Brace! Brace! Brace!

Scott Burke gets my vote for "coolest guy in the world" award... You may not recognize the name (yet), but he is the pilot that brought in Flight 292 safely last night in Los Angeles.

The JetBlue Airbus A320 suffered a mechanical problem on the front landing gear at lift-off, causing the gear to twist perpindicular to the flight path and then getting stuck in that position. After circling Long Beach airport for 3 hours to burn off fuel (their is a joke among pilots that the only time you can have too much fuel is when there is a fire!) before attempting to set it down.

I'm sure you've all seen the footage now - it's really cool! But Scott Burke put the plane down as if it were landing on fine china, holding the nose gear off the runway as he was killing speed, then letting the nose gear hit in a shower of first rubber, then sparks, then flames - all the while keeping the aircraft on the centerline of the runway.

Of course, he will also probably tell you that it's no big deal - he was just doing what any pilot has trained to do. And every emergency checklist tells you to do what he did. But he still made it look easy! I know a couple of hundred people that will never allow him to pay for his own beer ever again!

The other odd part about last night?

At around 7 local I got a phone call from a coworker. Knowing that I am a pilot, he thought I might want to watch the drama unfold on CNN - this was still a couple of hours before the landing. 4 weeks ago I would have put my book down and starting flipping news channels. But I guess Katrina has changed me. I knew that 98% of the bastards watching were going to be hoping for a disaster. I'm sure Tivo got a workout last night as well. For some reason, I decided that I would hear about the outcome enough today.

What am I becoming?