http://flash.oregonlive.com/cgi-bin/or_nview.pl?/home1/wire/AP/Stream-Parsed/OREGON_NEWS/o1958_PM_Norway-BraathensLandi Two Norwegian 737s make emergency landings with identical problem

The Associated Press 01/11/00 9:28 AM Eastern

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Two Boeing 737-500s made almost simultaneous emergency landings in two countries when their cockpit indicators gave virtual identical faulty readings, Braathens airline officials said today.

"It is just unbelievable. It happens that we get such indicator lights in the cockpit, but two in the same evening within half an hour of each other is unbelievable," Braathens spokeswoman Anne Grete Ellingsen said by telephone.

No injuries were reported in either landing.

One of the planes, with 45 passengers aboard, returned to the Oslo Airport Gardermoen when a cockpit instrument indicated that a landing wheels had not locked into position. After it landed successfully at 8:05 p.m.Monday, technicians found a wheel sensor had been incorrectly adjusted.

The other made an emergency landing with the same problem at 8:30 p.m. at Arlanda Airport near Stockholm, Sweden, on a flight from Oslo, and technicians found the same fault.

A third Braathens 737-500 experienced the same problem later Monday after it had landed and parked, the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet said.

"It was the sensors in the landing systems. There were two prongs that were a little too far apart," resulting in an incorrect signal, Ellingsen said.

She said the problems were due to physical adjustments.

-- LSRY2K (admin@lsry2k.net), January 11, 2000

Answers

Someone who was doing maintenance was setting those things wrong. Bet you find they either were worked on by the same maaintenance group, or the documentation that was used had a mistake in it.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), January 22, 2000.