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CAA: Airport News, "San Francisco airport back to normal after dramatic emergency landing"
Tuesday, March 14, 2000
S.F. airport back to normal after dramatic emergency landing
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Authorities were investigating Tuesday why the landing
gear of a Delta Air Lines passenger plane failed to retract properly,
forcing the pilots to make a dramatic landing that damaged a wing.
Flight 1972 was guided into the emergency landing Monday night after the
pilots discovered the problem with the landing gear. The plane came down
hard, its wing sliding down the runway with a shower of sparks.
The 79 passengers and seven crew members aboard were not injured.
The pilot, whose name was not released, told the passengers about the
landing gear problems soon after takeoff from San Francisco at 6:35 p.m. The
plane, bound for Salt Lake City, then circled for an hour as airline
personnel tried to decide whether they could fix the problem.
As the plane landed, its right wing scraped the runway and crumpled at the
end but didn't separate from the fuselage. Emergency crews doused plane with
fire-extinguishing foam as soon as it came to a stop, said airport spokesman
Ron Wilson.
Passengers exited by an inflatable slide.
"You could see that there were sparks coming off the wing's tip," passenger
Joe Burschinger of Los Angeles told the San Francisco Examiner. "I gotta
tell you, I've had rougher landings on normal flights."
Emergency crews were waiting for the flight when it touched down and the
airport was temporarily closed.
The worst part of the ordeal, passenger Shari Kendall said, was the wait
between the pilot's announcement there would be an emergency landing and the
landing itself.
"We didn't know when it was going to be," Kendall said. "It seemed forever."
By mid-morning Tuesday, the Boeing 727-200 was cleared from the runway into
a hangar where officials began their investigation into what caused the
malfunction.
The plane, acquired by Delta in August 1978, had been cleared during a
routine maintenance check last Wednesday, and had undergone extensive
maintenance last November. There were no indications on either check of
landing gear problems, Delta officials said.
No problems had been reported with this particular plane in the past, said
Delta Air Lines spokeswoman Peggy Estes.
Flight 1972 was scheduled to leave at 6:35 p.m. and arrive in Salt Lake at
about 9:15 p.m. It was then scheduled to travel on to Kalispell, Mont.,
arriving 11:45 p.m. The flight landed back in San Francisco at 8:01 p.m.
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