Landing TWA Jet At MidAmerica Airport Made "Perfect Sense"
Rescue Crews From Scott AFB Teamed With MidAmerica Personnel
MidAmerica Airport, Illinois (August 10, 2001) -- At best, TWA Flight 519 could have skidded to a safe landing at Lambert Field after a crack in a water deflector kept the plane's nose gear from coming down.
At worst, the Boeing 717 could have slid on foam and careened off the runway, jeopardizing scores of people and aircraft and causing a massive traffic jam at one of the nation's busiest airports.
In mind of that second scenario, air controllers diverted the approaching plane Thursday night from Lambert, which handles 1,300 flights daily, to sleepy MidAmerica Airport 35 miles southeast, which sees just one scheduled airliner take off each day.
The damaged jet landed safely at 8:16 p.m. at MidAmerica Airport, in Mascoutah, on a runway firefighters had covered with foam to minimize the chance of fire from the friction of metal against concrete. The 71 passengers and five crew members slid safely down emergency chutes.
Lambert spokesman Mike Donatt said Friday that controllers could not have made a better call.
"Given the scenario we had last night, there was no compromise in safety to divert to MidAmerica," Donatt said. "And then when you figure the infringement on traffic of foaming the runway at Lambert and having the plane sit on the runway for hours to be inspected, then it makes perfect sense to do exactly what (air traffic controllers) did."
Donatt said if the plane had been in immediate distress and needed to land at Lambert, it could have.
"And it would have been met with all necessary emergency equipment, including foaming, if need be," he said.
Ed Malinowski, in charge of the investigation for the National Transportation Safety Board, said Friday that a fracture in a part designed to deflect water from the fuselage during landing prevented the nose gear from coming down. The nose gear is the front member of a trio of retractable sets of wheels that support the plane on the ground.
The broken part was sent to the NTSB's metals lab in Washington for inspection.
The jet had left Nashville on Thursday afternoon and was scheduled to arrive in St. Louis at 4:15 p.m. It made an unscheduled stop in Springfield, Ill., due to storms in the St. Louis area.
Then, as the plane approached Lambert Field about 7:55 p.m., pilots reported trouble lowering the nose gear, TWA officials said. The plane did a fly-by of the control tower, so controllers could confirm the landing gear was not in place. The decision was made to travel by MidAmerica, only a few minutes at jet speed.
Passengers were remarkably silent throughout the crisis, said passenger Bob Burdorff, an engineer from Wichita, Kan., who was heading home from Nashville.
"I think there were a number of people on the plane that expected to die," said Burdorff
"I have to compliment the pilot, but there certainly was a fair amount of grinding and rapid deceleration," he said of the landing.
Rescue crews from Scott Air Force Base teamed with MidAmerica personnel to respond, in accordance with the two airports' joint-use agreement. Between 40 and 50 emergency workers, including firefighters from Mascoutah, were in place and had spread foam before the landing.
"All in all, I would call it a textbook emergency response," said Rick Hargrove, MidAmerica Airport's director. "Because of the foam and because of the crews, there were no sparks, there was no fire. Everything just went click, click, click."
TWA spokesman Mark Abels said the Boeing 717 involved in Thursday's landing is less than a year old and one of 24 in the TWA fleet.
He said all TWA aircraft are checked daily, including at least a routine overnight examination of operating systems. "We have great confidence in our maintenance program and our fleet, which is one of the youngest and most reliable in the industry," Abels said.
Meanwhile, NTSB officials in Washington said there was no indication in their records of any pattern of landing-gear problems at TWA - or of other problems with the Boeing 717.
Their records show four "incidents" involving Boeing 717s over the past 15 months - May 7, 2000, in Orlando, Fla.; May 26, 2000, in Atlanta; Feb. 19 in Milwaukee and March 27 in St. Louis. None were accidents, Lauren Peduzzi said. All are being investigated.
Boeing spokesman John Thom said the B-717 model has had some reports of electrical problems, but noted the jets have performed very well since entering service in September 1999.
In May last year, one of AirTran Airways' 717s reported a "total electrical failure" just after takeoff from Atlanta. The engines and flight controls were not affected and the pilots landed safely.
Information provided by the St. Louis Post Dispatch
Paul Hampel and Cynthia Wilson Article © St. Louis Post Dispatch
William Lamb and Philip Dine of the Post-Dispatch, and the Associated Press, contributed to this story.
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