Saturday, May 20, 2000 Northwest plane in emergency landing

A Northwest Airlines flight with 356 people on board turned back to Chek Lap Kok and made an emergency landing after a warning signal sounded in the cockpit. The alarm was raised on Thursday morning, about half an hour after the Boeing 747 took off bound for New York via Tokyo. After checks on the aircraft, the plane took off again at about 3pm.

A spokeswoman for the US-based airline said the warning signal sounded because it was not functioning correctly. "The pilot couldn't stop it ringing and it was so annoying he had to turn back," she said.

The signal was the plane's take-off warning, designed to sound before the plane leaves the ground if not all the instruments are set correctly. It performs no function mid-flight, the spokeswoman said.

The incident was the airport's second emergency landing in a few hours. An Indonesia-based cargo freighter with four crew reported trouble as it approached Hong Kong at about 3am on Thursday. The DC-8 had a problem with its hydraulics system.

http://www.scmp.com/News/HongKong/Article/FullText_asp_ArticleID-20000520021147044.asp

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 20, 2000