JetBlue Airways Flight 292 was
a scheduled flight from Bob Hope Airport (BUR)
in Burbank, California to John F.
Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
in New York City. On September 21, 2005, flight 292 executed an emergency landing at Los Angeles
International Airport (LAX)
after the nose wheels jammed
in an abnormal position. No one was injured.
Carrying 140 passengers and six crew, the Airbus
A320-232 aircraft departed from Burbank at 3:17 pm PDT (UTC-7).
The aircraft, which was built in 2002, bore the tail number N536JB and
the name "Canyon Blue". It was scheduled to fly 2,465 miles
(3,967 km) to JFK airport.
After takeoff from Burbank, the pilots
realized that they could not retract the landing gear. They then flew low over Long
Beach Municipal Airport (LGB) in Long Beach (the location of a
JetBlue hub) to allow officials in the airport's control tower to
take stock of the damage to its landing gear before attempting a landing, and
it was found that the nosewheel was rotated ninety degrees to the left,
perpendicular to the direction of the fuselage.
Rather than land at Long Beach Airport, the
pilot-in-command took the decision that the aircraft would land at Los
Angeles International Airport (LAX), in order to take advantage of its
long, wide runways and modern safety equipment.
The pilots flew the aircraft, which can carry
up to 46,860 pounds (21,255 kg) of aviation fuel, in a figure eight
pattern between Bob Hope Airport in Burbank and LAX for more than two hours in
order to burn fuel and lower the risk of fire upon landing. This also served to
lighten the plane, reducing potential stress on the landing gear and
dramatically lowering landing speed as well.
Since JetBlue planes are equipped with DirecTV satellite
television, passengers on Flight 292 were able to watch live news coverage of
their flight while the plane circled over the Pacific for hours. The in-flight
video system was turned off "well before landing".
Emergency services and fire engines were
standing by on the LAX tarmac ahead of the landing. Although foam trucks
were available, they were not used. The U.S. FAA no longer recommends pre-foaming runways,
chiefly due to concerns that it would deplete firefightingfoam supplies
which might later be needed to respond to a fire; it is also difficult to
determine exactly where a runway should be foamed, and pre-foaming might also
reduce the effectiveness of the aircraft's brakes, potentially causing it to
slide off the runway.
When the nose gear did touch-down, there were
sparks and flames from it, but no apparent damage to the rest of the plane. At
6:20pm PDT (UTC-7), the aircraft came to a stop very close to the end
of the 11,096-foot (3382-meter) runway 25L. In an attempt to keep the nose gear
off the ground as long as possible, reverse thrust was not used to
slow the aircraft. The pilots therefore used a much larger portion of the
available runway than in a typical landing, stopping 1,000 feet / 305 m
before the end of the runway, validating the decision to divert from Long
Beach, where the longest runway is 10,000 feet (3048 m).
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