Raider Charter Makes Emergency Landing

The chartered plane carrying the Raiders back to Los Angeles Saturday after their playoff loss in Buffalo made an emergency landing in Cleveland.

Ned Walker, a spokesman for Continental Airlines, said indicators showed that the landing gear did not fully retract.

The plane, a Continental A300 air bus, left Buffalo at 6:45 p.m. EST, an hour later than scheduled.

After the problem was discovered, the plane was rerouted to Cleveland, where it dumped fuel over Lake Erie before landing at Cleveland’s Hopkins International Airport, a major hub for Continental.

Emergency crews were on the ground when the plane landed. Walker said that is routine procedure for situations such as this.

Passengers were put on another plane, which left Cleveland at 9:30 p.m. EST and was to arrive in Los Angeles more than 3 1/2 hours after the scheduled arrival of the team charter from Buffalo.

Walker called the emergency landing a “routine response to a non-routine situation.” He said such landing-gear problems are “extremely rare but do occur.”