First, an incident reported by CNN. They didn't say which ship this was, but a Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier II pilot had a bit of excitement during a training mission. Takeoff was routine enough, but when he raised his landing gear, the nose gear didn't come all the way up. OK, that's bad. Time to go around for a landing. But wait, there's more!
CNN doesn't do embedding, sorry to say. But the rest of the story is that the nose gear wouldn't come all the way back down, either. But that's OK, because they're prepared for just such an emergency. Turns out they've got a standard piece of equipment to catch the nose. The pilot just has to line up on it exactly for it to work. Fortunately, lining up exactly is what Marine Corps aviators do for a living.
But, I have to say, that feat of airmanship pales by comparison to something I saw on my way home. The traffic seemed worse than usual. You almost never know exactly why. As I took the Highway 287 exit south from I-20, I saw some police cars parked on the overpass below. I didn't see what they'd stopped for. I was kind of busy driving. But, after I got home and checked up on some news, I saw what it was and wish I'd actually seen it.
Pictured: A lifetime supply of luck, expended.
Yes, you're seeing that right. Someone landed an airplane. On a curved highway overpass. IN RUSH HOUR. And they're probably going to live long enough to brag about it.
I'm trying to think of something else to say about this, and I'm failing miserably. If you pitched this as a scene in an action flick, they'd laugh you out of the room. No one would believe it. This is either a harebrained stunt gone wrong, or an unbelievably awesome feat of airmanship, bringing a busted bird home. I really hope it's the latter.
Either way, they've got a story to tell their grandkids that'll be hard to top.
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