White-knuckle jet landing attempt in Germany

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-03-04 09:56pm

Seriously, you have to see this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxDVq2gG ... re=related

Text article about the event:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/03 ... cnnSTCText

Darksider · Post by **Darksider** » 2008-03-04 09:59pm

Holy fuck.
What was the wind speed of that storm?

I wonder why they didn't cancel or re-direct the flight.

The Vortex Empire · Post by **The Vortex Empire** » 2008-03-04 09:59pm

Holy shit! The planes wings touched the ground. Those passengers are incredibly lucky.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2008-03-04 10:03pm

That isn't "White Knuckle", that's "Brown Underwear".

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2008-03-04 10:09pm

Frank Hipper wrote:That isn't "White Knuckle", that's "Brown Underwear".

"Ah, folks, first landing didn't go so well, so we're going to try again."

3 cheers to the skill of the pilots and to good engineering. That plane is already back in service!

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-03-04 10:30pm

Can you imagine being a passenger on that plane and experiencing that?

The Vortex Empire · Post by **The Vortex Empire** » 2008-03-04 10:31pm

Darth Wong wrote:Can you imagine being a passenger on that plane and experiencing that?

I'd need new pants?

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2008-03-04 10:37pm

Darth Wong wrote:Can you imagine being a passenger on that plane and experiencing that?

I saw a story about this on BBC the other night and one of the English-speaking passengers said that everyone on the plane went "silent" at some point. Perhaps it was after the plane was finally down safely, because I can't imagine silence while the thing was bucking around like that!

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2008-03-04 10:57pm

I'm not pilot, so I may be misjudging, but I think what I'm seeing is a plane going totally out of control due to brutal wind gusts. Which would mean the pilot needs to be commended for bringing that thing back into control, even if he did so just barely. That's one of those moments where the guy in control loses his cool for even an instant and everyone dies.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2008-03-04 11:23pm

The pilot was very skilled, I agree, but what was he thinking making the attempt in wind like that? You could see the plane getting shoved around laterally at the start of the video. He should have known better than to get that close to the ground before aborting.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2008-03-04 11:30pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:The pilot was very skilled, I agree, but what was he thinking making the attempt in wind like that? You could see the plane getting shoved around laterally at the start of the video. He should have known better than to get that close to the ground before aborting.

I suspect Broomstick or one of the other pilots here will be contributing to this thread soon enough, but there can be sudden wind shear effects or "microbursts" happen suddenly, if that is what happened here. There are ways to detect these sorts of events, at least to give some warning, but I don't know the details and will leave it to the experts.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2008-03-04 11:36pm

It's the runway, from what I've gathered. It's laid out at an angle perpendicular to the prevailing wind currents of the area. Upon landing the captain successfully convinced the airport officials to stop using that runway.

As for the passengers, one interviewed on CNN said that the biggest shock was a glimpse of the pilot's face after landing. I don't doubt it.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2008-03-04 11:41pm

Darth Raptor wrote:As for the passengers, one interviewed on CNN said that the biggest shock was a glimpse of the pilot's face after landing. I don't doubt it.

Neither do I. Unlike everyone else, the pilot has the lives of every single passenger on crew on that airplane on his shoulders. Not only that, he is probably the most aware of just how close it was.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2008-03-05 12:14am

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:The pilot was very skilled, I agree, but what was he thinking making the attempt in wind like that? You could see the plane getting shoved around laterally at the start of the video. He should have known better than to get that close to the ground before aborting.

Are there other airports in the vicinity which are less windy and he has enough fuel to reach?

D.Turtle · Post by **D.Turtle** » 2008-03-05 12:20am

There is another runway on the same airport that didn't have such strong crosswinds. The big question right now is why the airport waited so long before shutting down this runway (it was obviously immediately closed after this incident).

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2008-03-05 02:13am

FSTargetDrone wrote:I suspect Broomstick or one of the other pilots here will be contributing to this thread soon enough, but there can be sudden wind shear effects or "microbursts" happen suddenly, if that is what happened here. There are ways to detect these sorts of events, at least to give some warning, but I don't know the details and will leave it to the experts.

*disclaimer: I am not a pilot yet*

There are wind effects like that, but it looks like this was just a simple (if strong) crosswind. You can see he's getting blown around quite a bit well short of the runway. As he comes overhead, you can see he's got a pretty steep yaw to keep the plane's flight path even remotely aligned with the runway.

I don't know exactly what the point of no return is on a plane like that, but the pilot should've aborted the landing and tried a better runway. Unless he was just too low to go to full power and climb out of it, that was an incredibly dangerous approach. The wind gusts were moving the plane around enough to make a really hard landing and/or crash if one hit at the wrong time. There's just no reason to force an approach like that, especially when there's a better runway available at the same airport.

So in my (very inexperienced) opinion, that wasn't skill, that was reckless stupidity and a lot of luck. A bit less luck here, and we'd be reading about a crash with no survivors.

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2008-03-05 02:17am

I suspect Broomstick or one of the other pilots here will be contributing to this thread soon enough, but there can be sudden wind shear effects or "microbursts" happen suddenly, if that is what happened here. There are ways to detect these sorts of events, at least to give some warning, but I don't know the details and will leave it to the experts.

It was just a strong crosswind I think, windsheer would have caused a stall or sudden loss of altitude, and a microburst would have shoved it down into the ground or caused a sudden gain in lift (both extremely dangerous). Though I'm sure broomstick will be along soon to tell both of us we are idiots

Korvan · Post by **Korvan** » 2008-03-05 02:18am

Darth Raptor wrote:It's the runway, from what I've gathered. It's laid out at an angle perpendicular to the prevailing wind currents of the area. Upon landing the captain successfully convinced the airport officials to stop using that runway.

As for the passengers, one interviewed on CNN said that the biggest shock was a glimpse of the pilot's face after landing. I don't doubt it.

I was a passenger in an Air China 747 that had some trouble with a landing back in 1988. It wasn't near as bad as this one, but the wings were waggling quite badly and I saw one come to within a few feet of the ground. The pilot had to be helped off the plane by two attendants, he was as white as a ghost and shaking quite badly.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2008-03-05 02:21am

Resinence wrote:It was just a strong crosswind I think, windsheer would have caused a stall or sudden loss of altitude, and a microburst would have shoved it down into the ground or caused a sudden gain in lift (both extremely dangerous). Though I'm sure broomstick will be along soon to tell both of us we are idiots

Like I said, experts. It was just the first thing that came to mind, the wind shear thing, after a 6.7 second research time on Google.

Spin Echo · Post by **Spin Echo** » 2008-03-05 02:32am

Looks like there was a fair bit of cross wind (you can see the nose was pointed pretty far right despite the plane going mostly straight forward) and there was a strong gust of wind at the wrong time. Overall, the plane's approach was more stable (less rocking back and forth) than what I often would see coming in to land at Wellington. It wasn't until the very end where it suddenly rocks to the side and hits its wing that the planes does anything I'd be concerned about.

The problem with gust of winds is that they can often do unexpected things. There was a cessna that got flipped over at Welly due to a wind gust while it was taxiing on a day where the wind was only doing 20-25 knots.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2008-03-05 02:41am

Spin Echo wrote:Looks like there was a fair bit of cross wind (you can see the nose was pointed pretty far right despite the plane going mostly straight forward) and there was a strong gust of wind at the wrong time. Overall, the plane's approach was more stable (less rocking back and forth) than what I often would see coming in to land at Wellington. It wasn't until the very end where it suddenly rocks to the side and hits its wing that the planes does anything I'd be concerned about.

We must have been watching different videos. I saw the plane make huge lateral movements near the beginning of the video, well before it got dangerously close to the ground. The pilot should have aborted the attempt right there.

Spin Echo · Post by **Spin Echo** » 2008-03-05 02:48am

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:We must have been watching different videos. I saw the plane make huge lateral movements near the beginning of the video, well before it got dangerously close to the ground. The pilot should have aborted the attempt right there.

By the huge lateral movements, do you mean the little bit of rocking going on at about 20s in the video of the OP? Looking at it closer, it looks like they didn't straighten out before the landed, so there may be have been a bit of unexpected sink.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-03-05 02:49am

Just to point something out. If I heard him right, the german holding the camera said something that roughly translates to "That made me 'brown in my pants' " which I suppose is an idiomatic expression...

As for the wind... that plane was moving laterally from the start, I am with the Tuxedo

lukexcom · Post by **lukexcom** » 2008-03-05 02:49am

It's very late at night here, but here's what I saw when looking at the video.

It looked like a fairly steady crosswind, with the plane correctly crabbed into the wind. After the camera pans over to the runway view, it seems to me that the crosswind died down for a split second, then picked back up again. (Speculation: perhaps the pilot flying was deceived by this slight change in crosswind strength). According to the article, the pilot stated that a gust picked up the wing. If this occurs as you're straightening the crab, things can get very hairy.

But these incidents have happened before. It can happen when you approach a runway not facing into the wind, and there are strong, gusty crosswinds reported. Sometimes the design of the airport forces you to do this if you want to land there. The now-closed Kai-Tak airport (single runway) in Hong Kong is infamous for this.

Googling "747 crosswind hong kong" will get you plenty of videos where similar things have happened. Almost all of these videos were taken from Beacon Hill, which marks the turn for final approach that aircraft used for that end of the runway.

lukexcom · Post by **lukexcom** » 2008-03-05 02:56am

After viewing it again a few more times, it *looks* like he may have straightened out a split-second too late, but it wouldn't be that bad were it not for the gust that lifted up the right wing.

At that point, you don't care about keeping the thing on the ground; keeping control of the plane is paramount. Stabilize the plane, firewall the throttles, and abort the landing. Then follow through the aborted landing checklist, and whatever else their emergency procedures demand them to do.