Passengers prayed as pilot yelled 'Brace for impact!'

PASSENGERS on a United States domestic flight forced to land with one wheel still up have told how they cowered and prayed on a tense descent to New York's JFK airport.

The right landing gear was stuck and would not deploy, the pilot told air traffic control, according to a recording captured on the website LiveATC.net, devoted to air traffic controller talk.

"The wing was just scraping along the ground," passenger Carol Otto of Fishkill, New York, said. Video captured by a passenger shows a tensely quiet cabin in the seconds before the words "brace for impact!" came over the loudspeaker.

A flight attendant can be heard yelling "Heads down, stay down!" again and again.

No-one was hurt on Saturday night when Delta Connection Flight 4951 made its emergency landing as it was coming in from Atlanta, Georgia.

Jamie Pfeiffer, of Connecticut, said, "I could feel the vibration, I could feel it bumping" as the right wing scraped the ground. "The pilot was just awesome."

All 60 passengers exited safely through the main door on to the tarmac and were bused to the terminal, said airline spokesman Jarek Beem.

"I've never prayed so hard in my whole life," Loretta Hill, 39, of Connecticut, said. "I was just crying and praying to God that we would be OK.

"The pilots did an excellent job, they kept everybody calm."