GA - Plane forced to land in Atlanta

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Plane forced to land in Atlanta Bill Montgomery - Staff Friday, December 8, 2000

Passengers aboard an American Airlines jet said a vibration they felt shortly after takeoff from Orlando signaled problems with the landing gear.

"My heart started palpatating and I started saying Hail Marys," said Tabitha Sparks after Flight 1515 bound for Chicago's O'Hare Airport made a safe but unscheduled landing at Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport Thursday at 3:11 p.m.

"You could tell when they started to pull up the landing gear that something was wrong. You could feel there was definitely a vibration," recalled Ed Staly of Kankakee, Ill., who was headed home with his wife Roberta after visiting Disney World.

The Super 80 twin-engine jet manufactured by Boeing was the fourth airliner to make an emergency landing at Hartsfield since Nov. 29.

Speaking calmly over the intercom, the pilot announced the landing gear problem and said that for safety reasons all three landing gears had been lowered, Staly said.

Passengers said the pilot informed them the 127-passenger jet, which had taken off at 12:40 p.m., circled Orlando for 30 minutes awaiting word on where to land.

"The pilot said at first we would land in Nashville, but they had determined because of the drag on the plane and the much lower speed there wasn't enough fuel to make it to Nashville and that we were headed for Atlanta," Staly added.

Company spokesman John Hotard said the pilot radioed shortly after becoming airborne that "his nose landing gear would not retract, and the decision was made for him to land in Atlanta. There were no problems, and all 120 passengers got off the aircraft and were accommodated on other American Airlines flights to Chicago."

The jet has been taken out of service for examination by maintenance crews, he added.

"I'm just happy to be landed," said Luann Perez of Grand Rapids, Mich., who was traveling with her 8-month-old daughter Sophia. "The worst thing was that her nap got interrupted."

In other recent emergency landings at Hartsfield:

Delta Air Lines Flight 975 from Huntsville, Ala., landed without incident Saturday after the plane's hydraulic system was found to be malfunctioning.

On Dec. 1, Delta Flight 2103 from Greensboro, N.C., made an emergency landing after the pilot noticed smoke coming from an engine.

On Nov. 29, Air Tran Flight 956 headed for Ohio returned minutes after takeoff because of a fire in the forward baggage compartment.

http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/today/local_news_a303a81123c40047004a.html

-- Doris (nocents@bellsouth.net), December 08, 2000


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