pilots and flight attendants handled the emergency very well. Kudos to them!

This is a rare occurrence, but it does happen obviously. In our current economic slump, the airlines are all trying to fly with as little fuel as possible. The FAA is satified with ~45 minutes of fuel planned at touchdown (that's 45 minutes to FLAMEOUT). As a minimum, UAL adds the extra 15 minutes so we get an hour minimum. Culturally, UAL is probably the most conservative airline when it comes to fuel loads. This is the type of event that will bite you in the @ss when you plan to land with that little fuel. This crew obviously had some extra fuel they were able to use to do the extensive coordination and preparation that should be done. You never know about the landing gear until you're about 3 minutes from touchdown!!!

docbert

The lowest common denominator knows what "wheels" are, but probably has no idea what "landing gear" is. Given that they are repeatedly referred to as "landing wheels" I wouldn't be surprised if the gear -> wheels translation happened in editing, rather than with the original writer.

Cristobal

Three cheers to the pilot and crew for airmanship and professionalism landing the plane and getting all off safely ^

I liked the quote about the "unbelievably smooth" landing from a passenger quoted in the NY Times article saying he'd had worse landings at Newark!

Thanks to AD & axl for your clarifications, too.

RichG

Well, that's certainly possible... it just transfers the ignorance award from the reporter to the editor.

Meanwhile, more expert reportage from Ch. 2 News in NYC right now: the reporter at Newark on the 11 p.m. newscast just referred to an "Airbus A314." I know... it probably looked like a "4" in her notes.

dhammer53

UA 232. Only a Flyertalker would remember the flight number.

It was a sad day. If you were around then, you remember this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232



As soon as I heard 634 on the radio, I knew where this flight was coming from.

UA pilots. Good work. ^

rch4u

If this A319 cannot be repaired, count on seeing that much more UAX to cover the 4-5 segments that frame would fly in a day.

freshairborne

I haven't been a "flyertalker" for too long but I remember very well Flight 232. I was a UA 737 copilot when it happened, and I watched it on TV in Flight Ops at IAD. I learned shortly after that one of my crash pad roomies was one of the cockpit crew on that flight, and one of my other friends was one of the flight attendants.

Several years later, as a 737 captain, Al Haynes rode on my jumpseat, and told me the whole story, which was the same as the crash-pad guy, of course.

Come to think of it, "crash pad guy" was a strangely appropriate term after that.

Freshairborne