Crippled Airliner Lands Safely After Scraping Wing on Ground

A Piedmont Airlines jet with 100 people aboard made an emergency landing Wednesday with its left wing and engine scraping the runway after its landing gear jammed, officials said. No injuries were reported.

A flash of flame and smoke erupted from the left wing as the jet, a new Boeing 737-400 en route to Charlotte from Washington, touched down at Piedmont Triad International Airport with its left landing gear up.

The left landing gear could not be lowered because a wheel chock had become lodged in the landing gear bay, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Phillip Powell said.

Passengers slid down emergency chutes, and ground crews sprayed foam on the engine.

“I was thinking that this might be it,” passenger Pam Schaeffer of Washington said. She said she was sitting next to a former flight attendant who kept her informed of what the crew was doing. “Once I was out of the plane and on the runway and far from the plane, I started to feel OK.”

Flight 1489 had been scheduled to land at Charlotte, airline spokesmen said. But the plane was diverted to Greensboro, the site of Piedmont’s maintenance hangar, after the instrument panel indicated that the landing gear had not locked.

The pilot “circled for better than an hour in an attempt to get all the gear down,” Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Roger Myers said. The pilot got the nose wheel and right landing gear down, but not the left gear, he said.

During maneuvers to shake loose the landing gear and use up fuel, the jetliner touched down on one wheel, then immediately took off again.

Piedmont took delivery of the jetliner last November and has had no problems with it or with 737-400s in general, Piedmont spokesman David Shipley said.