Naim 6 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 (edited) Happened last Monday, but only Sin Chew carried the story: http://e.sinchew-i.com/content.phtml?sec=2...id=200707170006 The rest kept mum. +++ The Associated Press July 16, 2007, 2:20PM ET Landing gear scare for Air Asia flight PHNOM PENH, Cambodia An Air Asia flight from Kuala Lumpur landed safely in the Cambodian capital Monday after being forced to circle around the airport for about 10 minutes when its landing gear initially failed to deploy, an aviation official said. There were 130 passengers on board the Airbus A320 which landed at about 4:30 p.m., said Keo Sivorn, head of Flight Safety Operations at Cambodia's Secretariat of Civil Aviation. "The plane had to circle, flying for about 10 minutes around the airport before its landing gear worked properly," he said. "Now it has landed safety and all the passengers are fine." The plane was operated by Malaysia-based Air Asia. Four fire trucks were standing by in case the plane had trouble on landing, Keo Sivorn added. He said technicians were inspecting the plane to find out why the landing gear failed and see if it had any other problems. On June 25, a Russian-made An-24 plane crashed during a storm while flying to the southern coastal town of Sihanoukville, killing all 22 people on board. It had taken off from Siem Reap, the country's main tourist hub and site of the famed Angkor Wat temple complex. The plane was operated by PMT Air, a small Cambodia airline that began flights in January from Siem Reap to Sihanoukville, a new route launched to spur the country's burgeoning tourism industry. The last major air accident in Cambodia was in 1997, when a Vietnam Airlines TU-134B crashed while trying to land during a rainstorm at Phnom Penh International Airport, killing more than 60 people. http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8QDREH80.htm# Edited July 21, 2007 by Naim Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sandeep G 1 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 time to bring out the warranty card! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sri Ramani K. 0 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 bird was 9M-AFJ.. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ahmad Sharilamin 0 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 (edited) Well the A320 family has a history of landing gear and braking problems..was it the nose landing gear that jammed?... Recall infamous A320 Jet Blue gear incident... "With about 2,500 Airbus A320s in operation worldwide, the number of incidents involving jammed nose gear is not significant, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Greg Martin said Thursday. The A320 family _ which includes the A318, A319 and A321 _ has a somewhat unusual landing gear that rotates before retracting into the fuselage. "It's definitely not the most common way," said Chuck Eastlake, aerospace engineering professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. "The reason is that the ability of the nose wheel to rotate 90 degrees introduces the possibility of failure, exactly like what we saw." The problems with JetBlue Flight 292 marked at least the seventh time that the front landing gear of an Airbus jet has locked at a 90-degree angle, forcing pilots to land commercial airliners under emergency conditions, according to federal records. No one has been injured in the incidents, which span about a decade. There are more than 2,500 planes from the Airbus 320 family, which includes the Airbus 318, 319 and 321 models, in operation worldwide. Aviation safety officials Thursday said the planes have a good safety record. In the most recent case, JetBlue's flight from Burbank to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, carrying 140 passengers, was forced Wednesday to make an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport. The plight of the aircraft was televised nationwide, beginning with the plane circling over the California coast and ending at an LAX runway with a landing marked by fire streaming from the plane's front wheels. Howard Plagens, a senior air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating Wednesday's incident, called problems with landing gear "common." At a news conference Thursday at the Proud Bird Restaurant outside LAX, he said he believed that passengers had no reason for concern about the safety of the Airbus fleet. "How many Airbus A320s are out there?" he said, adding that the number of times the wheels have locked is small. "Incidents happen every day" involving landing gear on all types of planes, he said. The locking of the nose landing gear on Airbus jets is one of several recurring problems with the plane's nose landing gear. A Canadian study issued last year documented 67 incidents of nose-landing-gear failures on Airbus 319, 320 and 321 aircraft worldwide since 1989. Plagens said the A320 wasn't grounded after previous incidents involving the nose landing gear because "they did do fixes for those things." After the initial investigation, the NTSB will look at maintenance records for other Airbus A320 aircraft, Plagens said. Investigators will review other instances involving the plane's nose wheel, as well as modifications recommended to fix the problem. "If we find a pattern, we'll certainly do something," he said. NTSB officials expect the investigation into Flight 292's emergency landing to take six to nine months. They have removed the cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder from the plane and sent them to Washington for evaluation. In the next few days, safety officials will decide whether to send the entire nose-landing-gear assembly to New York, where mechanics will take it apart piece by piece and reassemble it to try to re-create the failure. The landing gear on the nose of the A320, also known as the nose wheel, is a big, bulky system controlled by a computer. The computer gives commands to an electrical system, which in turn operates the hydraulics that move the gear up and down, moving the wheels into proper position for both landing and storage. The problem that caused the wheel on Flight 292 to lock in the wrong position could have been caused by the electrical system, the hydraulics or some other part of the assembly, Plagens said. The maker of the nose landing gear, Paris-based Messier-Dowty, said in a National Transportation Safety Board report dated April 2004 that the company had redesigned the backplate onto which the shock absorber attaches to prevent the problem from recurring. At that time the manufacturer said it was awaiting approval of the redesign. Federal aviation officials and an Airbus spokeswoman said Thursday that they did not know whether replacement of the problematic part had been approved or implemented. A call to a spokeswoman for Messier-Dowty in Paris was not immediately returned. Edited July 21, 2007 by Ahmad Sharilamin Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jerry Ang 0 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 So, whats the course of the gear failed to be lowered?? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sri Ramani K. 0 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 from what i heard, it had a LGCIU1 (Landing Gear Control Interface Unit 1) fault.. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
E Faizal 0 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 Errmm.. so what the solutions did the pilot take? Let the grativity to bring down the gears? or any switch for backup hidrolics for that Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kenneth T 0 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 Didnt AIRBUS takes the necessary steps to rectify the problem? It's such a new bird for AK....such ashame for AIRBUS. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BC Tam 2 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 time to bring out the warranty card! I wonder if Datuk TF had to fill out the tear off bit and mail it back to Airbus within 14 days of purchase, with vendor's stamped and dated verification obviously !! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sandeep G 1 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 Errmm.. so what the solutions did the pilot take? Let the grativity to bring down the gears? or any switch for backup hidrolics for that hehehe probably was the case - gravity gear - more interestingly - how did the bird get back to KL? or was she grounded in Cambodia??????????? What does the A320 MMEL say about flying following a fault like that??? Or got engineer on board ah? change the C/B is it? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sri Ramani K. 0 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 they did the manual landing gear procedures and had to circle around the airport..thankfully, it worked.. was told that AFJ has had that problems before, and even after the incident, it did occur again. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Naim 6 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 they did the manual landing gear procedures and had to circle around the airport..thankfully, it worked.. was told that AFJ has had that problems before, and even after the incident, it did occur again. I've been on AFJ a couple of times, phew! +++ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ignatius 4 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 I've been on AFJ a couple of times, phew! +++ Same with me, Pheww!!!!!! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Levent Report post Posted July 21, 2007 How typical that they have to bring up the PMT crash and even the Vietnam Airlines crash in that article - both of which have NOTHING to do at all with the landing gear incident. Glad all worked out well with the AirAsia A320 though. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Min Chun 0 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 Thought they have few Gs' turn outside the area.. Felt relieved as it was over and had landed safely Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Wai Hung 0 Report post Posted July 21, 2007 if the a320 is forced to do a belly landing, will the aircraft be written off after that? just curious... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sandeep G 1 Report post Posted July 22, 2007 if the a320 is forced to do a belly landing, will the aircraft be written off after that? just curious... chances are pretty high... engines would sustain the most damage Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
