"John A. Weeks III" writes:

Anyone else watch the Jet Blue Airbus on CNN
do the emergency landing at LAX with the nose
gear pointed crossways?

Yup. And I got a bit of a chuckle while channel-surfing between
CNN, CNN Headline, Fox, and MSNBC, all of which were covering the
story, and all of which were having a very obvious problem trying to
fill the l--o--n--g time during which nothing was happening except
for the 320 continuing to circle.

Another chuckle came from listening to the reporters and their on-mike
experts had trying to figure out if the 320 has the ability to
dump fuel. The concensus was that the answer is "no" but one outlet
(CNN, I think) was still reporting after the landing that the 320
had dumped fuel over the ocean.

It is worth checking
out the highlights on CNN to watch it.

According to the news reports this morning, the passengers on board
had the opportunity to watch the landing live on CNN and/or Fox. Can
anyone confirm that the crew left the external video feed on during
the landing? I can understand the desire to do so, but do you want
the passengers to be distracted by something being said on Fox while
the cabin crew is going over the emergency evacuation procedure?

That
had to be one of the best and smoothest landings
I have ever seen. The pilot really greased it
in, and held the nose up for what seemed like
forever to burn off speed before he had to put
the nose gear down. Even after burning up both
tires and melting down part of the strut, he
never was more than a foot from the center line.
It was an amazing job in a pressure situation.

It looked like he touched down about 2500' from the approach end
of the runway, and ended up maybe 2000' from the end, based on
the runway markings. I didn't pay full attention to them (and had
to hurry elsewhere; I assume the landing was repeatedly shown) so
I may have misread something.

I do agree with the comment about a *perfect* centerline landing. The
news reports said that the pax gave the crew a long round of applause
after the plane came to a stop; so did I.

CNN brought Captain Al Haynes
on the air as an expert commentator--it was good
to hear his voice again.

Did you notice that the caption that CNN displayed on the screen
while Al was speaking said something along the lines of "Al Haynes,
retired airline pilot"? At one point the reporter asked him to
compare the situation to the one that Al handled so incredibly well
at Sioux City, but that caption was the equivalent of describing
George Washington as "an officer of the Continental Army".

Joe Morris