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Originally Posted by Kresge
Can you imagine sitting there oin an airplane seat knowing that you are about to possibly crash land and having to wait a few hours in that state of mind?!
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Oh, no. The plane was never going to "crash".
The most important thing to remember on this issue is the nose gear was
down and locked. A very stark difference from down and unlocked. One of the old tricks to retractable gear is the "slap-down". There have been many instances over the years where, because of electrical or hydraulic failure, the nose gear would drop due to gravity as per it's design, but the airstream wouldn't quite allow it to lock down. Pilots would have to set the main gear down,
hard, to slap the nose gear into locked position. Many times taking more than one pass to do it, literally boucing on the runway while managing to keep the nose in the air.
So this little jewel was locked, and that changes the whole emergency. The pilot still did an outstanding job, reeling back on the elevators until the nose settled onto the runway gently. It was an emergency, but relatively minor emergency. Remember that DC-10 that lost
all hydraulic power, and had to use differential thrust to do turns? That was a hardcore emergency.
I'm not sure why the passengers where not informed, however. I can understand "preventing a panic", but *something* should have been said before they started hearing about it on the TV's.