Commuter Plane With 32 Aboard Crash-Lands Safely

A commuter plane carrying 32 passengers and crew made a belly landing at Orlando International Airport on Sunday after a hydraulic failure locked up the landing gear.

No one was injured.

Comair Flight 3599 was arriving from Nassau in the Bahamas when the flight crew called to report the hydraulics problem, said airport spokesman Warren Wright.

Air traffic controllers directed the plane to a closed runway. With firefighters on alert, the pilot dumped excess fuel and landed the Embraer EMB-120 on its belly, throwing back 45-foot sparks as metal scraped the runway.

The plane was covered with foam as a precaution when it landed about 11:15 a.m., but there was no fire aboard the plane, Wright said.

Damage to the aircraft was minimal, the airline said.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were scheduled to arrive in Orlando later Sunday.

Also Sunday, a USAir jetliner with 132 passengers on board made an emergency landing at the Orlando airport after the right engine failed, said USAir spokeswoman Sharon Taylor.

Flight 192, bound from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Charlotte, N.C., was forced to land about 40 minutes after taking off at 7:14 a.m., Taylor said. All the passengers on the MD-80 jetliner were put on other USAir flights, she said.