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ONA stories by Al Quack
My ONA and Other
Aviation Experiences
by Al Quack
Al in ONA uniform 1966
Cockpit of ONA N864 DC-8-63
ONA DC-8-55F Contender at Travis AFB
Contender
Air Siam Flt Hawaii July 1971
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ATLANTA EMERGENCY LANDING
Al Quack tells about his experiences
flying as a flight engineer for ONA.
Warner Robins AFB
I remember one trip out of Warner Robins AFB
just south of Atlanta on Take-off, after V1
we heard all kinds of loud noises coming from
the nose wheel well till just after airborne.
The pilots were going to retract the gear at
the normal time, when I said wait a minute you
don’t know what kind of damage we have and you
may not get the gear down and locked again.
This was when Eastern still had Electra’s in
service and I suggested to the Captain to fly
the aircraft at gear down max speed to Atlanta
(they have long runway there) and make an
Emergency landing and then let Eastern fix it.
The Captain agreed and he made a perfect landing
holding the nose gear off as long as he could,
not knowing whether we had flat nose tire(s).
On post flight inspection we found both nose tire
recaps gone (both tires stayed inflated), both
nose wheel taxi lights smashed, nose wheel
steering cables damaged and minor damage to nose
wheel doors.
We all went to the hotel and Eastern called us
when they had our aircraft repaired. It was about
this time I heard the whole Electra operation and
crews were going to be moved to Tinker AFB in
Oklahoma very soon.
Also about this same time ONA came out with a DC-8
Crew Bid for which I had been waiting and it
couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I sure
didn’t want to fly out of Oklahoma while having our
home in Massachusetts.
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