TV terror: passengers watched plane drama unfold

THE airliner circled Southern California for hours, crippled by a faulty landing gear, while, inside its cabin, 140 horrified passengers watched their own life-and-death drama unfolding on live television.

While satellite TV sets aboard JetBlue Flight 292 were tuned to news broadcasts, some passengers cried. Others tried to telephone relatives and one woman sent a text message to her mother in Florida attempting to comfort her in the event she died.

"It was very weird. It would've been so much calmer without the televisions," Pia Varma of Los Angeles said after the plane skidded to a safe landing on Wednesday evening in a stream of sparks and burning tires. No one was hurt.