Croatia Airlines Dash-8 nose gear up landing in Zurich

[TBSC]

Croatian Dash-8-400 (9A-CQC) landed in ZRH with nose gear up. All crew and passengers are safe.

Accident: Croatia DH8D at Zurich on Sep 27th 2013, nose gear up landing (http://avherald.com/h?article=46918e03&opt=0)

[Tu.114]

Looks like a job well done.

[CUrdampilleta]

A Croatia Airlines de Havilland Dash 8-400, registration 9A-CQC performing flight OU-464 from Zagreb (Croatia) to Zurich (Switzerland) with 60 passengers and 4 crew, was on approach to Zurich's runway 14 when the crew went around reporting they had an unsafe nose gear indication, the nose gear appeared to be blocked. The aircraft entered a hold at 9000 feet, then declared Mayday reporting they needed to land without nose gear. Zurich Airport halted all traffic in preparation for the emergency. About 40 minutes after aborting the first approach the aircraft landed on runway 14 safely without nose gear and came to a stop on the runway on main gear and nose section of the aircraft, emergency services reported everything appeared under control from the outside, people could disembark slowly. The crew advised both engines were shut down, a few minutes later the crew advised all passengers had disembarked, everything was safe on board. Tower annotated to the crew: "Excellent job, well done".

Other traffic resumed a few minutes after landing, traffic was halted for about 15 minutes.

9A-CQC on runway 14:

http://avherald.com/img/croatia_dh8d_9a-cqc_zurich_130927_1.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BVNSs1xCIAA2r0B.jpg

[Machinbird]

A link to audio of the incident.
Very well handled.
LiveATC.net Croatia 464 accident in Zürich 27.09.2013 - YouTube (http://youtu.be/U01ZAkq9YfI)

[Clandestino]

Avherald now shows Charlie back at her feet, current estimate of her return to service is in about a month. Crew absolutely did splendid job, capt held the nose off as long as he could and lowered it gently, resulting in just about one hundred meters scrape. Passengers disembarked through 1L, despite cabin preparation some were surprised why they were urged not to take their hand baggage with them or what was the reason for too shallow stairs angle.

As the overall economical and political situation in Croatia is quite depressing, media immediately jumped on the opportunity to report at least something positive and instantly lionized hero pilots. That would be more palatable if these same media didn't run smear campaign in May during pilots and CA strike, accusing them of being overpaid (enormous salaries of 3500 € being mentioned), underworked (mere 70 working hrs in a month) and unwilling to share the economic pain with commoners.

A bit of bad news; this was scheduled to be the last flight of CA2 as her contract expired yesterday. At least she went out with a style. I keep my fingers crossed for her to find another job with company that pays more respect to their flight attendants. Purser of the flight is the youngest PUR in the company and as such is the first in line of those to be demoted to CA2 when the winter phase of "restructuring" begins.