Northwest 747 Lands on two legs at Narita

[newswatcher]

From Associated Press:

"A Northwest Airlines passenger jet made an emergency landing at Tokyo's international airport after one set of its wheels failed to descend Tuesday, an airport spokesman said.

The incident forced the airport to shut down its only runway and suspend all flights for one hour and 20 minutes, said Narita Airport spokesman Minoru Abe.

None of the 410 passengers and crew was injured.

Northwest Airlines flight 28, headed to Tokyo from Manila, notified the airport that its landing gear were stuck and the runway was cleared, he said.

One of the plane's three sets of landing gear failed to descend properly, but the other two supported it as it landed, he said.

Northwest Airlines officials could not be reached for comment.

It was the second time in two days that a Northwest Airlines plane had made an emergency landing at Narita Airport.

On Monday, a Los Angeles-bound jet with 295 people aboard returned to Tokyo after the pilots' instruments warned of engine trouble."

[Basil]

The AP report doesn't mention the a/c type however, a 747 has 5 legs. So long as you don't have the nosegear or two on one side stuck up then a landing without hull contact is feasible.

[BackSeatPilot]

Welp, Dow Jones identified it as a 747. Pretty rare to hear of the centre gear of 747 collapsing... or is it? http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/confused.gif

BSP

[newswatcher]

Further reports refer to right hand gear failure, with one of the engines touching the runway. It took one hour to clear the runway.

[PAXboy]

Presumenably, it would also make a difference as to whether the inner fuselage wheel set or the outer wing set, had failed. Not to mention the landing weight of the machine.

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A window seat on the sunny side of the aircraft, please!

[enginefailure]

well 2 legs out of 5 sounds not very comfortable .......

(but i believe that one leg failed to come down, or ?). If also an engine touched the runway i believe it was one of the outer legs. Hwo knows it exactly ?

[TravelMan]

Seems the engine came to rest after the plane was at the end of the runway, but they had to do tests to make sure the runway was clear (don't want another Concorde-type incident). Aircraft was Boeing 747-400, with 390 pax on board. 32 international flights had to be diverted to other airports in Japan since Narita was closed for 80 minutes! No wonder many refer to this airline as Northworst...my cousin is an f/a for them, too!!