Airbus Should Be Worried; JetBlue's Worries Not Quite Over

At least seven other landing gear incidents have been identified with the Airbus A320 planes, of which JetBlue Flight 292 was one. JetBlue owns 81 of the A320s and would be one of the biggest customers affected if changes needed to be made to the landing gear on the fleet of A320s worldwide.

A November 2002 incident on a JetBlue flight landing at Kennedy Airport was hauntingly similar to the situation Wednesday aboard Flight 292. That plane also landed with its nose gear turned 90 degrees in the wrong direction.

The incident was blamed on faulty maintenance procedures — but Green suggested investigators might now want to look deeply into the problems. "It seems to me that there's probably a design problem with the nose gear," he said.

The first A320 incidents arose in the mid-1990s and were attributed to problems with O-ring seals in the nose gear's hydraulic system. The problem caused nose wheels to turn 90 degrees upon landing — just like what happened on to JetBlue Flight 292.

A February 1999 incident in Columbus, Ohio involving an America West A320 led the Federal Aviation Administration and French aviation authorities to require modifications to the nose gear.


The problem seemed fixed, Green said — until a pair of A320 nose-gear incidents just a few weeks apart in 2002.

No one was injured Nov. 1 that year when a JetBlue A320 heading from Buffalo to Kennedy Airport landed with its nose wheels turned 90 degrees.

Three weeks later, it happened again — this time in Chicago, to a United Airlines A319, a sister model of the A320.

After those incidents, the National Transportation Safety Board reported, the French nose-gear manufacturer, Messier-Dowty, reported two more similar problems, one involving a Canadian airline, another in Ireland.

This time, the problems were blamed on faulty maintenance procedures — which Green said authorities attempted to fix by issuing new instructions to maintenance crews.

The manufacturer, Airbus, has done a good job shifting the blame to the individual airlines and maintenance crews who work on the planes, but one has to wonder why there are so many problems with the nose gear. Hopefully the FAA will cut through this situation and make sure that the travelling public is safe, though the FAA has a less than sterling reputation on doing what is right versus doing what is best for manufacturers and airlines.

Technorati: JetBlue, Jet Blue, airbus, A320, and Airbus A320.