FUN IN FLIGHT

Seeing the dramatic pictures of the JetBlue Airbus A320 making its emergency landing at LAX yesterday - its front landing gear stuck at a 90 degree angle and shooting out flames as the jet touched down - made me think of my own freaky little flying experiences, particularly my non-stop flight from LaGuardia to JFK.

About 6 years ago, during my previous life as a roving producer for the Daily Show (notice how I choose not to link to their site), I was dispatched to Nashville to break the story of a missing Wallaby (this was normal operating procedure for my job). I was scheduled to leave from LaGuardia in the morning, arrive at the shoot in the early afternoon, do the story, and head home. My correspondent was based in LA and flew out the day before.

Everything was normal on the ground, just another flight (in those days I racked up the frequent flier miles like crazy). Do you remember, prior to 9/11, how getting on a plane was like getting on a bus? I do.

So we taxi down the runway, the plane lifts off, and I'm looking out at the bay as we hear the landing gear start to come up. Suddenly the plane shudders as if it were being pulled backward, there are weird noises from outside and below us, we start hearing alarms, and I see the stewardess at the front of the plane leans over and looks down the aisle at the stewardess in the back of the plane.

She doesn't look very happy.

It was a pretty bumpy climbout, followed by a sharp right turn. All of us just kind of looked at each other.

Finally the pilot comes over the intercom, "This is your pilot, you probably noticed something's going on. I just wanted to explain what happened there." Ah, great.

"One of the landing gear is not coming up. We've gone through the procedures to re-cycle the gear but it didn't work. So we're requesting clearance to land at JFK."

Well, we circled around NY for a while - big lazy arcs. They kept trying to get that one wheel up, but it didn't work, and eventually we got clearance to make an emergency landing. Needless to say, we were a bit worried. Was the gear actually locked in the correct position?

A little nervewracking but the landing was fine. Total distance traveled - 11.2 miles, probably my shortest flight in a jet. We sat on the runway while techs checked the plane. (Sure! Let's go right back up!) When they couldn't fix it we got off and I got to take a shuttle bus back to LaGuardia, where I got the next flight to Nashville.

The wallaby story didn't turn out so great, but the emergency landing story kinda made up for up.