I knew that having an office with a great view of the LAX runways would bring its share of exciting moments :

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/21/airliner.emergency.ap/index.html

I saw the whole thing unfold from the comfort of my own desk. There was an unusual amount of police and fire activity near the airport this afternoon. We noticed a large number of helicopters hovering the area, and fire engines spreading all along the runway in preparation for what we quickly discovered would be the emergency landing of a JetBlue jet. This particular runway, usually very busy during the day, was almost completely closed, with only a few flights landing and no planes taking off / taxiing.

When the JetBlue flight finally arrived, sometime past 6pm, we saw it land very carefully on the runway. It ended up running almost to the end of the runway, and a great amount of smoke followed by some brief flames accompanied it to its final stop. Fortunately nothing bad happened. The pilot did a great job rescuing the passengers, who I am sure only got the scare of their lives. It was quite impressive to see the security apparatus deployed at LAX though.

I had my camera nearby so I was able to capture some of the action on video. :)