The problems with JetBlue Flight 292 marked at least the seventh time that the front landing gear of an Airbus jet has locked at a 90-degree angle, forcing pilots to land commercial airliners under emergency conditions, according to federal records.
No one has been injured in the incidents, which span about a decade. There are more than 2,500 planes from the Airbus 320 family, which includes the Airbus 318, 319 and 321 models, in operation worldwide. Aviation safety officials Thursday said the planes have a good safety record.
In the most recent case, JetBlue's flight from Burbank to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, carrying 140 passengers, was forced Wednesday to make an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport. The plight of the aircraft was televised nationwide, beginning with the plane circling over the California coast and ending at an LAX runway with a landing marked by fire streaming from the plane's front wheels.
Howard Plagens, a senior air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating Wednesday's incident, called problems with landing gear "common."
At a news conference Thursday at the Proud Bird Restaurant outside LAX, he said he believed that passengers had no reason for concern about the safety of the Airbus fleet.
"How many Airbus A320s are out there?" he said, adding that the number of times the wheels have locked is small.
"Incidents happen every day" involving landing gear on all types of planes, he said.
The locking of the nose landing gear on Airbus jets is one of several recurring problems with the plane's nose landing gear.
A Canadian study issued last year documented 67 incidents of nose-landing-gear failures on Airbus 319, 320 and 321 aircraft worldwide since 1989.
Plagens said the A320 wasn't grounded after previous incidents involving the nose landing gear because "they did do fixes for those things."
After the initial investigation, the NTSB will look at maintenance records for other Airbus A320 aircraft, Plagens said. Investigators will review other instances involving the plane's nose wheel, as well as modifications recommended to fix the problem.
"If we find a pattern, we'll certainly do something," he said.
NTSB officials expect the investigation into Flight 292's emergency landing to take six to nine months. They have removed the cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder from the plane and sent them to Washington for evaluation.
