Jet Blue Flight #292 lands with crooked nose gear!

Great pic!!!! 👍

There is a video clip of the landing on this site

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13443725,00.html

good job by the pilot!

good job by the pilot!

You can say that again.... 👏

I am very impressed with Orlando George's perceptiveness. He keyed in on the real story in this emergency that, to my knowledge, none of the television commentators had a clue about.

The air crew did an excellent job in this landing but did absolutely nothing you would not routinely expect from professional pilots. On a scale of 1-0, this landing was a 2 or 3, assuming the nose gear did not collapse.

The real credit goes to the designers of the nose gear assembly. Once the tire burned away, with the nose gear sliding on metal, I fully expected to see the gear collapse. Even more surprising to me was the confidence they had in that gear after the aircraft stopped. They shifted the center of gravity on the aircraft by unloading the passengers without first bracing the nose from collapsing.

I don't want to take anything at all away from the pilots - they did a great job. However, it was nothing but a well-executed soft-field landing.

Sorry - I left a couple of words out of the previous post which may have changed the meaning I was trying for.

In the second paragraph, the second sentence should have been: "On a scale of danger from 1-10, this landing was a 2 or 3, assuming the nose wheel did not collapse".

I don't understand what you mean, Don Wood. Is 10 good and 0 bad? Then why are you saying that the landing was a 2 or 3? I think that the pilot did a GREAT job with the landing. He made a nice centerline landing trying to keep the nose wheel up as much as possible. I trully respect that.

What I was trying to say, apparently poorly, was two things:

First, the danger inherent in that kind of landing is not great. On a danger scale of 1-10, 1 being the lowest level of danger and 10 being the highest, the danger in this kind of landing is about a 2 or 3. Aircraft are landed quite often with nose gear problems, often when the nose gear fails to come down at all. Almost never, in these cases, are there injuries or fatalities. There can be serious damage to the airframe if the nose does not extend or collapses on landing but, again, rarely is an injury encountered. If the nose gear had collapsed, the danger level would have escalated but, even so, not to a great degree.

Second, the pilots did a good job making a soft-field landing but did nothing exceptional. Every pilot, in the US at least, is taught and must be able to demonstrate soft-field landings. For readers who do not understand that term, it does not mean the landing field is actually soft although that's where the term originated. It means making a landing where the approach is made at a slightly lower than normal speed, the initial landing is made on the main gear, and the nose gear is held off the runway with full stick or yoke back pressure until the airplane's speed is no longer able to maintain the nose in the air and it settles onto the runway. Soft field landings (and take offs) are used whenever there is any condition that might cause nose wheel problems. These can include simple things like landing on a wet or soft grass field, landing when snow or mud is on the runway and may cause steering or upset problems if the nose wheel encounters it at too high a speed, or, as in the case of Jet Blue, where there is a nose wheel problem.

I had to demonstrate the exact kind of landing these pilots made when I got my private license, I have had to again demonstrate it each time I took a check ride for an advanced rating, I have had to demonstrate it each time I was checked out in a new aircraft type, and instructors often require it to be demonstrated during bi-annual flight reviews.

It is not a difficult, unusual, or dangerous landing to make. I am quite sure the pilots of this Jet Blue aircraft would tell you the same thing.

Don,

Roger that. I agree that it's standard for pilots to check out on the soft field landing like you say. -In any case, the JetBlue incident at LAX was an event for us aviation buffs.