As many as 10 people were injured Monday evening when the landing gear collapsed on a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 as it arrived at New York’s LaGuardia Airport — the latest in a spate of unnerving incidents in U.S. aviation following what had been a period of unprecedented safety.
There was some uncertainty Monday night about the circumstances leading up to the 5:45 p.m. incident. The Federal Aviation Administration initially said the pilots had reported possible landing gear problems before the landing, but CNN later said that the agency has since retracted that statement after it reviewed air controller tapes. The FAA didn’t clarify that issue later Monday despite a request from POLITICO.
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Also uncertain was the exact number of people who had been injured.
Southwest confirmed that five passengers and three flight attendants from Flight 345 were being treated for injuries, while CNN quoted the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as saying the figure was actually 10 injuries, none life-threatening. WABC in New York also reported that at least 10 had suffered back and neck pain, of whom six were taken to the hospital. Earlier news reports had reported as many as 12 injured.
Airport general manager Thomas Bosco told WCBS that the flight crew were also taken to a hospital for observation, and that a Port Authority police officer was treated at the scene for heat exhaustion.
The Port Authority told reporters that the plane’s front wheel “popped” while the jet was taxiing, and that the gear then buckled, WCBS said. The aircraft came to rest in a grassy area, the station said.
Passengers were evacuated from the jet on emergency chutes, USA Today said.
Two passengers told CNN that they didn’t remember any unusual warnings from the flight crew before the landing, except perhaps for more frequent than usual requests to make sure their and their seatmates’ safety belts had been buckled.
The landing was “incredibly shocking … almost like as if you’re being rear-ended,” one woman told CNN in an interview broadcast on the network. “People were really in a panic at that point.”
After the plane came to a rest, she said, flight attendants initially told passengers to stay in their seats, even as the cabin filled with fumes and smoke. After several minutes, as emergency crews hosed down the plane, “people really started getting kind of irritated and asking for the crew to open the doors, get some fresh air.”
A Federal Aviation Administration official said air traffic control had not reported any injuries upon landing.
The plane had 150 people on board, Southwest said in a statement. They included an infant traveling on a passenger’s lap, WABC said.
In its initial statement after the incident, the FAA said the pilots on the Nashville-to-New York flight had reported “possible front landing gear issues before landing,” and that the gear collapsed as the plane touched down at LaGuardia around 5:45 p.m.
After POLITICO asked for clarification later Monday night, the FAA issued an “updated” statement that omitted the detail that the pilots has reported trouble before landing. However, it did not explain the reason for backing off the initial statement or explain where the detail had come from.
LaGuardia was temporarily closed to arriving aircraft for about 90 minutes after the incident. Even after that, parts of the airport remained closed and may not reopen until Tuesday morning, NBC4 in New York reported.
Pictures and video of the incident circulated on Twitter, showing a plane in Southwest livery with its nose resting on the tarmac. According to the Dallas Morning News, Bobby Abtahi, a former Dallas City Council candidate who was in the terminal watching the plane when it landed, said the plane was pulling up to its gate when it “lost its wheel.”
The National Transportation Safety Board said on Twitter than it was sending an investigator to the scene. The agency didn’t immediately say whether Monday’s trouble would be classified as an aviation “incident” or a more serious “accident.”
The LaGuardia landing gear collapse occurred a little more than two weeks after an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crashed at San Francisco International Airport, killing three people, and just a week and a half after a parked Boeing 787 Dreamliner operated by Ethiopian Airlines caught fire at London’s Heathrow Airport. But it’s unclear how much any of the incidents can be pinned on Boeing.
Investigators of the Asiana crash have released details that appear to point more to pilot error than any mechanical malfunctions, and an initial report by British investigators into the Dreamliner fire focused on possible problems with the Honeywell-made emergency locator beacons.
The Boeing 737’s design is mature — the first model of the 737 was put into service in the 1960s, and the particular model at issue on Monday was introduced in the early 1990s. That makes it much different from the 787 Dreamliner, which has a dramatically novel design and has previously suffered problems with overheating of its lithium-ion batteries.
An incident similar to Monday’s occurred just two months ago at nearby Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, when a US Airways turbo-prop plane operated by Piedmont Airlines made a belly-landing after its left main landing gear failed to extend. No injuries were reported.
Source: southwest - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFnPMdNXlkxa4p3Q8_eFq41H8QyIw&url=http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/southwest-flight-laguardia-94583.html
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