theoflyalot

NEWARK -- A United Airlines flight made an emergency landing at Newark Liberty International Airport this morning after its landing gear failed to deploy properly, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

United Airlines Flight 634 from Chicago with 53 people aboard landed safely after 9:30 a.m. at Newark, its intended destination, the Port Authority said....
.....

ABC news, however, showed a photograph of what appears to be the disabled plane parked on the runway, with its right wing touching the ground, surrounded by emergency vehicles.

from NJ.com . Sorry, but my BBG terminal doesn't give the full URL...

PFKMan23

The link can be found here. Glad to see everyone is safe.

d3van

Scary. Hope that nobody was injured. I wonder how much damage the plane suffered?

snowed

Oh no. I hope everyone is safe and the plane will be ok. Kudos to the crew for the happy ending.



More info and picture here.

Spider777

Just curious if anyone knows, how did the airbus land with only one half of the rear gear extended.. Wouldn't the weight shift during landing and draw the plane to the side without the fully deployed gear... I'm shocked the side of the plane never touched the runway causing a huge stream of sparks or anything..
Planes are made soo amazingly that it's great pilots are able to land them safely.

Ironic this happened on the day Sully's flight television special is going to air on TLC ..

HJsimpson

glad to hear every one is okay ^(well, except the lanbding gear). Good things there weren't too many passengers on the plane. That probably helped with quick evacuation.

cyborg

This happened to me on a TWA 767 back in 1987. Turned out to be caused by maintenance procedure carried out at SFO before the flight. In this case the pilot decided to land at Scott AFB instead of STL. CAP told me there were two reasons for this: 1) Headwind to make a landing at lower ground speed, 2) SAFB has a large medical facility...

I looked out of the window after we touched down, still moving and didn't see sparks, but the plane veered off center and the right engine ate a bunch of turf and skewed the plane as we stopped.

http://aviation-safety.net/photos/di...0&vnr=2&kind=C

http://aviation-safety.net/photos/di...0&vnr=1&kind=C

http://www.ntsb.gov/recs/letters/1988/A88_26.pdf

A pilot told me the plane was sold to US Air, but appears to belong to Airbone under new tail number.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Airbo...81fc35d8a5739a

Cheers,

-Cyborg

Spider777

Thanks cyborg.. Glad y ou were ok on your flight.. yeah i guess the engine takes the majority of the screeching down the runway after landing.. Still amazed that the wing never touches the runway..Aren't the engines made to break off during impacts like that?

aluminumdriver

No, they're not. They are designed to break away if they encounter extreme stress encounters, like during a seized engine that is blowing itself apart, something along those lines. Sliding down a runway wouldn't introduce those stresses.

Looks like the pilots did a great job overall. It's why hopefully people choose to fly United, not the cheap fares but well trained professional pilots when things do happen to go wrong.

AD

It seems they had a malfunction that wouldn't let the right side come down, even with manual extension. You're correct in that the plane will drag to the side with the gear up. That's why the pilots will land slightly to the other side of the runway, and use rudder and differential braking of the good extended gear to maintain runway alignment. It's actually an easier situation with wing mounted engines, versus say an MD-80. With fuselage mounted engines, the preferred method then is to suck up the gear and land on the belly, since the most dangerous thing in this is grabbing a wing tip and potential loss of control.

AD

777-200LR

I dont think they will fly this plane anymore.

SFflyer123

It seems to me that unless there was a risk of fire, they could have evacuated via a portable staircase, just like the air berlin over-shoot:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/trav...0104-lnny.html

Though I am no expert, I understand that people can be injured on those slides, breaking ankles, etc. Certainly, if there were elderly people on that flight, I could see how having them slide down those evacuation slides could seriously hurt them. Was this just a knee-jerk reaction to the landing, or do you think they really needed the slides to get out quickly? Any thoughts?

halls120

^ to the pilots on this plane. And yes, this is one of the reasons I choose UA over the competition.

cyborg

I called our TWA pilot Fabulous Phil Callahan!

WRT previous post: engine on our 1988 flight acted like a well designed skid (curved sufrace).

Cheers,

-Cyborg

NTSB report cited wing damage on the TWA flight, so depends on the event...

Cheers,

-Cyborg

rch4u

Really? I'm pretty sure the flying public assumes competent pilots are a given and purchase on the basis of price and convenience.

sharmaintl

Great job pilots! I hope they as much kudos as 'Scully' did for his Hudson landing. I am sure this was no easy task either. ^^