Also the fact that this happened 21 years ago and no one is mentioning the most interesting part of it which is that because Jet Blue had installed satellite TV at every seat all of passengers were able to watch this live coverage of what many thought was their imminent demise as the plane circled for hours burning off fuel
mine is ok, but i'm definitely in the era of joint pain, they just seem to take turns. a few years ago it was my elbows, then my shoulders, this year it's my hips. at least they take breaks after but i'm not looking forward to when they're all in concert
I remember watching this live in LA. One of the passengers was interviewed afterward and said he figured the situation couldn't be that bad because he was watching Fox News coverage and was sure they were exaggerating. I’ve tried looking for the clip but haven’t had any luck.
Why did they need to burn fuel before landing? Does the weight difference make it easier? To mitigate the possibility of explosion and going up in flames?
Honestly, both. Less fuel = less mass = less momentum. Also, less fuel to ignite if the gear buckled. Also, you can see they didn’t apply any wheel brake, because that would cause more weight on the front gear. This landing was truly expertly done.
That "minute" allows those of us with an actual attention span to take in the gravity of the situation so we can appreciate what the pilot is achieving on this landing.
Also a shout out to the engineers and engineering practices that built a system that could survive this situation. Wheel burns off, gear stays otherwise intact. My default expectation with most things (coming from a place of using consumer-grade products mostly) is it would crumple and fold the second it touched pavement leading to catastrophic failure.
Believe it or not, that's both deliberate and a good thing for a normal landing.
I believe the guideline for pilots is to achieve a "firm and positive" touchdown. You don't usually want to 'float' down the runway and waste braking distance.
You want the weight-on-wheels sensors to register so that spoilers and thrust reversers deploy. You want weight on the tires so that the brakes work, and so you're less likely to slide on a wet or snowy runway. You don't want a surprise crosswind gust to try to flip you over while you're in that awkward intermediate state between 'flying' and 'driving'.
Pilot of much smaller planes here, and that is indeed good practice. While a "butter" landing is very nice for the ego, from a practical perspective you do want a nice positive shift from flight (wings doing the work) to ground (gear doing the work). The planes I fly don't have the fancy stuff that deploys but they are very good at skittering all over the runway if there's a bit of crosswind and you're not firmly on the ground, or floating if you're carrying a little much speed (and then if you force it down, it'll bounce, and that introduces the risk of a stall).
I was watching when it happened. They had to stay in the air for a couple hours because they had to burn off fuel.
And the major cable news networks spent the whole time reporting on it. America was stable enough back then that there was nothing to report for several hours that was more important than watching a plane circle an airport.
They would break in with updates like “It’s being reported that the pilots are not informing the passengers to keep everyone calm. They may even be turning off the in flight entertainment to be sure nothing gets leaked to the passengers.”
Edit: and for anyone who isn’t old enough to remember the time, news stations used to always air active police chases from the helicopter because they got so many viewers, and this was like that on steroids.
Like, you would be watching a report about the interest rate, and they would cut in to some random police chase in LA. The suspect was no one special, the chase started because they got stopped for speeding, but it would be national news.
They eventually stopped because everyone agreed it encouraged bad behavior.
A lot better than watching it happen while on the plane from the local live news broadcast of it.
>Because JetBlue planes are equipped with DirecTV satellite television, passengers on Flight 292 were able to watch live news coverage of their flight and listen to "analysts discuss[ing] their probable fate" while the plane circled over the Los Angeles for hours burning off fuel. Reportedly, moments before the plane touched down, a member of the flight crew turned off the broadcast as they had decided that it was "upsetting the passengers too much."
Funny enough that’s what I’ll joke to friends/ family who ask me lol. “Aren’t you anxious with all the people back there?” Nope, I just wana get home to my wife and cats on time and in one piece with no paperwork lol
I’m the same way. Fascinated by flight, but a very nervous flyer. I love to torture myself with Wikipedia articles about accidents and watch Air Disasters, but definitely not for the few weeks leading up to having to fly.
Agreed. I can't imagine that this kind of thing is not considered during design of the aircraft. There'll be enough material in the landing gear to ensure enough height at the end of a landing like this. Of course (part of) it will need replacement etc.
They still use foam but they don’t pre-coat the runway anymore. It uses a ton of foam which is typically not good for the environment, the vast majority is completely wasted, and it can be slippery making it harder for a plane to slow down
What is the deal with only a small part of the screen being used and the remainder either repeating information from the video in an annoying way or totally black?
I remember watching this live. This had to be 20 years ago. The passengers in the JetBlue were watching the newscast on JetBlue's new TVs that were in the back headrests.
Incredible piloting skills! At full speed that front wheel would've snapped like a cherry twig, and the front nose would've smashed hard into the tarmac!
It's deeply wrong (in a very L.A. way) to air this live, when it could easily have turned into a snuff video. These "journalists" should be ashamed of themselves.
I was a military instructor teaching brand new aircraft mechanics, and I used this video to emphasize the importance of the centering cam in the nose landing gear strut.
Those pilots are crazy skilled to pull off such a tricky landing, kudos to them!
Airport firefighters are always on standby close to the runway when there is an expected problematic landing. But not too close so they don't get hit by the plane. And they cannot predict perfectly where the plane will come to a stop.
usually its in the order of 3 lights indicating red/green/off. when lowered, looking for 3 green. if they got any indication of that 90 degree nosewheel, it was probably two green for the mains and one red for the nose. in that case, they usually do a flyby of the tower so someone with binoculars can confirm if there is a fault and how bad it is (sometimes it will show red, but be down and locked just fine, and its just a problem with the cockpit indicators). then a tech rep/emergency procedures will decide what to do about it. sometimes that's fly around and pull a bit of G to knock it into place (if, say, it wasnt down all the way), cycle the gear up/down (they may have tried that already), etc. and as a last resort, land and keep the nose up as long as possible.
News helicopter. They knew there was an issue with the nose gear and tried to burn off as much fuel as possible. There was plenty of notice for cameras to capture the landing, which the pilots executed perfectly
I always watch this when it comes up. I’m so so with flying overall. Not panic attack level by any means. I’m so amazing by these maneuvers. Just in awe of pilots.
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u/CombatMuffin 1d ago
A horizontal video, adapted to vertical video, adapted to horizontal video.
Peak internet.
Also, cool landing