A Gulfstream V business jet belonging to Nike with seven people on board is having landing gear trouble over Portland.
Weird, all the landing gear incidents recently.
CNN Woman to Maj. Gen. Don Shepperd: How is an airplane able to land on it’s belly without blowing up?
:dubious: :rolleyes:
I’d like to tell her that airplanes don’t watch Hollywood movies, so they don’t know they’re supposed to blow up.
The jet is burning off fuel before attempting to land. The aircraft took off from Hillsborough Airport about an hour ago on its way to Toronto (if I heard correctly). That would be quite a bit of fuel to burn off.
Is there some consideration given in cases like this to finding the best airport for it to land? Not being sure of the geography there, I’m assuming it’s landing somewhere other than where it took off.
So - some airports are better equipped to handle this than others, right?
I don’t know about Hillsborough, but it’s not too far from Portland. And I’ve never piloted an aircraft with retractable landing gear. (A helicopter doesn’t need as much space to land in an emergency. 
) The recent King Air incident near Atlanta had the aircraft landing at a smaller field than Atlanta. (Charley Brown?) A Gulfstream is a larger, faster aircraft so if I were flying one I’d like the longest runway I could find. In addition, portland probably has a larger fleet of emergency vehicles and associated personnel.
I just heard this: This is the ‘maiden voyage’ of this aircraft. It was purchased, apparently new, about a month ago. Obviously it had test flights, and there had to have been a ferry flight or two. It was recently checked out and serviced. (Just as the King Air, which I think was a 1977 model, had been recently maintained before its incident.) But this is apparently the first ‘in-service’ flight of this Gulfstream.
I bet this is giving the passengers a nice warm fuzzy feeling.
“Okay folks. What we’re going to do here is fly in circles for a few hours until we’ve burned up enough fuel to crash safely.”
Wow. Talk about your “buyer’s remorse”.
Better than a warm crispy feeling.
I kid! A little gallows humour. In fact, the last time I looked at the numbers on the Nall Report I think only 20% of GA crashes involved fatalities.
I’ve been watching this on TV. There are several points. Seven persons aboard, including three crew. Phil Knight is not aboard, nor are any sports figures. They said there is a 25K fuel load which will take about 3 hours from now to burn off, no dump capabilities on the G-5.
The right gear is stuck at an angle, but the left gear a the nose gear are operable. They’ve done two touch and goes, apparently to try to “shake” the offending gear down and a flyby at Hillsborough so that techs. could get a visual on the problem. PDX still has a minor fog/visibility problem, but that should be gone by the time they make a decision.
According to FoxNews
[quote]
“Phil Knight, the chairman, is not on board, nor are there any sports stars or spokesmen,”
Now they’re saying it might land at Hillsborough.
They have Carol Dean-Toder on the phone. She’s a former Gulfstream instructor pilot with about 1,000 hours in-type. Based on this incident and the previous King Air incident, CNN seems to be getting some good experts to help them with their coverage. Usually I roll my eyes at this sort of story, since the reporters usually know little about aviation. (Indeed, I did roll my eyes in my second post because of the reporter’s question about an explosion.) But the experts they’re getting seem to be setting the record straight, and it’s good to see a news broadcaster making use of them.
It is possible there will be a post-landing fire, but I’d be surprised if this landing were not successful.
Now CNN have John King on the line. It’s still a serious situation; and while I expect this landing to be textbook there is still a chance of something going wrong. Still, anyone who has ever seen a King video will understand why I’m amused at hearing him on the broadcast. He has that distinctive voice and cadence.
Coming for landing, looks like the gear is down.
Perfect landing, great news, the landing gear did open properly.
Nice landing. 
Would’ve been nice if someone listening to the tower frequency could have told us if the pilot reported three greens.