Originally Posted By: kc2ixe
The Jet Blue jet, I remember the story - Jet was coming into Kennedy in NYC, brought the gear down, and they discovered a small problem - the gear had turned all the way to one side. They went through the whole procedure to get the nose gear pointed the right way, with NO luck. They flew around for a while, to get the fuel state down to a minimum (and of course while this was happening, all the news crews came out to the airport), ad when the time came, the pilot landed the aircraft, and held the nose JUST off the pavement for as long as he could - you are seeing the results of the nose gear touching down. I gather they managed to grind about 6" of the gear off

Just to clarify that one a bit…

That JetBlue flight was supposed to go to John F. Kennedy in NY from the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, CA. The nosewheel got stuck almost sideways when the gear were retracted after takeoff. Unfortunately, the nosewheel does not fit sideways in its well, so retraction failed. Since the aircraft couldn’t exactly make its indended transcontinental trip with the gear still down, the aircraft made an emergency landing at Los Angeles Intl. (LAX) on runway 25L after burning off its load of fuel over holding patterns over the Pacific ocean for a few hours. The pilots did an amazing job of gently (and manually… no autopilot landing there) touching the nose down to avoid any unnecessary stress on the jacked nosewheel, and were reportedly annoyed that the aircraft was 6 inches off the runway centerline when the plane came to a stop.

That was a classic example of how it is done.

http://www.airlinesafety.com/editorials/JetBlueLAX.htm

Personally, I am more interested in how that twin engine GA plane (Cessna 310?) got into a lake/lagoon… confused Someone obviously didn’t land as well as the previous example!
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