A United Airlines commuter plane has landed at Newark Liberty International Airport Monday evening without its nose landing gear, according to witnesses. There were no reports of injuries.
Runway 22L remains closed after the accident. Flights to Newark are being held at their origin until at least 7:30pm local time, according to the FAA, while departures are leaving with 45 minute delays.
The jet, a Shuttle America Embraer E-170 inbound from Atlana, touched down on Runway 22L just after 6:30 pm with its front gear still retracted, said Ben Huh, the CEO of I Can Has Cheezburger, via Twitter.
Plane at Newark touched down on the runway without nose gear. We r waiting for clearance to takeoff.
— benhuh (@benhuh) February 27, 2012
I can see fire trucks and police evacuating passengers from the United commuter flight that touched down w/o nose gear at Newark. Wow.
— benhuh (@benhuh) February 27, 2012
Live video of the scene showed the plane had been evacuated by emergency slides and that fire crews had doused the surrounding tarmac with foam.
UPDATE 8:10 PM ET
The plane in the incident was N637RW, delivered in 2005. It was operating as United Flight 5124 from Atlanta.
According to The Aviation Herald, the crew initially aborted approach to Newark after the plane’s landing gear lights showed that the front gear had not deployed. After circling and completing checklists, the plane flew past the control tower for a visual inspection, which confirmed the gear was not down.
All 69 passengers and four crew safely evacuated via emergency slides and were bussed to the terminal.
UPDATE 9:00 PM ET
Another Shuttle America Embraer E-170 had a similar issue and landed without its nose gear at Washington Dulles Airport in 2006. In that incident, the crew of United Flight 7512, operated by N651RW, got an nose gear error light when they attempted retracting the gear upon takeoff from Houston. Deciding it was not an actual malfunction, the pilots decided to continue to Dulles as planned, but were unable to deploy the nose gear on approach. The plane landed without its nose gear at Dulles, injuring one of the 61 people onboard. The NTSB blamed the accident on “Improper servicing of the nose landing gear strut and the operator’s inadequate maintenance procedure,” and “the inadequate checklist provided to the flight crew by the operator.”
