LANDING GEAR JAM

The United flight 405 is about to land at LAX airport.
Fifteen minutes before landing, Captain Brice Clark activates the landing gear.
To his shock, there is no response; he cannot get the wheels out to land.
He tries several more times as the plane approaches the airport with no success.
He calls the control tower and informs them of his predicament.
The reaction is swift: You cannot land on your belly;

you have to direct yourself towards the sea and land on water to avoid damage. This is the only solution. Help is on the way.

Luckily the sea is not too far from LAX, so Captain Clark informs his co-pilot to get ready for a landing on water as the landing gear is jammed. He also has to advise the passengers of the technical problem they have encountered since they will soon realize they are on water and he does not want them to panic.
He is now getting close to water but he is so nervous that rather than moving west then returning east to land closer to shore, he starts landing heading west, which means that the plane will finish its run far from shore.

What the Captain does not know is that at the same time, the control tower is bombarded with calls from every other airplane to land at LAX because their landing gear is jammed too. Panic starts as within half an hour 27 planes are finding themselves is this situation. No one knows nor can understand what is happening.

 This time, Control informs pilots to go west then fly back to land closer to shore where help will join them. The added caution is that they should stay in the air until the previous aircraft has safely landed on water before taking their turn.

 

Within minutes the population of Los Angeles is noticing that its sky is covered with airplanes in all directions and wonder what is taking place. A panic on land is starting to grow. People now fear the planes will crash on them. The news takes hold of the story and it is on every station. People on sailboats are quickly asked to evacuate, either quickly head north or south but not come close to shore, though some of the bigger ones will be asked for their help to help evacuate the passengers

The operation of evacuating the passengers by switching them to a small boat that docks near each plane is not an easy one, for soon we are in lack of these boats. Then the operation of releasing the passenger’s luggage comes up.
What does not cross anyone’s mind at this stage is how are we to recuperate the planes to get them out of water and be operational after the landing gear problem is checked.

Interestingly enough, this landing gear jam only affects planes landing at LAX. Other control towers have been called to verify if they are experiencing a similar problem. And it is not the case.

People now are associating this drama to the Motor Bug that took place in July 7 2007.
There is something in the air around Los Angeles and no one can do nothing about it but wait. Unfortunately, this case may be graver as accidents could happen in the landing on water where passengers may be hurt or killed. And that has to be avoided.

The NTSB has never encountered a situation such as this one. Every major engineer from aircraft companies is called to find a way to solve the problem, for by now LAX is rerouting incoming flights to other destinations a bit further thinking that the bug only affects LAX. 
Soon San Diego, San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco are the recipients of rerouted flights and a commotion is amplifying as all these flights are in addition to their already full load of traffic.
Now all of California is in a mess.

So far five of the twenty seven jets have safely landed going west then heading east towards the shore. Some pilots inform the tower that they are running short on fuel and should be given priority to land. Everyone talks at the same time and it becomes hard to understand one another. 
This goes on for nearly ten minutes when American 1220 without getting permission to land heads for the water. Continental 646 does the same thing. The Control Towers is screaming but no one listens. Both planes are too close to one another. Both are eager to land not caring to go west first. They realize that five of their colleagues are already on water and that they should make sure to avoid them.

From below, Air France 101 and KLM 33 notice two planes coming in their direction. There is nothing they can do but watch them getting closer. They yell on their radio to no avail. Within seconds, American scratches the top of Air France before splashing on water very brutally while Continental hits a wing of KLM, tearing it apart tilting that plane on its side.

From above the other twenty jets have seen the tragedy and are imagining themselves facing the same predicament. They all now know to go further north or south on water to avoid a collision, but the only ones to do it are the ones with more fuel. They inform the tower and they get an o.k. providing they respect the order they will get. 

Eight jets are now ready and that seems to be under control. But there are twelve left