A US Airways flight was forced to make an emergency landing at the Newark, New Jersey airport early Saturday morning, around 1 a.m. EST, according to multiple reports. The aircraft would not lower its landing gear during its approach to the airfield, forcing the pilot to circle the airport in an attempt to reverse the problem. When this did not work, the pilot was forced to make a belly landing, which, according to ABC New York, was on one of the airport’s long parallel runways.
The aircraft in question, a Dash 8-100, had 31 passengers on board, none of which were harmed during the emergency landing. Here’s an example, courtesy of Wikimedia, of what the plane looks like:
Over at YouTube, ABCNews posted their segment, which included some eyewitness video of the landing in question:
From where I’m sitting, it looks like the pilot needs a bigger seat, what for those huge brass cojones, and all. For those of you whose imaginations aren’t quite vivid enough, here’s a clearer example of what this morning’s belly landing resembled:
That, of course, is not from the US Airways landing.
Further indicating the pilot’s impressive skill in executing such a landing without jostling the passengers to the point of injury, there’s this nugget from Yahoo news report, “Sparks flew upon landing, but the pilot managed to keep the airplane on the runway and the wings level.” From my limited point of view, it sounds like this pilot might be ready for the Top Gun competition. They’ve already got a cool pilot call sign going for them, and yes, I am talking about “Sparky.”