United Flight 888 Had Faulty Landing Gear… AGAIN

Many sites reported that United flight 888 from Beijing to San Francisco had to return to Beijing because of faulty landing gear on August 3. I have seen no reports that the same flight the next day suffered the same problem. Shortly after take-off on August 4, the pilot reported that the landing gear would not retract and we would have to return to Beijing. According to the pilot, we dumped 200,000 pounds of fuel in order to reach a safe landing weight.

We only learned that the same thing had happened the day before after returning to the airport. Unlike the story reported for the August 3 flight, United did not arrange a later flight for the passengers. They dumped approximately 220 passengers (according to a ticket agent) back in the terminal with no plan for getting them back out. They eventually sent many of us to destinations far from San Francisco, such as Washington DC because they could not promise to rebook passengers on the flight to San Francisco the following day.

Problems with landing gear one time may be bad luck, but two times in a row suggests faulty maintenance procedures. In addition, United did an extremely poor job of getting the passengers to their destinations, telling passengers that a later flight would be arranged for them before asking them to depart the plane, but then telling us nothing was available after we were sent to wander about the terminal. Finally, it seems likely that approximately 50,000 gallons of jet fuel dumped in the air over Beijing by two flights cannot have been particularly good for the already bad air pollution there.

-Submitted by Stephen Schneider

photo credit: lemoncat1