World
John McCain had a hair-raising moment aboard his plane on Tuesday in the final hours of campaigning when his pilot had to abort a landing
Updated : Nov 19, 2013, 11:17 PM IST
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico: John McCain had a hair-raising moment aboard his plane on Tuesday in the final hours of campaigning when his pilot had to abort a landing in New Mexico at the last minute.
As the "Straight Talk Air" campaign plane came in to land at a hilltop airport in Albuquerque on a final campaign stop, the Boeing 737 suddenly pulled up sharply and accelerated around 300 feet (90 metres) from the ground.
It then circled the airport before coming back in to land safely a second time, an reporter on board said.
The pilot explained afterwards that the first landing attempt had been aborted because of traffic on the runway.
Passengers traveling on the plane made light of the incident, laughing and joking as the jet veered upwards to halt its landing. When it eventually landed journalists and staff broke into applause.
Republican candidate McCain, a former Navy pilot, was finishing election day in the city of Phoenix in his home state of Arizona.
His Democratic rival Barack Obama had his own incident on Sunday minutes after his Boeing 757 took off from Cleveland, Ohio.
The pilot strayed too close to another aircraft in violation of safety rules, the Federal Aviation Administration said, and reporters on board felt the campaign plane lurch to the right and descend to expand the gap.
The Democrat had a more serious air scare in July when his previous chartered airliner was forced to make an unscheduled landing after its flight crew detected mechanical problems.
The jet was diverted to St. Louis, midwestern Missouri, during a flight from Chicago to North Carolina after the pilots noticed problems with pitch controls, which keep the aircraft level in flight.
An inspection on the ground revealed that the rear emergency evacuation slide had deployed inside the tail cone during the flight, the National Transportation Safety Board said afterwards.