You know, This One. I was on my way to DC from Long Beach last Saturday. When I was going through security I saw the plane, Canyon Blue
sitting outside the terminal. It wasn’t at a gate, so I was only sort-of interested. I knew it was the one. When I was watching the news reports, I looked for the name - I fly JetBlue semi-regularly, and I know they name all their planes - Out of the Blue, Wild Blue Yonder, Red White and Blue - I wondered to the wife if I had been on it before.
You can clearly see the name here.
So I sat down by my gate, looking out the window. There was no plane their, yet. A lady sat with her back to the window facing me. One plane was backed out of it’s gate onto the tarmack, and proceeded to leave. A few minutes later, Canyon Blue was backed out from where it was sitting as if it was going to leave. Whew, I thought. It’s not mine. But it backed out farther and farther - just in position to come into my gate. Uh-oh, I thought.
Sure enough, they started to roll it up to my gate. Swell. You ever get that feeling you just really don’t want to get on a plane right now? The lady in front of me turns around and watches this big plane rolling right up to her windowlike it’s going to crash right through it, laughs and says, Wow! That’s really scary! I’m thinking, Lady, you got no idea.
When we took off, I was, shall we say, unusually conscious of the noises and whether or not we were going up to cruising altitude - as oppose to turning around and coming back down for some reason. :eek:
But I figured that this was probably the best inspected palne in the fleet. Still, it only took them a week or less to get the plane back in service. I would have thought the FAA would have grounded it for a longer inspection.
I know at least one other person noticed. As I was getting on the plane - Long Beach uses stairs - I heard him saying - well I won’t mention it to anyone.
Anyway, it was a good flight. I like JetBlue, mostly. Just a little extra scary.
You have a good point, that was the best plane in fleet at the moment.
Glad your flight was less dramatic then the week before. 
Suggests that the inspectors found something to indicate that the problem was clearly in the mechanicals of the front LG assembly itself, not on any other part of the airframe or systems.
I haven’t seen any follow-up on the accident, but it appeared to be a broken link arm on the nose gear. This was spectacular and potentially dangerous, but I believe it is pretty easily fixed if it doesn’t cause a more damaging accident such as a nose gear collapse.
We flew Alaska Air back from Cabo just a couple of months before their crash off the California coast. I’ve always wondered if we were on the same plane.
IIRC, it wasn’t the first time that particular linkage broke on the Airbus A320, it’s just the first time it was caught live on national tv.
The 2000 Point Mugu crash? That plane crashed upside down into the ocean out of control and was destroyed.
Yeah, but it should be noted that stuck nose gears happen on all sorts of planes, and generally don’t lead to any serious crashes. The worst that can happen is a skid on the nose if the strud breaks off.
JRD, I believe the poster was saying they may have flown that plane BEFORE the crash.
Just don’t look out the window at 20,000 feet, or you might see William Shatner balanced on the wing, trying to pry it apart.
:smack: