CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A Delta flight landed abruptly but safely at Charlotte Douglas International Airport Wednesday with part of its landing gear extended, authorities said.
The airport said in a tweet that the runway was closed following a mechanical issue with Delta Air Lines. No injuries were reported and all passengers were transferred to the terminal. The airport said it was working to remove the plane and reopen the runway.
Photos of the scene show wheels on the ground under the wings, but the nose of the plane is on the runway. An inflatable slide extends from a plane door, and firefighters appear to be helping passengers disembark on the slide.
The pilots received an “unsafe nose gear” indication as the plane approached the Charlotte airport and flew through the air traffic control tower so controllers could visually inspect the plane, Delta said in a statement. They saw that the nose gear doors were open, but the nose gear had not descended and the pilots landed the aircraft without the nose gear.
The Boeing 717 plane left Atlanta with 96 passengers, two pilots and three flight attendants and was headed to Charlotte, Delta said.
“Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people,” Delta said in a statement. “While this is somewhat rare, Delta flight crews train extensively to safely handle many scenarios and Flight 1092 landed safely with no injuries reported.”
The airline said it is now focused on helping remove the plane and help passengers reach their final destinations, and is fully cooperating with investigations by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.
Passenger Chris Skotarczak said if he hadn’t seen the shadow of the plane with its nose wheel down and been told to prepare for an emergency landing, he would have thought nothing was wrong.
“The pilot told us, we’re going to land, we’re going to hear a big thud and we’re going to hear a lot of screeching,” Skotarczak told The Associated Press. “But it was almost softer than a normal landing.”
The crew calmly led the passengers to the emergency parachutes at the two exits.
“I have been traveling for work for the last 10 years; Going down that slide is one of the best things,” said Skotarczak, who was traveling to his Charlotte office from Buffalo, New York.
Less than four hours after landing, Skotarczak was at work, but with only his cell phone and a bottle of water. Passengers were asked to leave everything else on the plane when they left, and he put his wallet in his backpack so he wouldn’t have to sit in it for the entire flight.
“I was going to buy a lottery ticket, but I can’t,” he said.
Skotarczak and his wife are going on vacation to Europe next week, and he said his wife asked him if it would be okay to fly again.
“I told him that it can’t happen to the same person twice. I just took one for the team,” Skotarczak said.
An anonymous passenger shared video of the landing with WCNC-TV, showing people on the plane leaning calmly with their heads down and their arms clasped on the back of the seat in front of them as the plane touched down.
The video showed an uneventful touchdown. The person who filmed it said: “That was not bad at all.”
Gregory A. Zahornacky, a former major airline captain and assistant professor of aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said such landing gear failures are “very rare” and that commercial airlines in the US have a “fantastic” track record. “aircraft maintenance.
Zahornacky said the crew did what they were supposed to do when the nose gear didn’t perform as expected, which is extend the rest of the plane’s landing gear to absorb energy as the plane touches down.
“I’m sure they did everything physically and humanly possible to check and see if they could get the gear down,” said Zahornacky, who flew the DC-9, which is the precursor to the Boeing 717.
“It was the best potential result we could hope for in a situation like this,” he said. “I think there is probably minimal damage to the aircraft, which is secondary… to the safety of the passengers and crew. So I think the big takeaway here is that everything was handled in the right way and in a safe way.”
Charlotte Douglas International Airport is among the busiest airports in the US, according to Airports Council International. It offers non-stop air service to 178 destinations.
