Airbus A320 -Two Design Flaws?
Wednesday's dramatic landing of the JetBlue A320 at Los Angeles was heartstopping. It was amazing to see the flight skid to a halt right in the middle of the runway.
Watching this on TV, I was told that such incidents of the front landing gear are very rare. Good thing, because you could see how a plane in the hands of a lesser pilot could have skidded off the runway, or flipped over.
But now the New York Post reports that there have been at least seven prior incidents of the front landing gear being stuck. The NY Daily News says that there have been at least five prior incidents of this type. That's not so wonderful.
Previous incidents have been blamed by Airbus on bad maintenance, but I'm not sure about that.
And this plane supposedly cannot dump fuel in flight. If that's true, I see this as a major design error. There will be times when a large plane needs to dump fuel in order to minimize fire / explosion risk in an emergency landing, or to minimize the weight of the plane when it is necessary to land very soon.
