September 21, 2005 Flight
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. 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 made 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. The Airbus A320 does not have the mechanical facility to dump fuel, despite various news agencies reporting that the aircraft was doing so over the ocean.
Because 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 firefighting foam 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.
Los Angeles Fire Dept. Battalion Chief Lou Roupoli said, "The pilot did an outstanding job. He kept the plane on its rear tires as long as he could before he brought ." 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).
Read more about this topic: Jet Blue Airways Flight 292
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