The Jet Blue Landing
The Political Teen has the video (hat tip: Lileks) in .wmv format. I made the conscious decision not to watch the landing in real time as I was worried that the plane would smack the tarmac hard and ugly. And I just didn't want to watch that. I've seen enough of the devastation of Katrina and I'm sure Rita will bring her own measure of hardship to a whole new set of people. I'm sort of burnt on disaster I suppose. Still, I did watch the landing this morning.
Can we have a round of applause for the pilots, please? I don't think the landing, given the screwed-up nose wheel, could have possibly gone any better than it did. The losses are, in my grotesquely non-professional estimation, the fuel burned off and dumped, a gouge in the runway and an eroded nose wheel assembly. Of course the nose wheel assembly was already bad so that's not really a much greater loss. And that's it. The plane was under control during the entire landing. It looked like it didn't even waver after the nose wheel burned off and the metal started its shower of sparks. The flight crew should be given a commendation. In my opinion of course.