Scary Landing At JFK / Malfunction reroutes jet bound for Newark
By Joshua Robin. STAFF WRITER
3 September 2003
Copyright 2003, Newsday. All Rights Reserved.
An American Airlines plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Kennedy Airport yesterday after its front landing gear would not open entirely, airline officials said.
Flight 1048, bound for Newark from Dallas, was rerouted to Kennedy, where it landed at 11:36 a.m. using its rear gear and the underside of the plane's nose to stop.
There were no injuries reported and the 128 passengers and five crew members departed the rear of the MD-80 using a staircase. The cause of the malfunction had not been determined yesterday, an airline spokesman said.
One passenger, Betty Micharski, 69, of Trenton, N.J., who lost her brother in a 1993 airplane crash, said passengers and crew members were clearly frightened as the plane descended into New York without its full landing gear.
"The guy alongside of me, he was a big guy, and he was shaking and shaking and shaking," said Micharski, who was returning from Los Angeles. "I was thinking, my will is not in order."
The pilot first reported problems to the tower about 45 minutes before the flight's 10:47 a.m. scheduled arrival in Newark, when an indicator light showed the landing gear was malfunctioning, passengers and officials said.
The plane circled the airport tower, where officials there confirmed the gear hadn't fully extended.
American Airlines spokesman Todd Burke said the pilot elected to land at Kennedy because it has longer runways than Newark.
Passenger Lisa Larson of Dallas called the mood inside the plane "very controlled."
"God, the crew did an amazing job," she said. "They kept us informed, they trained everyone."
Passengers were asked to assume an emergency landing position and firefighters spraying foam met the plane as it landed. After the plane landed, passengers burst into applause.
"It appears from our initial report that this was a textbook landing considering the circumstances," Burke said.
The aircraft was parked near a grassy part of the runway, where it remained hours after the landing, its nose clearly dipped. Passengers were loaded into two chartered buses, bound for Newark.
Micharski, whose brother Donald Robbins of Williamstown, N.J., died in a 1993 crash of an FAA plane in Front Royal, Va., said she thought of him yesterday, but vowed the incident wouldn't deter her from flying in two weeks. She's bound for Germany, in time for Oktoberfest.