btwissel

then the question is why did they pick 22L when 10/28 and 14R/32L are so much longer.

flying4dollars

Why would you get in trouble for not declaring an emergency? How do you know they didn't declare the emergency? From a news report? Please, they're lucky they got the right airport and company much less the specifics of what the crew did. Besides that, ATC can declare an emergency on you even if you don't. The paranoia among some pilots kills me. Do your best, do your job, and stop worrying all the time about getting in "trouble". Obviously these guys had some problem outside the realm of normal ops and did a good job getting the plane down safely. Nice job AA guys, glad no one was hurt.

weasil

Actually they landed 22R not 22L but I had the same thought - I watched it happen. The wind at the time was 100/10 (at least on the ATIS).

eaglefly

If they had to land fast because of loss of instrumentation, why did they pick the shortest runway at ORD ?

Why did they declare the emergency 3 miles out (well inside the marker) ?

It will be interesting to see the report on this one.

RuttR

The crew should have asked for clarification when the tower told them to "roll it off at the end".

dc10pilot

what happened to their standby instrumnents - airspeed etc

aa73

L&G,

I would like to ask everyone from please refraining from judging the crew without all the facts. It is very easy to sit here and armchair quarterback the whole thing without having been present in that flight deck.

As I know it, the emergency didn't start out as one. They were across the lake, almost to the east side when they decided to turn around and divert. It was a gradual descent, and 22R was in that direction. An emergency was not declared until the very last two or three minutes, on final to 22R. That tells me that things went downhill in a hurry right in those last couple minutes, at which point they may have wanted to get in on the ground in a hurry. Possible electrical smoke, that type of thing. If you are already set up for 22R on a 3 mile final for a non-emergency and you start getting smoke indications, would you perform a go around to land on a longer runway? I don't think so, especially when 7700ft of runway is way more than enough for almost any jet. It goes without saying that they would have chosen a longer runway if they felt they had time, as we are all trained.

Bottom line - it must have started out as an abnormal, and deteriorated from there. IMO the crew did an outstanding job in light of the circumstances.

73

Busboy

Actually, it was, "Turn left, at the end, if able."

AAflyer

Why is it necessary to pick the longer runway. Shouldn't the runway suit the
situation?

For instance if you departed and you had a cabin fire would you pick the closest runway or the longest.

If you were dealing with an emergency in IFR would you shoot a VOR approach to a longer runway or an ILS to a shorter one? Depends on the emergency.

I would not be so quick to assume one must always choose the longest runway. Especially with lack of details in this situation.

Respectfully,

AAflyer

steak pilot

Thats right, nobody got hurt.