Plane Had Previous Landing Gear Problem

June 4 - KGO (KGO) -- "We're always training for it. We executed our plan and we feel very good about it." That's the assessment from Oakland International Airport where a plane skidded nose-first down a runway Sunday.

We learned today that the very same plane -- a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 -- had a landing gear problem 13 years ago. But it didn't end anything like this -- a long skid down the main runway in Oakland following the collapse of its nose gear.

The plane has been moved, the runway has re-opened, and an investigation is now underway.

As airliners go, this is what you might call middle-aged. It was delivered in 1991 to Southwest Airlines from Boeing. It did have one other incident with its landing gear in 1994. That, it turns out, was completely unrelated and had to with a problem with a cable at the time.

We now know that landing gear problems in airliners are very unusual.

From a distance, it's just another Southwest Airlines 737 at Oakland Airport. But that wasn't the case yesterday when Flight 3050 from Sacramento to San Diego it diverted and crash landed -- the nose wheel collapsing with 119 passengers and crew on board.

Southwest says the crew noticed problems with the nose gear right after take-off. They diverted to Oakland because the airline has maintenance people here. The giveaway -- three indicator lights on the instrument panel. The one for the nose gear did not go green, nor would the gear lever move into its proper position.

David Mitchell, Retired 737 Captain: "I have seen it. It's not particularly usual, but it's not rare and it's not something to get too concerned about."

David Mitchell spent 31 years flying for United, 15 of them in 737s. If an airliner's landing gear has to go bad, he says let it be the nose wheel every time.

David Mitchell: "A nose gear is really no problem because you don't lose any directional control."

Nose gears don't fail very often in large airliners. The last big one occurred in Los Angeles in September of 2005 aboard a JetBlue Airbus 320 in which the wheels got stuck turned sideways. Big sparks, but no injuries on the landing.

At SFO, the last nose gear failure happened in November of 1980 on a Transworld Airlines Boeing 707.

ABC7 aviation consultant Ron Wilson remembers the incident well.

Ron Wilson, ABC7 Aviation Consultant: "In fact, the airplane landed so straight down the runway, that as the gear folded up inside the nose of the airplane, the nose of the aircraft was flicking off the center line lights."

The airport bought that plane for $10 dollars and used it for training. Later, the airport sold it to a movie company that blew it up.

No such fate in store for the airliner at Oakland Airport. Southwest Airlines plans to repair it and put it back into service. There is no timeframe for that yet.

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