LOT Polish Airlines 767 Touches Down With No Landing Gear At Warsaw

A Boeing 767 from Polish carrier LOT airlines enroute from Newark International made an emergency landing at Warsaw's Chopin International Airport on Tuesday with the landing gear stuck.

WARSAW, Poland – A Boeing airliner carrying 231 people from the U.S. landed on its belly Tuesday in Warsaw after its landing gear failed to open, triggering sparks and small fires. No one was hurt, but passengers described feeling severe stress as they prayed for a safe landing.

Capt. Tadeusz Wrona, who handled the descent so smoothly that many on board thought the Boeing 767 landed on its wheels, was instantly hailed a hero in Poland and online, where within hours he was the focus of several Facebook fan pages

"I was praying for the pilot not to lose control because we started to make circles over the airport. It was terrible," passenger Teresa Kowalik told reporters at the airport. "We owe everything to the pilot. He really did a great job."

LOT said the plane suffered "a central hydraulic system failure," indicating that the hydraulics used to extend the landing gear, or undercarriage, failed. The failure of an entire undercarriage was unprecedented for a Boeing 767 and highly unusual overall, according to aviation data and experts.

The pilots discovered there was a problem about half an hour after leaving Newark, said LOT president Marcin Pirog. They circled the plane above the airport for about one hour before descending, partly to keep trying to release the landing gear, and partly to use up fuel to lessen the risk of a blaze.

The pilot told passengers four hours into the flight that the plane faced technical problems, said a passenger who gave only her first name, Malgorzata.

"The pilot addressed us a number of times and said we should follow instructions. Later, a flight attendant said there might be a fire, and at that point people began to get nervous and uncertain," she said.

By the time the plane landed, escorted by two F-16 fighter jets, its fuel tanks were nearly empty, LOT spokesman Leszek Chorzewski said.

A fire brigade laid out special flame retardant foam for the plane to land on. On landing, sparks flew from the engine and small fires erupted under the plane but were immediately put out by firefighters.

The landing itself was so smooth that "we all thought we had landed on wheels," said Andrzej Pinno, a 68-year-old passenger.

Passengers even applauded, but then grew alarmed when sparks and black smoke rose from the plane. "This is the moment where we realized this was not a normal landing," added Pinno.

Passengers were then evacuated using emergency slides. They were taken to a medical center where they were kept several hours before being released.

"We were waiting for a crash, and we waited and waited and waited -- and thank God it never happened," said Greg Cohen, a passenger from Livingston, New Jersey. "It was a very lucky flight, a very, very great pilot. We are very fortunate."

Relatives of passengers waiting at the airport sought information as the emergency unfolded.

Joanna Dabrowska, 29, managed to speak to her mother-in-law, a passenger, via mobile phone after she evacuated the flight. "She was in shock, but she was fine," Dabrowska said.

Meanwhile, Polish officials and media declared the pilots and crew heroes. LOT said there were 11 crew and 220 passengers on the LO 016 flight.

LOT airlines president, Pirog, told reporters that Wrona and co-pilot Jerzy Szwartz carried out a "perfect emergency landing," which prevented anyone from being injured. "Unfortunately it rarely ends this way," Pirog said.

Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski congratulated and thanked the crew and emergency workers for ensuring no one was hurt.

"I thank everyone with my whole heart in the name of Poland," Komorowski said.

Within hours, at least six Facebook fanpages devoted to Capt. Wrona had appeared. On Twitter, admiration was profuse. One Tweeter insisted, "Give that pilot a medal!" Others drew comparisons to Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who became a national hero in the U.S. when he landed a crippled US Airways jet in the Hudson River and saved 155 lives.

Warsaw's Chopin International Airport was shut down overnight due to the plane coming to a rest near a spot where both of the main runways intersect. Flights are being rerouted to the airports at Lodz, Gdansk and Krakow while officials and rescue workers are clearing the runways in Warsaw.

Poland had experienced a number of aviation disasters in recent years, the most recent of which was the April 2010 crash in Smolensk, Russia that killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others on board.

Scam Within a Scam- Hackers Hit EU Carbon Credit Exchange, Steal €30 Million in Carbon Credits

Trading on the European Union Carbon Exchange was halted after hackers made off with an estimated €30 million in carbon emission allowances from five European countries in late January.

The Czech Registry for Emissions Trading was one of the worst affected by the hack, losing 7 million euros worth of the pollution permits, known as EU Allowances (EUAs).

Some 2 million EUAs were stolen by hackers from Austria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Estonia and Poland within a few days. Each credit allows the bearer one ton of emissions and is worth 14 euros.

EU authorities say they suspect a phishing scam enabled hackers to log into unsuspecting companies' carbon credit accounts and transfer the allowances to themselves, allowing them to be sold on.

The credits are normally traded between companies that have a shortage of or excess emissions allowances for their current operations, and involve instant payment, meaning hackers can create accounts and then delete them as soon as they are paid.

Investigators in Greece have traced the thefts to at least 8 internet protocol addresses in Romania. Registry officials in Estonia and Germany say they have located some 610,000 allowances stolen from the Czech registry, but the theft not only highlights a lack of security on the international exchanges, but also raises concerns that credits purchased in good faith on the open market could turn out to be stolen from the registries.

Some of the markets reopened with limited activity on Feb 3rd after giving "reasonable reassurances that the minimum security requirements are in place".

It is not the first time the ETS has suffered a security breach. The system was hit by a phishing scam last year that saw 13 European markets shut down, while a cross-border fraud scam in 2008 and 2009 netted criminals 5 million euros, according to Agence France-Presse.

I could go on about how such 'cap and trade' or climate or carbon Exchanges are pretty much worse than useless, but they do a bang up job of explaining that all by themselves- however unintentionally. Hell, Chicago's much-ballyhooed Climate Exchange shut down at the end of 2010.

Leaving aside the fact that such a system would arbitrarily place limits on output from manufacturing, transportation, utilities and energy exploration, how exactly would these trading mechanisms be enforced? It would require a massive bureaucracy and even more red tape- think along the lines of 0bamacare's 1099 mandate, only for air instead of healthcare.

All while obstructing further exploration and drilling for oil in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, coal in West Virginia or natural gas in the Marcellus shale. This in turn has already driven up energy costs and will only further America's dependence on energy imported from unstable or belligerent nations.

And if anybody think the above problems will magically go away thanks to some sort arbitrary imposition of cap and trade of carbon exchange scheme, I have a bridge in Brooklyn couple of EU carbon credits to sell you.

Pole-ing the Electorate- Campaign Posters of Bikini Clad Candidate Make Appearence in Warsaw in 1st Of It's Kind Campaign

Municipal elections in Poland's capital have never been so hawt!

Some political news out of Poland that, mercifully, doesn't involve the President of Poland and his cabinet dying in a horrific plane crash. That's right- just because most of the elections are over and done with in the USA doesn't mean there are others that we should be paying attention to.

While it's not that unusual for pop stars or beauty queens elsewhere in the world to run for office (Venezuela pops to mind right away), the campaign for a seat on a district council in Warsaw is the first of it's kind for Poland.

WARSAW - A Polish singer and tabloid celebrity has put up posters of herself stretched out on the sand in a provocative bikini as part of her campaign to win a Warsaw district council seat in municipal elections on Nov. 21.

Several of the posters — http://www.saramay.pl/blog.html — are to be seen around Warsaw’s Bemowo district bearing Sara May’s slogan: “Beautiful, independent, competent.”

“The deeds count, not the words, so I will not promise anything. I live in Bemowo in Warsaw,” May, whose real name is Katarzyna Szczolek, wrote on her English language website, adding that she would try to make the city a better place to live in.

Internet users who posted their comments below May’s poster on various websites were not interested in her political views, preferring extensive discussion of the extent to which her photograph had been digitally enhanced.

I am by no means the first blogger to post the story of Katarzyna Szczolek and her bid for the municipal seat, so the image of her campaign poster has been pretty widely circulated.

So I took the liberty of posting some other images from Katarzyna Szczolek/Sara May's portfolio so visitors can get a better idea of how she looks in a wet sari her qualifications for office.

I'll let you be the judge.

[Hat tip: Jammie Wearing Fool; Support Your Local Gunfighter]