Another Reason To Always Aim For The Centerline

We can only imagine the contents of the cockpit voice recorder after the crew of this United Airlines A-319 touched the nose gear down at O’Hare International Airport (ORD) in late November. According to the NTSB preliminary report, the plane had taken off from O’Hare on a flight to Los Angeles with 77 passengers and five crew aboard, and the crew was unable to retract the nose gear. The plane returned to O’Hare and when the nose gear touched it was rotated 90-degrees to the direction of travel. The tires blew and the wheels ground down to the axles but the pilots managed to keep the aircraft on the blacktop, which survived fairly well, too. There were no injuries. According to the NTSB, the plane had flown just four cycles since undergoing “heavy maintenance,” which included overhauling the nose gear.