Today a Jet Blue Airbus landed with the nosewheel jammed to one side.
Big Deal.
Still, every news outlet covered it like it was Armageddon , because, don’t you know, IT MIGHT HAVE CRASHED SPECTACULARLY. Bullshit. In this day of electronic news, when even the passengers on the plane could watch live and in color, it seems that the media get ever more hysterical and intrusive. I’m surprised they didn’t have cameras in the concourse interviewing people waiting for that flight “Mrs. AirlinePassenger, what will you do when you watch your husband burning to death out there on the runway?” Maybe they did, but I didn’t see that coverage, thankfully. It wouldn’t surprise me, though.
I’m a pilot, though, and that gives me some insight as to the physics of the operation in question. Clearly, one wants to keep the nosewheel off the ground until the last possible second, to allow the plane to decelerate before bringing it down.
One also wants to use the maximum amount of available runway, to avoid using the wheel brakes as much as possible, since they tend to transfer weight forward, being behind the center of gravity.
One also wants to move the center of gravity towards the rear of the plane as much as possible, to enable the elevators on the tail to remain effective a little longer. This will aid in keeping the nose up.
The pilots of the plane in question did all this, and more, perfectly. That’s their job, and they did it well. Kudos. They did their job quietly, and in communication and cooperation with dozens of people on the ground, ensured the safest possible outcome. The media were the ones whipping up the hysteria.
Not so very long ago (1989) , a DC-10 had a catastrophic engine failure and made an emergency landing in Sioux City, Iowa. Again, communication and cooperation saved a lot of lives. Al Haynes, the pilot of UAL 232, once told me at a safety seminar that everyone on the plane who survived the accident owed their lives to the preparations made in advance by the people of Sioux City, IA.
I still don’t know why FEMA looks so much like a clusterfark, sending trucks of ice to Maine, and everything else that has gone wrong with their ongoing response to Hurricane Katrina, when a small group of citizens in Iowa showed us all how it could be done right over 15 years ago.
Unless they made special provisions, the loved ones wouldn’t have been watching the plane burning. Remember, only ticketed passengers are allowed to go to the gates, now. So they would have had to watch it on TV, too. Then we could have watched the loved ones watching their loved ones burn on TV.
Heh, true :) It’s been a long time since I flew on a commercial airliner- certainly not since 9/11. I was thinking they’d just be looking out the terminal windows.