PPRuNe Forums - JetBlue A320 landing at LAX (2024)

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NTSB Narrative/ A320 Nosewheel Problems

Took me back over 40yrs when I worked at Southend Airport almost a carbon copy situation with a (DC8?).

No pax and they shoved everything movable to the rear. The nose wheel turned 90 degrees on touching 2/3rds down the runway.

Biggest excitement was the police Austin Westminster which chased it down the runway, making a huge whooshing sound.

For some others re: evac....I made a 2 engine approach and landing in a 727 freighter at LAX some years ago...as a matter of procedure, the LAX fire crews followed us down the taxiway after landing all the way to Imperial...the whole time, the fire/rescue commander was in contact with us via the ground vhf freq, and here I learned something very interesting: At LAX, the fire/rescue trucks have infrered (sp?) sensors that scanned our whole a/c, and the fire/rescue commander relayed that everything (breaks, engines, fuselage, etc) were within normal parameters i.e.-no fire, ergo, no panic....

Well done to the crew for a true "non" incident...

BTW, as can be seen from the videos, the centerline is reserved for professionals...

Nice job to the crew. Sticking it on centerline knowing millions are watching is not to be dismissed lightly.

Did anyone notice though:

It looked like touchdown was well down the runway, on the other side of the paint. Maybe intentional as the equipment was at the departure end.

Also, wouldn't it have been a good idea to jack the nose. The integrity of the strut had to be suspect and the pax were still onboard.

And I noticed the firetruck did not seem to have hoses at the ready to extinguish any fire that might have ensued from hot metal and hydraulic fluid coming together.

Can't argue with success, though.

Does anybody know what indications the flight crew had on the flight deck, how did they know that they had a problem?

If it was a double LGCIU failure how would you know that the nosewheel wasn't straight? Just because you have a double LGCIU failure doesn't mean that you have a problem with the landing gear.

With a dual LGCIU failure and a NWS fault you need to verify the position of the nosewheel by doing a flyby. That is what the AWA crew did in CMH. The Jet Blue crew evidently had that information. They (the AWA crew) also evacuated because they did have some smoke and there was frequency congestion with the local controller working tower and ground control freqs. That is why we now get a discrete frequency to talk to the CFR trucks (Crash, Fire, Rescue).

These guys did a great job, their procedures were the same the AWA crew used, move people aft, hold it off, etc. I don't care how much you practice, doing it for real will still get the heartrate up.

Jet Blue is lucky with the state of the industry being what it is. They have a lot of very experienced crew who were at UAL, USAir, and so on for a long time before they jumped to Jet Blue.

Two thumbs up for the perfect and professional handling of an emergency situtaion by the flight crew, tower, rescue crew...

Just a question out of curiosity, how about a locking event with an angle less than 90 degress, say 30 or 45 degrees? Will that cause any complications and result in a drift or will the inertia overcome that and eat the rubber up like it was in this case?

>Just a question out of curiosity, how about a locking event with an angle less than 90 degress, say 30 or 45 degrees? Will that cause any complications and result in a drift or will the inertia overcome that and eat the rubber up like it was in this case?

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Having read the analysis report (further up) about another similar failure, I don't believe that such a possibility would occur. The 'failure to return' is because the mechanism goes 'over-centre' (at the 90degrees position). Lesser angles would still be controllable.

"However, once the nosewheel strut had deflected 90 degrees, the centering cam would have been rotated to a flat area, and would have been incapable of overriding the 3,000 PSI hydraulic system, and returning the nose wheels to a centered position."

So I'm afraid it's all or nothing . . .

However the possibility of a programmed nose-wheel hold-off automatic landing should be a distinct possibility, especially as this fault has happened several times before, maybe Airbus could add a button for this . . .

LuckyStrike, the device is engineered as such that you will always have about 90° in this failure to avoid any other unwanted intermediate angle.

For your question what would happen if it would stuck at another angle, I'm not sure, but my feeling tells me that with high speeds, the intertia would be stronger and destroy the tyre first, before the tyre gets grip and steers the nose of the aircraft to one side. As soon as the tyre is gone, you wont have any major sideways movement anymore - the aircraft goes straight.

We are talking of no crosswind of course.

Dani

Howard Plagens, the lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board in the JetBlue Flight 292 case, told reporters that it was at least the seventh time that an A320 has landed with a twisted front landing gear.

He added that the plane was last service on Tuesday, in New York, where technicians replaced a sensor that measures distance to the ground.

Aviation sources say one such incident involved a JetBlue A320 in New York in 2002. Another involved a United Airlines Airbus A319 in Chicago.

An America West Airlines A320 in February 1999 landed at Port Columbus International Airport with a twisted landing gear. America West have failed to replace a part in the landing gear as requested by Airbus. The replacement was made mandatory after the incident.

http://www.radarvector.com/2005/09/e...oblems-in.html

As we were all sitting at home in Long Beach watching everything unfold on cable TV, we did notice a few things that stood out:

1) 4 firemen standing at the top of the gantry, not really doing anything except getting in the way.

2) 1 more fireman halfway down the stairs and around 3 blocking the foot of the stairs milling about trying to feel important.

3) You have to have your wits about you for this one but about 10 mins after full stop you can notice around 8-9 firmen posing for a picture, thumbs raised, plenty of back slapping beside the gear.

4) Anyone who had an airport ID card seemed to be milling/poking around.

and

5) The buses were on the tarmac for what seemed like an eternity, I thought that wasn't very 'bueno' to quote a local phrase.

These are minor points compared to the excellent flying by the pilot and crew. Just maybe could be looked at for the future.

Not at all familiar with the Bus, but on other aircraft the nose gear is mechanically prevented from turning more that 50 - 60 degrees, hence the need to disconnect NLG torque links for towing.;)
Is the Bus and other later generation:rolleyes: aircraft not the same ??:confused:

Never had this problem on the DC3:p

It's yet too early to speculate about why it turned to 90° but it's much better to have it that way than less. Imagine what would happen if you have it turned about 10-20 degrees...!

It's pretty obvious to me that Airbus designed this part the way that it goes to about 90° so it doesn't turn into a catastrophic position.

Modern aircraft also have the feature of locking it out and letting it go more than 90° for towing, including Airbus.

As posted earlier, the A320 "Book 3" (the 'Abnormals' book) details exactly the occasions / warnings that may result in the NW being 90 degress off. It seems a known potential fault, even has some mitigation (90 degrees OK, 60 degrees not - see KLM 737 BCN), and has occurred a number of times without all this publicity.

To actually find out would require a flyby.... but to be honest, from the notes in Book 3, if you couldn't establish that (IMC / LVPs etc.), you'd just assume it was off.

I'll leave enquiries to establish how "hazardous" it really is. Seems to be dramatic, and expensive in warranty terms for someone in the Airbus chain, but dangerous?

It occured to me that 90 degrees might be the best angle for the system to go to in the event of a failure...

90 degrees might actually be better than 0 degrees because at 90 the wheels would have little or no grip - giving some steering using the rudder.... or have I got that wrong?

Well the only one is "L/G SHOCK ABSORBER FAULT" and even then you must have "WHEEL N.W. STEER FAULT" in order to suspect a nosewheel alignment problem, (according to the book).

I am still interested to know what indications that these chaps had. Did they do a fly by?