On 6/20/2012 11:16 PM, Robert Neville wrote:
Sancho wrote:

In view of the experience of the JetBlue flight that had hydraulic
problems on departing Las Vegas for New York and had to fly around Vegas
for hours to consume fuel before landing at McCarran, is it accurate to
say that the Airbus A-320 can't dump fuel and that F.A.A., among other
authorities, has approved the plane despite that?

OMG!!!!! And is it accurate to say the FAA approved the Boeing 737 despite the
fact that it can't dump fuel?

I'm sensing a conspiracy here.

JetBlue, under pressure for tarmac delays, seems to be looking for other
places to upset passengers:

JetBlue’s ‘4 hours of hell’

By BILL SANDERSON

Last Updated: 12:21 PM, June 20, 2012

Posted: 2:30 AM, June 20, 2012

ASSOCIATED PRESS

A mechanical failure sent a JetBlue plane like this one careening wildly
through the skies, sparking panic among the 155 people aboard the Las
Vegas to New York flight, passengers told The Post yesterday.

“It was four hours of hell,” said Travis McGhie, who described how the
plane kept lurching from side to side and going into steep turns when
its hydraulic system failed Sunday.

“People were getting sick. Some people were throwing up. There were a
lot of people getting nauseous,” said another passenger, Tom Mizer.

The crew did everything they could to prevent panic. One flight
attendant walked down the aisle saying: “Look at me — I’m smiling. If I
was scared, you would know it. If I’m not scared, you don’t need to be,”
Mizer said.

There was no screaming, but “there were definitely people reacting out
loud,” said McGhie.

Mizer and McGhie, both Brooklyn residents, realized something was wrong
as soon as the full Airbus lifted off from the Vegas airport.

“You could hear a screeching — an obvious mechanical screeching,” said
Mizer. “We were bouncing around a lot.”

One of the pilots declared an emergency and radioed Las Vegas
controllers that they were dealing with “quite a few things, but the
initial thing is . . . we’ve lost two hydraulic systems.”

The plane was loaded with five hours’ worth of fuel. Because the A320 is
incapable of dumping excess fuel, the pilots circled the area south of
the Vegas Strip until they’d burned enough to allow the crippled plane
to land safely.

“People on board got a little freaked. People were upset. Nobody was
crazy, but everyone was upset.

“It became a long, sort of very tense waiting game,” Mizer said.

McGhie added, “The plane kind of felt out of control. It wasn’t able to
balance itself, and the air was choppy,” said McGhie.

The side-to-side weaving was likely a sign that the pilots had lost
lateral control, said Dave Esser, a professor at Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University in Florida.

An Airbus manual describes a double hydraulic failure as “improbable in
operation.”

Esser said an Airbus has enough backup systems that the passengers were
not in serious danger. “Even if everything failed, there would have been
a way to manually land the aircraft,” he said.

JetBlue confirmed the incident. The FAA is investigating.