JetBlue Drama 'Surreal'

(CBS/AP)  The airliner circled Southern California for hours, crippled by a faulty landing gear, while inside its cabin 140 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 (video)

Wednesday evening in a stream of sparks and burning tires. No one was hurt.

Federal authorities, the airline and the plane manufacturer launched investigations.

Varma, 23, and other passengers said the plane's monitors carried live DirectTV broadcasts on the plane's problems until just a few minutes before landing at Los Angeles International Airport.

The landing gear trouble — the front wheels were stuck in a sideways position — was discovered almost immediately after the plane departed Bob Hope Airport in Burbank at 3:17 p.m., en route to New York City.

The Airbus A320 circled the Long Beach Airport, about 30 miles south of Burbank, before being cleared to land at Los Angeles. It stayed in flight for three hours to burn off fuel, said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Donn Walker.

CBS News correspondent Jerry Bowen reports that as dramatic as the three hour odyssey was, its cause may have been a simple maintenance mistake, according to aviation experts.

If so, it is not the first time it has happened on the Airbus 320, reports Bowen: Since 1999, there have been at least six similar incidents -- four in the United States, including another JetBlue plane.

Zachary Mastoon of New York said it was "surreal" (video)

to watch his plane's fate being discussed on live TV while it was in the air. At one point, he said, he tried to call his family, but his cell phone call wouldn't go through.

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