Incident of the week #7

Sometimes everything is going well, you took off from your destination, flew the whole time without any indication of some sort of a problem just until you´re on your final approach. You want to land, but there´s something very, very important missing.

This happened this week on a Shuttle America Embraer E170 on behalf of United Express, flying from Atlanta to Newark (USA). The flight went smooth for all 69 passengers and 4 Crew when, on final approach to Newark, the flight deck decided to abort landing reporting a gear disagree message - the "unsafe gear indicator" light had come on.

After the pilot informed the authorities, the airport was immediately temporarily closed down and the runway was coated with flame-retardant foam for prevention. As the flight crew was unable to confirm if the nose gear had deployed correctly, they were set on hold at 5000 feet and with only 50 minutes of fuel left, the flight crew started to work on checklists and performed a low approach 35 minutes after aborting the first approach. That gave the tower the opportunity to visualise the aircraft and confirm that the nose gear was not down, although the gear doors appeared a bit open, about a bump visible.

The crew then declared emergency and prepared the cabin for landing. One passenger, Kija B., 25, told the "New York Times" that she was woken up from a nap by flight attendants warning her to get into a crash position (what a nice situation to wake up to!). About 45 minutes after aborting the first approach, the aircraft was finally able to land and after coming to a stop, evacuation immediately took place. All slides were deployed, no injuries occurred and all passengers were bussed to the terminal. For them, it was, well, let´s say, a different kind of landing and deboarding!

Later on that day, the FAA reported the nose gear collapsed on landing and that the aircraft landed nose gear up and received substantial damage. During recovery of the aircraft, the nose was lifted but the nose gear still did not extend. The nose wheels were found turned sideways in the wheel preventing extension.

I guess, if you´re missing one of the three gears, it´s always best to be the nose, since you can hold it up as long as possible and still be able to slow the jet down better than if it was the right or left rear gear. Nevertheless, kudos to the flight crew for the great landing and of course also to the cabin crew, for successfully preparing and evacuating the cabin.