United jet makes emergency landing

By By William F. West / community editor
March 5, 2003
A United Airlines Boeing 757 made an emergency landing today at Meridian Regional Airport after reports of a possible fire in a wheel well of the plane.
Tom Williams, Meridian Airport Authority president, said the jet, with more than 90 passengers on board, landed at about 7:45 a.m.
Wheel wells are the area where a plane's wheels go up into the wing. When cockpit instruments indicate a fire, the standard procedure is to land at the nearest airport, which the pilots did.
An Air National Guard air crash crew came to the scene, inspected the plane and saw no evidence of a fire.
Williams said the passengers will probably be picked up by another plane later in the day.
United Airlines Flight 275 from Orlando to San Francisco was the second plane to make an emergency landing at the Meridian airport within the past year.
The first was a U.S. Airways 737, which had a broken windscreen and had to land about a year ago. Williams is coordinating with United Airlines on what to do next.
The passengers exited the plane at about 8:15 a.m. Al Campa of San Francisco, president and chief executive officer of Panscopic, a computer software company, was one of the passengers.
Campa, 41, said they were flying along when the captain began to descend over Mississippi and advised them of the emergency landing in Meridian.
He noted the fog and could not see the runway until just before touchdown.