The Nome Nugget

44 Passengers in Crippled Airliner
Have Tense Moments Before Landing

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) – A young mother prayed, using the words of the Christmas carol "Silent Night," and a male passenger worked a crossword puzzle, but "wondered if it was worth finishing."

That was the reaction of two of the 44 passengers aboard Capital Airlines flight 77 which landed here Friday night on a blanket of firefighting foam spread over a runway.

The four-engined, turbo-jet powered craft made the emergency landing after circling the Charlotte airfield for two hours as the pilot attempted to remedy a defective landing gear and burn up the highly flammable fuel.

Meanwhile, on the field below the overcast, murky skies, ground crews worked hastily to spread a soapy foam blanket over half of the runway.

Flight 77, a New York to Birmingham and Mobile, Ala., run, was scheduled to stop in Charlotte for fueling. When the pilot, Capt.
H. A. (Corky) Corcoran of Alexandria, Va., started to set the craft down he discovered there was too much hydraulic pressure on the cylinder of his right wheel.

Corcoran, a veteran of 16 years with Capital, began to circle the field. He and stewardess Eve Madsen, 25, of Atlantic Highlands, N.J., and Helen Nagy, 23, of Chicago, told the passengers the trouble and kept them informed of developments.

Mrs. Faye Layne of New York, a passenger, said she decided to pray silently.

"All I could think of," she recalled, "was 'Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright'."

Her son, Hayden, 7, slept thru the episode.

Capt. Corcoran set the Viscount down with the defective right wheel sliding on the foam while the left and nose wheels ran on the concrete runway. It was his first experience with such a landing but he "slid in as smooth as ever."