Pilot Lands Jumbo Jet Safely After Wheels Fail : Emergency: Plane makes two passes over LAX before touching down with its nose up. Twenty-four people suffer minor injuries.

A United Airlines jumbo jet made an emergency nose-up landing on its wing wheels at Los Angeles International Airport Monday morning, slightly injuring 24 people, 11 of whom were treated at area hospitals.

Passengers said they spent a harrowing 45 minutes as the jet’s pilot made two passes at a runway before landing and skidding to a stop.

The pilot--who was heralded as a hero but whose name was not released by United--was forced into the landing because the aircraft’s nose and fuselage wheels could not be lowered.

The almost-new Boeing 747-400 was carrying 323 passengers plus a crew of 20 on a flight from Sydney, Australia. Passengers and crew used emergency chutes to evacuate the aircraft.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Greg Acevedo said 23 passengers suffered minor injuries during the evacuation and one firefighter with the rescue unit was slightly hurt. There was only slight damage to the aircraft.

“The pilot did an outstanding job bringing the plane in,” said Elly Brekke, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Gary Mucho, regional director for the National Transportation Safety Board in Los Angeles, said simulated tests would be run on the jet in an effort to determine why the wheels malfunctioned.

He agreed that the landing was a skilled one under pressure conditions. “The crew did an excellent job,” he said.

The assessment was shared by passengers.

“The pilot gets an A-plus,” said Zane Bair of Pacific Palisades, a journalist for the Australian Broadcasting Corp. who was in seat No. 1 in the first-class section under the plane’s nose. “He seems to have landed it perfectly.”

Passengers said that the pilot informed them about 45 minutes from LAX that red warning lights indicated some of the landing gear was malfunctioning.

“He said he was having problems with the landing gear,” said a passenger, Cassandra Edwards, 48, of Berkeley. “But he said he didn’t know how serious the problem was.”

Passengers were told to assume a crash position, tightly buckled to their seats with heads between knees and hands grasping ankles.

As LAX came into the pilot’s view, airport officials shut both of the airport’s south runways while allowing its two north runways to remain open, according to Brekke.

Then, Brekke said, the pilot made two counterclockwise maneuvers--the first at low-enough altitude for the control tower to confirm whether the red warning lights were accurate.

They were.

The jet’s wing wheels--four on each wing, slightly outboard of the main body wheels--lowered properly.

On the second maneuver, as emergency equipment stood by, the pilot touched down on the two-mile-long runway in an effort to jar the other wheels loose. But nothing happened.

On the final maneuver at 10:23 a.m., the jet touched down gently on Runway 25 Right on LAX’s south side.

According to John Keys, a Los Angeles Fire Department paramedic, the jet’s nose remained aloft until the last few yards of the landing. The nose then dropped to the runway, screeching along on two nose wheel doors, which had opened. There was no fire.

“The screeching noise as the plane was landing was the most frightening part because we didn’t know if it was going to burst into flames,” said Edwards, who had been on a safari vacation in Australia.

“I could see the looks on the stewardesses’ faces,” she said. “They were obviously concerned. . . . The safari was very challenging, but nothing like this.”

As the pilot was braking, Joy Wahab, 20, a passenger from San Diego, said, “I thought the plane was going to roll over. But everything worked out OK.”

According to a spokeswoman for Boeing Co. in Seattle, Elizabeth Reese, the aircraft is state-of-the-art, the first in the 747 series with an all-computerized flight deck. She said there had been no previous problems with landing gear since deliveries of the aircraft began in February, 1989.

It was the second United airliner in a week to land at LAX with failed landing gear. Last Tuesday, a Boeing 737 with a retracted right main gear skidded to a safe landing, coming down on the nose gear, the left main gear and the engine under the right wing. The 107 people aboard slid down emergency chutes and there were no injuries.