GREENSBORO (AP) -- A DC-9 jet carrying 62 people made an emergency landing at Piedmont Triad International Airport on Tuesday after the pilot reported smoke in the cockpit, authorities said.

Four crew members and a passenger were treated for minor injuries.

AirTran Flight 913 from Greensboro to Atlanta reported the trouble at an altitude of about 7,000 feet, just minutes after takeoff, and landed safely on a runway about 3:45 p.m.

"There was quite a bit of smoke coming out of the aircraft when they opened the door," said Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Atlanta.

The plane was carrying 57 passengers and five crew members.

Four crew members were treated for smoke inhalation, and a male passenger was treated for a leg injury, AirTran officials said.

Tad Hutcheson, a spokesman for AirTran, said the aircraft underwent a routine maintenance check in Atlanta on Monday night.

"There were no problems, no writeups," he said.

Bergen said she had been told there was evidence of a fire in the front of the aircraft, but Hutcheson could not confirm that.

"There was quite a bit of smoke there in the cockpit and the cabin, but we can't confirm what caused it," he said.

AirTran, based in Orlando, Fla., is the former ValuJet, whose plane crashed in the Everglades in May 1996, killing 110 people. The airline's maintenance contractor was convicted of hazardous waste violations in that crash. SabreTech was convicted of causing the transportation of explosive-tipped oxygen generators blamed in a cargo fire that caused the crash shortly after takeoff on a Miami-Atlanta flight.

Last month, an AirTran DC-9 with 79 passengers aboard made an emergency landing in Fort Lauderdale after reporting hydraulic problems.

The FAA said fluid leaked into the plane's ventilation system, causing an odor and a vapor. The problem was fixed and the plane returned to service.

http://www.news-observer.com/ncwire/news/Story/211813p-207879c.html

-- Doris (reaper1@mindspring.com), August 09, 2000

Answers

AirTran Jet's Crew Discussed Emergency Landing on Highway GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) -- An AirTran Airways flight forced to make an emergency landing with smoke in the cockpit was in enough trouble that the crew discussed landing on a highway, The Washington Post reported Tuesday

An AirTran Airways flight that was forced to make an emergency landing at Greensboro, N.C., on Aug. 8 was in greater trouble than first indicated, sources close to a federal investigation told the newspaper.

Crew members of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9, its cockpit filled with smoke from an electrical fire, considered the roadway landing because they had doubts they could make it to Piedmont Triad International Airport, the newspaper said.

A disaster may have been prevented by immediately turning back to Greensboro at the first smell of smoke.

The cockpit and part of the cabin filled with ``intense smoke'' in the seven to eight minutes it took to get the plane back to the runway, the captain later said.

AirTran spokesman Jim Brown said Tuesday the crew followed company policy by landing at the nearest airport. Brown said he was unaware of any consideration the pilot may have given to landing on the road or elsewhere.

AirTran Flight 913 from Greensboro to Atlanta reported the trouble at an altitude of about 7,000 feet, just minutes after takeoff around 3:30 p.m. The captain immediately declared an emergency after the crew noticed smoke about 15 miles south of the airport.

The cockpit crew said smoke was rapidly filling the area and it was having trouble seeing, the newspaper said. The crew discussed looking for a road to land on, investigators said, but managed to get back to the airport.

``It was a serious incident,'' one investigative source said. ``It was an event they will remember.''

The source said that although the investigation is continuing, the pilots and flight attendants appeared to have handled the emergency properly.

Four crew members were treated for smoke inhalation in the incident. One man strained his right knee in the evacuation when he jumped off the front of a wing. All 62 people aboard evacuated the jet using emergency exits.

A National Transportation Safety Board investigator said the day after the forced landing that the electrical fire originated in the bulkhead between the cockpit and the passenger cabin.

The cockpit side of the bulkhead holds a circuit panel. On the cabin side, it holds a public address system for flight attendants.

The aircraft involved, N838AT, was originally built for Turkish Airlines in 1970 and delivered to ValuJet Airlines in late 1994. ValuJet merged with AirTran and assumed that name in 1997.

ValuJet was shut down for a period in 1996 because of safety concerns following the crash of another DC-9 into the Everglades. Among the concerns then was that the airline had not rebuilt the cockpits of its secondhand planes, leaving pilots to cope with different types of controls and different circuit-breaker panel arrangements from plane to plane.

http://www.wral-tv.com/news/state/North_Carolina/NC-- AirTranLanding______=TOPAP.html

-- Doris (reaper1@mindspring.com), August 23, 2000.