Emergency landing televised on JetBlue flight

No other flights affected
She and the other passengers were taken by bus from the tarmac to the airport’s international terminal. The plane was towed to a hangar, and the runway where it touched down was closed for about three hours, but no flights were delayed or canceled, officials said.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who spoke with the pilot, identified him as Scott Burke and praised him for the calm he showed during the flight.

“He joked that he was sorry he put the plane down 6 inches off the center line,” Villaraigosa said.

JetBlue spokeswoman Jenny Dervin said the airline was investigating the incident with the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board. She declined to identify the pilot and first officer.

Voice, data recorders handed over
The cockpit voice recorder and digital flight data recorder — the so-called black boxes — were removed from the airplane and secured by the investigator in charge, the NTSB said Thursday.

About 57 of the passengers were placed on another flight, which arrived at New York’s Kennedy Airport at 6:05 a.m. EDT Thursday, said airline spokeswoman Sharon Jones. Others were put up in hotels and given reservations for Thursday flights. Still others simply returned home.

Among the latter group was Varma, who was greeted by her parents at the terminal.

“It started out just being a ghastly birthday, but now it’s just fabulous, “ said her father, Anil, who turned 51 on Wednesday.

A similar problem with sideways landing gear struck an America West Airbus A320 in 1999. That plane landed safely at Port Columbus International Airport in Ohio, and no one was injured.

Airbus spokeswoman Mary Anne Greczyn said the company is working closely with JetBlue to determine exactly why what happened.

“While rotated nose landing gear is uncommon, it has happened in the past, with a similar outcome — safe landing, no injuries,” Greczyn said in an e-mail. “Last night’s incident concluded exactly as Airbus expected it would. Flight crews are trained to handle such situations and aircraft are designed to withstand such landings.”

JetBlue, based in New York, is a five-year-old low-fare airline with 286 flights a day and destinations in 13 states and the Caribbean. It operates a fleet of 81 A320s.

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