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Contact Photographer Marco Toso
What: Livingston Airbus A321-200 en route from Greece to Italy
Where: Athens
When: Sep 19th 2009
Who: 211 passengers and 7 crew
Why: When smoke was detected on board, the plane diverted to Athens and landed safely while an emergency crew waited. No source was given for the smoke but the plane is apparently back in service.
UPS flight 5X-605 made an emergency landing in Louisville, Kentucky, on November 27th.
The Airbus A300-600 freighter plane took off from Chicago, Illinois, but the crew failed to retract the landing gear.
The crew continued to Louisville where they requested the longest runway. The plane subsequently landed safely. Everyone aboard remained unharmed.
What: Airbus A340 en route for Dubai
Where: Melbourne airport
When: March 20
Who: 257 passengers and 18 crew
Why: Incorrect weight data on an in-flight computer caused the tail of an Emirates plane to scrape the runway during take-off. ( The Australia’s air safety regulator concluded that the weight was incorrectly entered on the onboard computer which resulted in thrust setting and take-off reference speeds lower than those required for the aircraft?s actual weight. (The weight entered was 112 tons too light.) The incident caused substantial damage to the plane’s tail. The tail ripped out at least one runway light, and dislodged a flight data recorder at the plane’s rear. Manual correction of thrust caused the rear fuselage to scrape the tarmac. The Emirates investigation is considering a flight computer double-entry system “to protect against single data source entry error.”
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Antonio Camarasa
What: Air Comet Airbus A330-200 en route from Madrid Spain to Buenos Aires Argentina
Where: Atlantic Ocean
When: Nov 6th 2009
Who: 270 passengers
Why: While en route to Argentina, Brazilian Authorities denied overflight permission to Air Comet. The flight had to return to Madrid. Although the plane had the essential paperwork, . Air Comet owes substantial debt (air taxes) to the Brazilian government.
A helicopter, belonging to the U.S. Coast Guard, had to make an emergency landing in a parking lot in Houston, Texas, on January 22.
The chopper had to be landed in emergency at a shopping center’s parking area, after a bird hit it. Authorities said the helicopter was flying over the Gulf of Mexico for checking on an unmanned platform at the time of incident.
Four people were aboard at the time; all of them remained uninjured.
