I was thoroughly unimpressed by this entire affair. I mentioned a similar incident briefly in another post related to airlines in which we were forced to deal with a plane whose landing gear completely failed to deploy and we got no live TV footage complete with talking heads discussing probable courses of action for hours. This airliner's landing gear just deployed crooked and it skidded to a stop. The wheel caught fire because that's what wheels do when they're not rotating and moving at 100+ mph. Whee.

The left rear landing gear on the military-chartered flight completely failed to deploy and totalled the left wing, leaving the plane in such miserable condition that it had to be left on the airstrip until mechanics could jack it up and haul it off.

I think I might just be bitter over my buddies' flight not showing up on the evening news because there were no rich businessmen on the flight, just a pack of scrubby, unshowered soldiers straight out of Baghdad International.

For the record, if any men cried over this they probably had panties on under their trousers.