Investigators recover flight data, cockpit voice recorders after NYC nose gear collapse
Posted Jul 22, 2013 8:50 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
NEW YORK, N.Y. – U.S. investigators have recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of a plane whose front landing gear collapsed, sending it skidding along the tarmac at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport.
The recorders were recovered Tuesday, a day after the hard landing injured 10 and caused the airport’s temporary closure.
The nose gear of Southwest Airlines Flight 345 arriving from Tennessee collapsed Monday right after the plane touched down on the runway, officials said.
“When we got ready to land, we nosedived,” said a passenger, Anniebell Hanna.
Six of the injured were taken to a hospital with minor injuries, said Thomas Bosco, acting director of aviation for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees the area airports.
Bosco said there was no advance warning of any possible problem.
He said the nose gear of the plane collapsed when it landed, and “the aircraft skidded down the runway on its nose and then veered off and came to rest in the grass area.”
Both of the airport’s runways were back in use by Tuesday morning, a Port Authority spokesman said.
Southwest said 150 people were on the flight, while the Port Authority said the total was 149.
The landing gear collapse came 16 days after Asiana Flight 214 crash-landed at San Francisco’s airport, killing two Chinese teenagers; a third was killed when a fire truck ran over her while responding to the crash, authorities said. Dozens of people were injured in that landing, which involved a Boeing 777 flying from South Korea.
Longtime pilot Patrick Smith, author of “Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel. Questions, Answers, and Reflections” and AskthePilot.com, said landing gear issues are not high on the list of worries for pilots.
“From a pilot’s perspective, this is nearly a non-issue,” he said. “They make for good television, but this is far down the list of nightmares for pilots.”
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Associated Press writers Amanda Barrett, Deepti Hajela and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.
