Around time 0:30, you first hear “SkyWest 3857” check in. This is how things normally sound, and gives an idea of how much controllers must keep track of. For the first 30 seconds, the approach controller is handling routine traffic in and out. Here are some guides to what you’ll hear, in the 11:45 segment above. The controller says they seem OK, and the plane lands without incident, damage, or injury. Just before landing, the fight crew asks the tower controller to look out the window and confirm that the landing gear (wheels) have come down. It doesn’t necessarily imply that it is on fire, plummeting from the sky, or in other life-or-death peril. “Emergency,” in this sense, is a technical aviation term meaning that a plane gets priority over other traffic, because it needs to get on the ground without delay.

The approach controller registers the emergency and instructs the crew on the series of right turns you see in red, bringing the plane back to Dulles a few minutes after it took off. The crew asks for, and gets, clearance for an “emergency” return to Dulles, because they can’t safely continue the flight. Very soon after takeoff, the flight crew finds a mechanical problem, apparently with the landing gear. It’s normal for planes to be given an indirect course on their immediate routing away from a busy airport. Eventually its path was supposed to converge roughly with the blue line pointing up to the northwest, toward Minnesota.

A commuter airline, “SkyWest 3857,” which passengers would think of as a Delta regional flight, takes off from Dulles, at the bottom point of the red-line pattern.

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