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Large Text Size Large Text Size Change text size From the Chicago Tribune Disabled jet makes safe landing at OHare By Jason Meisner and Charles Sheehan, Tribune staff reporters 10:09 AM PDT, June 20, 2006 No injuries were reported this morning after a disabled American Airlines jet made a safe emergency landing at O'Hare International Airport. The pilot of American Airlines Flight 1740, which originated from Los Angeles, notified the O'Hare control tower at about 6:15 am that the plane had no working nose gear, Chicago Aviation Department spokeswoman Kristen Cabanban said. ADVERTISEMENT There were 131 passengers and five Chicago-based crew members on board the plane. American Airlines spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan told CLTV the plane was approaching O'Hare for a landing when the crew radioed O'Hare controllers to tell them the nose gear may not have lowered properly. "The aircraft flew past the air traffic control tower, and it was determined, yes, in fact the gear was not in the down position," Fagan said. "The cockpit crew eventually decided to just go ahead and land and made a very lovely landing under a stressful situation." The Chicago Fire Department instituted a standby response calling five ambulances to the scene and surrounding the runway with emergency equipment, fire Chief Kevin MacGregor said. He said officials confirmed the plane would have to land without its nose gear but decided not to put flame-retardant foam on the runway. "A foam blanket can make the runway more difficult and slippery to control the landing," MacGregor said. The plane was able to land safely at about 6:28 am on runway 14-Right, Cabanban said. She said sparks shot up from the metal nose of the plane when it made contact with the runway, but there was no fire. "It was an excellent job by the pilot to land that plane," Cabanban said. "All of the passengers were able to deplane the aircraft via the stairs." MacGregor said paramedics checked the passengers at the scene but no injuries were reported. They were loaded onto a bus and taxied to a terminal, he said. "We were coming in to land and everything was normal, but then they started accelerating and we took off again," said one of the passengers, attorney Jonathan Lurie of Los Angeles. Lurie said that after the pilot circled the airport, he brought the plane into a rapid climb, apparently in an effort to jar the landing gear free, then started to descend again. "You felt almost like you were going to faint," he said, adding: "People were tense, people were in tears. Alissa Rizzo, 27, from Lake in the Hills, was returning from her honeymoon in Bora Bora with her new husband, Joe. She said the pilot told passengers he had performed a "Negative-G" maneuver. "It felt like he hit the brakes and the plane backed off, dove down and pulled up," she said. She said passengers were told to assume the crash position during landing, with their heads down on their laps and their arms wrapped around their knees. After all that, both Lurie and Rizzo both said the landing was one of the smoothest they had ever experienced. After passengers were bused to the terminal, it took about 15 hours for passengers to retrieve their luggage and they were on their way, Rizzo said. American Airlines' Fagan said that as of 9 am, everyone had safely disembarked from the plane, the crew had gone home and the passengers either had gone on to connecting flights or to their destinations in the Chicago area. The incident was having little impact on American's operations nationwide, Fagan said, though "the air traffic controllers obviously are working with one runway out of commission until we are able to jack up the aircraft and move it off to a hangar so it can be looked at." Cabanban said the plane would remain on the runway at its resting point for several hours while American Airlines officials inspected the aircraft and investigated the incident. She had no further information on what went wrong with the plane's landing gear. The runway will remain "inactive" while the investigation continues, she said, but the incident was expected to cause no major delays.
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