Don't we all just love the FAA ?????

American Airlines Flight 1400

This happened to Kevin May (First Officer) on September 28 climbing out of STL (St. Louis) headed for ORD (O’Hare). He is the husband of Jane May who is our best flight attendant here at the Pfizer Air Shuttle.

While on climb out they had a fire bell and light going off, all the instruments on the captain’s side went blank and they lost all hydraulics. The captain gave the aircraft to Kevin to fly since he had lost all his instruments. As they circled and lined up with the runway to make an emergency landing the tower stated “your nose wheel isn’t down”. Kevin elected to do a single engine go around which gave the captain enough time to hand crank the nose wheel down right before they touched down on the runway. The MD-80 was full and thankfully no one was injured.

The FAA and NTSB are involved and as always are playing Monday morning quarterback. After reviewing the cockpit recorder tapes they are saying that the pilots screwed up and should have evacuated the a/c after landing with the emergency slides.

As Kevin stated to me “why injure people unnecessarily with an evacuation with the slides when the fire was already out”. They did an evacuation but not with the slides. Yes, they did the engine shutdown checklist, and the engine fire memory items, and flew the airplane, and put the nose gear down by hand, was talking to the control tower, etc).

Kevin May and the captain are still NOT on flying status (they are grounded) because the FAA and the NTSB are not finished. Makes you want to go fly for the airlines, doesn’t it????????

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Flight 1400 Crew endures engine fire, loss of hydraulics and electrics on left side, executes flawless single-engine go-around due to gear not extending.