A Polish airliner was forced into making an emergency crash landing this week after the landing gear failed to open.
Fire services doused the runway with flame retardant foam to mitigate the danger of the plane bursting into flames upon landing, and the pilot circled Warsaw airport for over an hour to burn up fuel that could otherwise have ignited.
Though flames and smoke could be seen pouring from the undercarriage (see embedded video for more), these weren’t to develop into a larger fire and the landing was a textbook example of fire and disaster management.
Footage courtesy Associated Press
A spokesperson for LOT airlines said the fuel tanks were almost empty by the time the plane came into land, and the plane was completely evacuated in just 90 seconds.
Fire crews then doused the plane with water long after it had come into land to make absolutely certain that no embers remained.
Pilot Tadeusz Wrona subsequently dismissed suggestions he was a "national hero" by saying "any of our pilots could have landed the plane and the result would have been the same, because we train for situations like this on simulators."
The Boeing 767 flight from Newark was carrying 231 people, all of which were reported to be unharmed.
