Have you had a chance to take a deep breath since yesterday’s miraculous, Sully Sullenberger-level landing at Mandalay International Airport?
Good. Because as you’d imagine, more details and video have emerged in the past 24 hours since the spectacular front-landing-gear-free landing, fleshing out exactly what happened and giving everyone a taste of the aftermath from the perspective of the passengers on board.
A first person video taken by passenger Naing Lin Tun shows smoke slowly filling the cabin and passengers running off the tarmac, leaving behind a plane tilted towards its nose.
https://www.facebook.com/nainglintun.phayphaylu.3/posts/350245989178315
In a Facebook update on the Myanmar National Airlines page that has since gone viral, the airline confirmed what most believed yesterday, which is that the “nose landing gear was malfunctioning and couldn’t be activated.”
When the pilot, Captain Myat Moe Aung, was unable to activate the emergency landing gear procedure, he followed protocol and ejected remaining fuel to reduce the landing weight — and, we’ll assume, reduce the chance of exploding — before executing the landing with no front landing gear deployed.
https://www.facebook.com/MyanmarNationalAirlines/posts/2383584338544919
According to Facebook user Nay Min, the captain informed passengers over the intercom that he had decided to land with only the aircraft’s rear tires down, as the alternative would have been to land in the Irrawaddy river, something that would have taken us properly into Tom Hanks territory.
https://www.facebook.com/nainglintun.phayphaylu.3/posts/350896442446603
In an interview with Eleven Media, Captain Aung said that the decision to land using only the back tires came after they had exhausted all options and consulted ground control.
“We calmly informed the crew, who told the passengers, in English and Burmese, that we had to make an emergency landing. We still had 6,000 pounds of fuel left in the tank that we had to eject before making a landing so we were flying for 20 more minutes,” he said.
Nothing to it, right?
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