First, the pilots and jetBlue maintainance made the decision to land the aircraft. Plain and simple. I really doubt they gave a damn about any sort of law suit. Second, the gear would not retract, that is how they noticed the problem in the first place, so flying to JFK would not only be unsafe, but also impossible at the rate of fuel burn expected, especially considering they already have to weight restrict out of BUR. As far as aviation firms go, are they only sharks if they defend the airlines or just victims? What if maintainance negligence is found to be the problem? Safety is most definately part of the contract of carriage, so if people are put in danger, it is a breach of contract as well as a potential tort. What many people (notably you) don't understand is that in many cases, in order to preserve your rights, you have to file suit early to satisfy the timeliness requirements. That also extends to manufacturers, where they may need to be joined early in order to do discovery as to whether or not it was a defect or it was negligent maintainance. Non-lawyers don't understand how the law works, but far too often make assumptions based on propaganda they have rammed down their throats by insurance companies. Here is something you probably don't know. Malpractice suits actually drove premiums down and health care quality up for years simply because doctors took that much extra care in taking care of patients. When insurance companies decided to look for a way to justify massive premium hikes, they blamed law suits. Problem is, malpractice suits had declined, along with the amount awarded, in that time. As far as 70% of the cost of a Cessna being related to the cost of litigation, perhaps that is because Cessna had to actually put some safety into the aircraft. I am sure that of the $300-$400 thousand dollars one pays for a Cirrus SR-22, lots of that has to do with the safety parachute and roll cage. So, lawyers are doing a bad thing? The reason the aircraft went to LAX is multi-fold. First, if it went off the end of the runway, it would cause far less damage to any surrounding area as the end of 25L is a beach. Second, LAX would not have traffic severly affected, because it still had 3 runways to work with while they had to close 25L, while LGB's only long runway would have been closed and flights, especially jetBlue's flights, would be severly effected by having only 6000 feet of runway. Beyond this, there is that much more emergency equipment at LAX than at LGB because it is one of the busiest airports in the world, as opposed to one with very limited service. Finally, LAX has a major A320 operator hubbed at the airport with big MX hangars on site. The aircraft can just be towed over to United and checked out there for damage and have parts replaced rather quickly. Your attack on lawyers is completely uncalled for and an insult to the thousands who work everyday to protect and preserve the rights you seem not to care about In a message dated 9/22/2005 3:39:01 AM Eastern Daylight Time, damiross3@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: Did you interview the pilots to determine that they didn't continue with the flight so they could "have a controlled situation in which to land..."? JFK is JetBlue's main base where they do maintenance. Unless the gear would not retract - which the news casts I've seen haven't mentioned - the aircraft could have made it to JFK. What do you call a lawyer in a firm that specializes in aviation that sues an airline before the facts of the incident/accident are in? What do you call a lawyer in a firm that specializes in aviation that sues an aircraft manufacturer because its plane was not maintained properly (in other words, there was no defect in the airplane cause by the manufacturer. Did you know that a large part of the cost of purchasing is due to suit-happy lawyers? At one time, 70 (seventy!) percent of the cost of a Cessna light aircraft was due to possible liability caused by lawyers. >From my view here on my high horse, I still say one of the reasons that the aircraft went to LAX was due to lawyers. Alireza, based on your previous e-mails and this one I should have known that you were pursuing a career in an industry that is rated very high on the list of professions that most people hate.