American Airlines DC9 landing incident at O'Hare
 

Chicago Tribune story here

Disabled jet makes safe landing at O’Hare

By Jason Meisner
Tribune staff reporter
Published June 20, 2006, 8:26 AM CDT

No injuries were reported this morning after a disabled American Airlines jet made a safe emergency landing at O'Hare International Airport.

The pilot of American Airlines Flight 1740, which originated from Los Angeles, notified the O'Hare control tower at about 6:15 a.m. that the plane had no working nose gear, Chicago Aviation Department spokeswoman Kristen Cabanban said.

There were 131 passengers and five Chicago-based crew members on board the plane, said John Hotard, a spokesman for American Airlines. Hotard said upon approach to O'Hare, the plane first flew by the tower for a visual inspection.

"There was a flyby in which they passed the tower, but the tower could not confirm whether the nose gear was down," Hotard said.

The Chicago Fire Department instituted a standby response calling five ambulances to the scene and surrounding the runway with emergency equipment, fire Chief Kevin MacGregor said. He said officials confirmed the plane would have to land without its nose gear but decided not to put flame-retardant foam on the runway.

"A foam blanket can make the runway more difficult and slippery to control the landing," MacGregor said.

The plane was able to land safely at about 6:28 a.m. on runway 14-Right, Cabanban said. She said sparks shot up from the metal nose of the plane making contact with the runway, but there was no fire.

"It was an excellent job by the pilot to land that plane," Cabanban said. "All of the passengers were able to deplane the aircraft via the stairs."

MacGregor said paramedics checked the passengers at the scene but no injuries were reported. They were loaded onto a bus and taxied to a terminal, he said. The scene was secured shortly before 7 a.m., he said.

Cabanban said the plane would remain on the runway at its resting point while American Airlines officials inspected the aircraft and investigated the incident. She had no further information on what went wrong with the plane's landing gear.

The runway will remain "inactive" while the investigation continues, she said, but only minimal delays were expected at the airport today as a result.

Tribune staff reporter Charles Sheehan and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The video of the landing is quite interesting and I hope you all get to see it. A puff of flame at touchdown of nose section of aircraft, but plane will likely fly again...below is a report on a similiar incident some 10 years ago.


regards
jon

=====report from 10 years ago=======

Date: October 28th, 1996
Type: MD82
Registration: -
Operator: American Airlines
Where: JFT International Airport, New York
Report No.: Not Available
Report Date: -
Pages: -

This is not an accident investigation report.

At about 22:31 EST, American Airlines flight 346, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82 aircraft, N244AA, landed nose gear up at JFK International Airport, New York.
Visual meteorological conditions existed. There were 93 occupants; 1 passenger received serious injuries, and 2 passengers received minor injuries. The aircraft received minor damage. The departure point was Chicago, Illinois. The original destination was LaGuardia Airport, New York. The flight was operated under 14 CFR Part 121.
The flight was inbound to land at LGA on runway 31 when the flight crew received an unsafe nose gear indication. A low approach was made at LGA for ground personnel to visually determine the nose gear position, which they were unable to confirm as being down. The flight crew decided to divert to JFK where a landing was made on runway 31R and subsequently an emergency evacuation was performed. The injuries were incurred during the evacuation. The serious injury consisted of fractured bones of the ankle and foot.
Preliminary examination of the aircraft revealed the nose landing gear upper lock link, P/N 3914464-503, was fractured in two pieces. The linkage jammed against the shock strut structure, preventing extension of the strut. Metallurgical examination of the link to determine the failure mode is scheduled. NTSB Identification NYC97LA009
Aircraft is s/n 49256, l/n 1158, delivered to AA Sept 1984 with JT8D-217 engines, MTOW of 67,812 kgs / 149,000 lbs., configured in F14/Y125, and with a TTSN / TCSN as of Dec 1995 of 34,206 hrs / 19,743 ldg

DC-9 Nose gear stuck
 

Evening flight into Nashville in a DC9-31 late winter 1975. Nose gear wouldn't come down. Every procedure was carried out. We flew east of Nashville to try plan "B" (not found in any manual). The passengers were told that we were going to do a maneuver that would press them down in their seats, but to not be alarmed. We then made a "smooth" 3G pullup. Out came the nose gear with a wham. Later investigation confirmed our suspicion that the nosegear uplock simply had frozen with some ice. The ice of course had later melted, but the area was wet and very cold when we landed.
Experience is a great teacher. Don't ding an airplane if any other solution remains plausible. I am not potshotting the crew of AAL; my comment is just to always evaluate any possibility outside what the FAA and company manual dictate. That's what we're paid for......:ok:

Link to the video from Chicago's channel 2:
http://cbs2chicago.com/

and

http://cbs2chicago.com/video/[email protected]

EAL747...good move on your part...especially noted the "late winter" remark. You are right, pilots need to think and not just do checklists.


while we all know at altitude it is below freezing, when the freezing level is down to the deck, things don't thaw out .

today's wx at ORD approx time of incident:

METAR KORD 201053Z VRB04KT 10SM SCT250 18/14 A3003 RMK AO2 SLP166 T01780144

EAL, as you know, there are a couple of giant springs up in the nose gear compartment on the DC9 ( we called it the ROCKET). I was flying along one day and Kaboing! We landed and one of the springs was missing...may have fallen out when we put the gear down.



I wonder about the possibility of counterfit parts contributing to this? too early to know.

regards

jon

jondc9

IMHO at 18 degrees centigrade I don't think that freezing would have been a factor in this incident.

Airclues

Absolutely fantastic landing.

Fire Chief decides?
 

The Fire Chief decided not to foam the runway?

Well well! I would say that if the Commander requests foam he should get it.

I had a runway foamed once (also for an MD type ) and waited gladly 35 minutes to get it. Later I took the boys in the Fire shop a barrel of beer so they had some foam of their own.

This slipperiness argument is wrong. There are studies over 10 years old showing this. The usual tenuous argument for not foaming is if there is no dedicated equipment, you might use up fire fighting foam that you will need later to put out the blaze that you wouldn't have had if you had foamed the runway.

I suggest the Fire Chief reads the reports. I'll see if I can find them.

FC.

I have just watched the video of the landing, you guys make it look so easy when things go wrong......I am truly impressed!!!! :D :ok:

airclues

yes, that was my point. eal 747 indicated a winter event where the temps might have been freezing all the way to the ground.

today's event was clearly well above freezing at 18 c. my speculation is a bad part, faulty mx, or even an odd strike of something during takeoff.

as to foaming the runway, I tend to agree with the chap who foamed for another md80 incident. kudos also for buying beer for the brigade boys.

FWIW, at least in the USA, some 20 years ago foaming became something of the past for civilians, 15 years ago for military. And yes, if you foamed today, you would have to wait for the fire engines (fire trucks, equipment) to make sufficient foam for the post crash use...and while waiting, the foam on the runway would dissapate a bit...15 minutes seems the max useful time of foam. I too agree that directional control would not have suffered had there been foam on the runway.

My personal feeling is tht foaming the runway was popular with SAC to avoid problems with nukes. ;-)


Having covered things like this, I recall the press release for a CAL express embraer at houston with a gear problem. Press release said RUNWAYS WAS FOAMED> Pictures indicated otherwise. A call to a knowlegable person proved that the fire crew had HOSED off the runway where the tire (tyre) had burst (to remove debris, to allow continued runway ops)...the plane landed on different runway.

Must have been a slow news day then :zzz:

Great Landing
 

As a non pilot it seems that he managed to hold the nose off the ground for ages, until he was down to a very low speed. This must have been beneficial in terms of risk and damage. There is plenty of video about of similar instances but subjectively this guy/gal seems to have been able to hold the nose gear (or nose in this case!!!) off the tarmac for longest. Does this indicate a superior piece of flying?? I guess it does....do many of you pilots practice this type of event in the sim?

It used to be military practice (assuming plenty of surplus runway) to hold the nose off for "aerodynamic braking" - reduces brake energy and maybe tire wear as well.

25-30 years ago after a few runway overruns by commercial pilots, Boeing & McD-D discouraged this for airline ops. Haven't heard anything lately, but the risk of overrun through misjudgement does seem to outweigh the brake wear benefit. :}

PS - Keeping the nose up is a standard practice for soft-field landing in light aircraft. And if you're buying your own tires & brakes, you can effect some real economy here!

Main Gear
 

I recall a BA (BEA?) Viscount, or Vanguard, who came into LHR many moons ago with one side main gear inop.

He managed to hold the wing up long enough that there was minimal damage to the a/c, ended up with only part of the a/c off the runway, and the pax were deplaned to a safe distance. As the Flight Deck crew emerged from the a/c, the pax spontaneoulsly broke out with a round of applause.

Superb flying:ok: . Of couse, in these days the company would have been inundated with "emotional damage" compensation claims :ugh:

Temperature at altitude is waaaaaaaaaaay below freezing. The plane originated in LAX. Several hours at cruise with temperatures that should have been around -45 to -50 C. *IF* ice formed it's a function of how long the a/c was in above freezing temperatures to allow any ice to melt. Freezing issues would be more likely if they taken off from a wet airport, especially if slush is involved.

S-80's have had nose gear retraction/extension issues in the past.

Holding the nose off? To a certain extent it is always held off on landing. Sometimes guys don't lower it slow enough and it 'bangs' down. Only looked at the video one time but it appears to have happened slightly in this event. Granted the pitch attitude when the nose would touchdown was a complete unknown to the crew. And crews do use 'aero braking' on some a/c(not S-80's) to a limited extent but nothing like fighter a/c do(which is cool looking).

Tail authority is still available after touchdown. It would depend upon C.G. and a/c weight but it can be fairly slow(below 100 kts).

"Smooth 3G manuever"??? Hopefully you wrote the a/c up for an 'over G' since I've yet to see a transport category jet that's certified to 3 G's.

"G" the a/c to try to lower the gear was removed from manuals. It was there in the 1980/90's. Why has it removed? How many G's should the pilot pull? How's he know how many he's pulling? No G meter(see previous paragraph). Relative risk analysis apparently thought gear up was safer than trying pull G's and possible damage the a/c even more with an 'over G'. Frequently the a/c it raised, gear lowered, and towed to the mx hangar to fly again within days.

There are only two easy to know G's in aviation. One G(99+% of ops), and two G's (60 degree level bank). Almost everything else(30, 45 bank G's are published), absent a G meter, is just a guess.

Agreed, but there is a way to reach the max G for which the aircraft is certified. You could slow to just below Maneuvering speed, and then pull back hard on the yoke. You will stall before you bend, but I guess then the risk would definetely outweigh the reward. I certainly wouldn't want to stall an airliner just because the nose gear hasn't extended. :=

So many planes have had failed nosegear extensions and I've yet to see one go bad (that is a good thing). It is an emergency that is handled just like a normal landing, so I guess it is pretty much a non event. The only thing I see different is that you try and lower the nose down gently before the tail looses effectiveness. :ok:

One doesn't have to go that far back to find a similar modern incident. Nice that paragraph 2 of the synopsis has "The flight crew responded to the in-flight emergency with commendable judgement and conducted a skilful landing ..."

I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but last time I checked "maneuvering" speeds are more a small airplane kind of thing. while usually preventing "bending" by stalling first, large planes rarely use maneuvering speed...indeed my 737 manual doesn't even publish it.

please remember that rough air penetration speed IS NOT the same as maneuvering speed. DP Davies' book, "handling the big jets" goes into some detail about starting around page 220 (third edition).

While a maneuvering speed can be calculated, pilots of transport planes often don't have access to this(glass cockpit planes might have a display of this, but chances are that a g meter is somewhere in the loop of this?). Small planes have a nice placcard or other markings telling what maneuvering speed is for max weight.

And yes, a 60 degree bank, properly coordinated maintaing altitude turn should give you 2 gs (positive)

When I flew fighters in the military, that is exactly what we used to do. However in airline OPs at AA the practice is to put the nose of the MD-80 down immediately so that you don't drag a thrust reverser. Having said that, when you land without a nosewheel you do indeed hold the nose off as long as you have good control and then very gently lower it to the runway. Hopefully as softly as possible.

hi justanotherwindscreen:

I flew the nine but never the -80. in the 9 we could deploy thrust reversers inflight ( not legally of course!!!!) is there any logic or interlocks to prevent that in the super 80? also, I read somewhere that some planes had a ground sensing mechanism on the nose strut to make sure the nose wheel was on the ground prior to thrust reverser deployment? do you know if AA had it that way?

j

Interesting reading. Is there an reg on the plane? (yeah i know it is, but what is it :) )
Wanna find the plane on Airliners.net if its there.

FOAMING OF RUNWAYS...definitive answers to:


This cert alert gives updated AFFF user guidelines in the following areas:

1. Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) - less than 3% Concentration

AFFF in concentrations less than 3% is not acceptable to the FAA for use on airports.

The 1% concentrate that is available should not be used in ARFF applications because of the difficulty in consistently providing an accurate mixture. Any attempt to use 1% foam would necessitate the installation of a computer-controlled system and each load would have to be checked carefully. There are other means of proportioning but they are not accurate at low percentage proportioning settings. Experience and testing have shown there is no consistency between different loads. Also, at low concentration, there is no room for error on the fire ground. If a mixture is discharged on the lean side, the result is plain water being applied to a fuel fire. The opposite of lean can be problematical also, because at 2% (only 1% off), you are consuming concentrate at twice the designed rate.

2. Use of Alcohol Type Foams

The FAA does not approve the use of alcohol type foams in ARFF vehicles on airports and part 139 does not provide for substituting Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) with alcohol type foams.

Alcohol type foams are typically used by city and industrial fire departments because they are effective on both hydrocarbons, such as gasoline, and polar solvents such as alcohol. They have to carry only one type of foam on their trucks if they use alcohol type foams. These foams are labeled AFFF/ATC or Alcohol Resistant AFFF, which gives airport operators and firefighters the impression that the foam is okay for airport use. We are aware of several airport ARFF stations using alcohol type foams because the foam was ordered using city fire department specifications for ATC/AFFF.




The following problems are associated with the use of alcohol type foams on an airport. Alcohol type foams are usually not compatible with AFFF currently in use at airports, and ARFF vehicles cannot proportion alcohol foams correctly without changes in the mechanical proportioning systems. Also, a special additive to the alcohol foam can produce, over time, a scale that can form in and obstruct the metering valves on truck foam systems.


3. ARFF Foaming of Runways for Emergency Landings

The FAA does not recommend the foaming of runways for emergency landings and warns against the practice with any foam other than “Protein” foam. Fluroprotein foam, film forming fluroprotein foam, and aqueous film forming foam are not considered suitable for runway foaming operations due to their short drainage time. It is recommended that ARFF personnel decline to foam a runway when requested by a pilot because they do not have the specialized equipment and protein foam

The effectiveness of runway foaming is not fully substantiated by the real evidence of operational incident studies. Neither the International Fire Service Training Association (IFSTA) nor the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recommends the practice. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Airport Services Manual Part 1, Rescue and Fire Fighting, Third Edition - 1990, contains a chapter (Chapter 15) on foaming runways for emergency landings. The chapter addresses the theoretical benefits from foaming runways, but then describes the shortcomings of those benefits. It also describes operational problems that should be evaluated to determine the feasibility of foaming a runway.

Some of the problems are as follows:

* The difficulty of determining for certain the type of emergency that would lend itself to the practice such as the position and condition of landing gear.
* The time element available for accomplishing the production and distribution of the foam covering that may take up to an hour or more.
* The reliability of information on the landing techniques to be used relating to wind and visibility conditions, pilot experience and skill, visual and radio aids available and the aircraft operational problems.
* The foam-making capability and adequacy of the equipment available. Airports not having adequate equipment should not attempt to lay a foam blanket. If the runway is to be foamed, it is essential that additional supplies of foam are available and the ability of the ARFF service to deal with any concurrent or subsequent aircraft accident must be assured.
* The effect the foam laying and clean-up operations will have upon the aircraft movements at the airport and how this will affect the safety of all aircraft operations in progress.
* The weather conditions during and immediately after the laying of a foam blanket. Foam should not be laid during heavy rain or snowfall conditions.



Techniques of runway foaming differ, depending on the numerous variables involved. Without the proper equipment, training and material, the desired effectiveness of the practice will be difficult to achieve. Foaming a runway can also result in the airport fire department being short of agent at a critical time, if the firefighters are involved in fire suppression after the landing.

N244AA does suffer with nose gear collapses - it has a previous incident at ORD when, after a complete hydraulics failure, it landed and veered off the runway, hitting a manhole cover which collapsed the nose gear. 12 September 1989 I saw it happen (NTSB site has more details)

Reply to Mike Jenvey
 

Thanks for that Mike,

I still haven't turned up the stuff I wanted (In paper form...)

In my case (at ZRH) there was a machine, making the protein (blood and guts) type of foam.

We just had a strip 12m wide about where the left wingtip would have touched, had the gear collapsed on that side. We didn't land "in" the foam but nevertheless the inquiries afterwards dredged up some interesting stuff on braking actions etc.

The problems with non protein based foam as mentioned in your link are:

Some of the problems are as follows:
• The difficulty of determining for certain the type of emergency that would lend itself to the practice such as the position and condition of landing gear.
• The time element available for accomplishing the production and distribution of the foam covering that may take up to an hour or more.
• The reliability of information on the landing techniques to be used relating to wind and visibility conditions, pilot experience and skill, visual and radio aids available and the aircraft operational problems.
• The foam-making capability and adequacy of the equipment available. Airports not having adequate equipment should not attempt to lay a foam blanket. If the runway is to be foamed, it is essential that additional supplies of foam are available and the ability of the ARFF service to deal with any concurrent or subsequent aircraft accident must be assured.
• The effect the foam laying and clean-up operations will have upon the aircraft movements at the airport and how this will affect the safety of all aircraft operations in progress.
• The weather conditions during and immediately after the laying of a foam blanket. Foam should not be laid during heavy rain or snowfall conditions.

They don't mention slipperiness and that was what the fire chief quoted.

As regards waiting, we had to wait quite almost an hour too - though the reason was that the spark plugs were out of the laying truck for maintenance reasons! Those guys raced to put the truck together again but never told us - they figured we had enough problems, bless 'em. We used the time to burn off fuel and plan our approach.

I don't think anyone rushes into a non standard approach like that - there is so much to decide - do we arm the spoilers? Have we got hydraulics for the rudder / brakes etc. How will we hold the wing (nose in this case) up and so on, in addition to having the cabin all prepared and the passengers well informed. So the foaming time is not really an issue.

The point about using up the fire fighting foam is also made here - though it begs the question whether it isn't better to avoid the sparks in the first place.

Cheers,
FC.

paulc,

Would you happen to have a link to this specific incident you mentioned?
I went to the NTSB site and was unable to locate the report. I'd really like to read the details of that.

Thanks.

ORD landing
 

I was flying the CBS news helicopter and have to hand it to the crew for getting their ship on the ground successfully. All of the news helicopters were held outside the surface area by the tower which explains the long distance picture (5 miles). Fly safe.

land of la

thanks for that post...I was wondering why the images we saw were so distant.

captjns:

the question was specifically meant to determine whether the version of the super 80 that american flys is so equipped.

the dc9 was not equipped.

the 737 is equipped.

the question is about the md80 as operated by american

Problem was a broken spray deflector possibly caused during pushback. It had hooked around somthing up in the wheel well and no amount of G was going to release the nose gear (or should I say passenger aircraft acceptable G). There are so many different scenarios that are possible it is always my policy to NEVER potshoot.

Hmm.. I have flown all models of the 9 and the 80. It is my understanding that nothing prevents the thrust reversers from being deployed in the air other than the pilots not doing that. AA does not have a sensor on the nose to prevent thrust reverser deployment. As far as other carriers are concerned, I don't know.

Yes, you grab hold and pull them up and you'll be in reverse when airborne. The thrust reverser isolation valve closes to block system pressure when the ground shift is in the flight mode but the accumulator is there to open them up for you...the slip stream will do the rest.

That's why you pull c/b s-28 or t-28 for three seconds when you get a reverse accumulator low message/light in flight. To bypass ground shift, open the isolation valve and allow sytem pressure to briefly recharge the system.

bafanguy

Not laughing at you but with you bafanguy. Maybe when I was younger I might have added more details, well, I don't know if I would even have done it then. But, really the only thing that stops them from going into reverse in the air are the pilots not doing it. I remember the World War II ace and Viet Nam fighter pilot Robin Olds said that one of the main reasons he shot down so many aircraft was that he never looked at the instruments. I have about 18000 hours on the DC-9 variants but have always found it annoying to talk about valves and CBs and such. One of the great things about this biz is that it is made up of so many different types of folks that all seem to get the job done amazingly well.

JAWS,

I hear ya...never gave the valves & c/b thing much thought. It was just part of the game.