ABC: FAA Tapes Reveal Drama of Obama Jet Incident... Audio Contradicts FAA Account of "No Emergency"

[JackORoses]

EXCLUSIVE: FAA Tapes Reveal Drama of Obama Jet Incident
Audio Contradicts FAA Account of "No Emergency"

By BRIAN ROSS, JOSEPH RHEE, and ERIC LONGABARDI
August 14, 2008

The incident involving Sen. Barack Obama's campaign plane last month was much more serious than the airline or the Federal Aviation Administration said, according to FAA control tower tapes obtained by ABC News. Obama was en route to North Carolina when his plane developed mechanical issues and made an unscheduled, but safe, landing at Lambert International Airport in St. Louis, Mo. Collapse

At the time, an FAA spokesperson said the pilot did not declare an emergency and the airline owner, Midwest Airlines, said safety "was never an issue."

The tapes, to be broadcast tonight on ABC News' World News with Charles Gibson, show otherwise.

Just 41 seconds after discovering he no longer had full control of the plane's up and down movements, the pilot told an FAA air traffic controller "at this time we would like to declare an emergency and also have CFR standing by in St. Louis."

An FAA spokesperson acknowledged today that its statements at the time of "no emergency" were wrong, based, the spokesperson said, on erroneous reports from FAA air traffic managers.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Politics/story?id=5581453&page=1

here's the audio: http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=5580812


We were damn lucky on this one boys and girls.
They actually had lost pitch control for a short time. If they hadn't regained it, they wouldn't have been able to land.

And who was in charge of that inflatable slide?

[zbdent]

1. Bet there's some guy out there going

"Damn ... how did I screw it up?"

[Mme. Defarge]

2. No accident - n/t

[tallahasseedem]

3. Yeah...

"mechanical issues." Anyone ever read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"? I think not.

[mopinko]

9. i read it.

haven't read the new one yet, tho.

and yeah, paul wellstone, and many more.

note to self- need more foil.

[ebdarcy]

4. Scary. It's enough to make a person paranoid.

[barack the house]

5. Flight is still statistically more safer than cars. Control was regained everything fine. -->

If it make sure there are extra checks before flight all the better really.

[Alexander]

7. But people are much likely to survive car crashes than plane crashes...

So those statistics even out.

[cyndensco]

6. My heart sank when the pilot announced Senator Obama was on board

"51 souls."

Once Leno read a newspaper article about a man who threw his tv out his window because he watched his team lose a hockey game. Problem was, he was watching it on tape and had seen the game countless times....Though I knew this audio was from Obama's pilot, it still left a sick feeling.

[Phx_Dem]

8. OMG. Just hearing it makes me

lose it. I shouldn't have listened. :cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry:

[CreekDog]

10. Same type of aircraft with same problem in the Alaska flight 261 crash

back in 2000.

they lost control of the pitch too, in attempting to regain control, that flight surface jammed then ultimately broke off.

scary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261

"The probable cause was stated to be "a loss of airplane pitch control resulting from the in-flight failure of the horizontal stabilizer trim system..."

[ladjf]

11. Flight 261 had a failure of the jack-screw that raised and lowered

the elevator. During the crises, the jack-screw eventually sheered off totally allowing no pitch control. The plane dived into the ocean.

The problem with Obama's plane was less serious but still dangerous. The inflated slide could possibly have shifted position is such a was as to completely disable all pitch control. The results of that would have probably been fatal.

[populistdriven]

13. He is no longer flying MD-80's .... I hope. nt

[AtomicKitten]

12. Too close for comfort and I particularly don't like hearing the news after the fact.