WARSAW – No one was hurt when a Boeing 767 flying from Newark, New Jersey, with some 230 people on board, made an emergency landing at Warsaw’s airport yesterday after trouble with its landing gear.
“All safety procedures worked perfectly fine and, thanks to this, nobody was injured,” said Leszek Chorzewski, spokesman for the Polish national flag carrier LOT, the operator of the aircraft.
Live television footage showed the Boeing landing on its belly, with a few sparks flying as it hit the runway covered with flame-retardant foam.
There was no blaze but firefighters hosed the aircraft with water and foam seconds after all the passengers escaped.
“I thought I would feel like we were hitting the ground violently, but then we felt plane touching the ground and that was it,” said one of the passengers, Krzysztof Rozycki.
LOT said the hydraulic system responsible for operating the wing flaps and the landing gear failed and a back-up system worked only for the flaps – forcing the emergency landing after the aircraft had circled for nearly an hour above Warsaw.
Other passengers spoke of fear and total silence during the landing. “There were tears, there were tears,” said Hubert Waz.
Poland’s president Bronislaw Komorowski said he would award state decorations to the crew after briefly talking on the phone to the pilot. “To all those involved, I say thank you with all my heart,” Mr Komorowski told a news conference.
Capt Lukasz Wrona is a veteran LOT pilot in his 50s, with a passion for gliding. This may have helped him to land the aircraft safely without wheels, local media reported.
The airport was due to remain closed for all other flights until at least this morning as LOT conferred with Boeing on how best to remove the craft from the runway, officials said.
Poland was shocked by an air catastrophe in April 2010, when a government aircraft carrying president Lech Kaczynski and 95 others, mostly senior state officials, crashed while trying to land in thick fog in western Russia, killing all on board. – (Reuters)