White-knuckle jet landing attempt in Germany

[Broomstick]

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

Indeed. It's called a "brown alert", which is a step up from "red alert".

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

Yes. Have experienced some hair-raising cross-wind landings as both passenger and pilot, although I've yet to scrape a wing on the ground.

There's worse than that possible, though fortunately such things are very rare.

I'd need new pants?

Either that, or surgical removal of the seat cushion if your rectum has a panic-seizure as opposed to passing out and going limp.

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.

Did I hear my name?

There are devices to detect things such as low-level windshear, and the more we know about weather the better able we are to predict such things as microbursts, but none of these systems is foolproof. This is why even early training teaches how to deal with sudden wind changes and potential crosswind emergencies. It's also why airplanes are supposed to arrive at their destination with sufficient fuel to make it to an alternate, in case they can't land at the intended place for whatever reason, including high winds.

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.

I think there's a bit of poor judgement here, true, however, in bad weather (and I understand there was storm in the vicinity) conditions can change extremely rapidily, between one airplane landing and the next. Conditions were apparently marginal at best, which descrease the margin of error.

I'm not a jet pilot, but I believe Wicked is - my information is that jet engines do not move from low to high power as rapidly as piston engines.- combined with the inertia of such a large mass as an airliner, it can be very difficult to change direction quickly. An airliner is not as maneuverable as a smaller airplane. There is a noticable lag between going to full power and turning a descent into a climb.

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

Windshear is used as a boogey-man by the media, but all it means is two different air masses are moving in two different directions. This is actually a common occurance - but usually not a violent one. As an example, winds on the ground might be blowing at a compass heading of 200 degrees and several hundred meters above the ground at a heading of 240 - the transition may be gradual, or it may be abrupt. If the winds are moving at similar speeds there is windshear, but not enough to cause a violent effect. Even in the cockpit you might not notice more than a need for a minor course correction. And then there is windshear of the sort that destroys aircraft - it's a spectrum from mild to horrible. By the way - windshear can be on any plane from horizontal to vertical - it can throw you up, down, or to either side.

Gusty conditions and/or turbulence always (in my experience) has a degree of windshear involved, but again, it's usually not severe and is easily handled.. What you're looking at in the video is unquestionably an extreme condition.

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.

I don't know if this is common with pilots of large aircraft, though it wouldn't surprise me - on final, pilots of my sort will often move all the controls more than strictly necessary for compensating for wind both to make sure that all controls are working properly, but also because the way the airplane reacts can give information about local conditions and how the machine is reacting. That may or may not be what you're seeing at that point in the approach. Or it could have been difficulty in managing the approach - I can't tell from looking at it. It could even be some of both.

In theory, the pilot has the right to refuse to land on a runway and to request a different one (assuming there is another one at the airport). Personally, I wouldn't hesistate to do so, or even go to another airport. However, in the US we have many, many more airports than any similar sized location in Europe, making diversion easier. Also, ATC in Europe is different - my information is that pilots are typically charged every single time the wheels touch pavement, whether a full-stop landing or not, and possibly for things such as each approach, go-around, whatever - in the US, even at a place like O'Hare, the landing fee is just for an actual landing, not for an approach. These fees are triple or even four-digit sums whether you're talking dollars, pounds, or euros. I prefer to believe that financial factors were not at play here, but I'd be a fool not to at least consider the option. Airlines don't like to their pilots to do go-arounds, because even without fees that's fuel that has to be burned and fuel is money. A lot of money. Of course, airlines like it even less when the airplane crash, which is why they put up with go-arounds - even at thousands of dollar/pounds/euros they're still cheaper than a crash.

So yeah, between schedules and money pilots are definitely under pressure to land it quickly and to it the first approach. Even at my level of aviation you get this pressure. With the airlines it's orders of magnitude worse.

Damn, never knew planes could fly sideways.

Yep, they can! Sometimes we do it delibrately, for fun (but not too close to the ground)

I've been reading a pilots forum and the crosswind was 48 knots! The pilot really should have been using his superior judgement to avoid having to use his superior skills and requested another runway.

See, that bothered me a great deal - here in the Chicago area, which is noted for wind activity, even the big airports shut down around 45 knots of wind, crosswind or no. For the metric types, 45 knots is 83 kph and 48 knots is 89 kph. It is certainly possible to fly in higher winds (I know a couple pilots who landed a Piper Cherokee, a small four-seater, in a 55 knot/102 kph headwind - yes, another "brown" experience I was happy not to be a part of) but the risk goes up considerably.

The pilot made a very basic error, he didn't keep his crosswind correction in throughout the landing roll. Instead it appears he removed it right after the main landing gear touched down. Just because you have contact with the surface it doesn't mean you don't need to still 'fly the airplane'. On most days doing that sort of fuckup just means you roll down the runway leaning slightly, with this sort of wind it means a wingtip striking the pavement.

Instead of being called 'hero', the pilot should instead be refered to as 'first officer' for a few weeks.

I have to agree with Wicked - although the pilot made a good recovery there was some bad judgement here. If the wind is 48 knots and the runway is perpendicular to the wind ask for another runway BEFORE attempting to land. And for Og's sake, don't screw up the touchdown!

It was beat into my head from day one if the airplane is moving at all consider it flying. Think about driving your car down the road on a day with strong, gusty winds - you can feel the effects on the vehicle, some rocking back and forth, headwind/tailwind. This effect is MUCH greater in an airplane. Wind gusts can, and have, flipped over airplanes taxiing at low speed. Back in the 1990's in my area a business jet was flipped over on take-off due to a gust of wind - actually, conditions not too disimilar from what is seen in the linked video. Except that in that case the wingtip dug in, the airplane cartwheeled, and everybody died. Maybe that's what bothered me most about that video - I've seen the aftereffects of what happens when an airplane wing digs in at those speeds in real life.

And we can reasonably assume the crosswinds where within the aircraft's operating limits or dispatch would have sent the jet somewhere else.

I can't say I know the crosswind limitations personally, but the pilots over on PPRuNe say the A320 has a crosswind limit of 33 gusting 38 knots. The METAR at the time put the crosswind components at 31 gusting 48 knots. So technically underlimit... if you don't get a gust of wind.

I don't know how the airlines make their rules, but when I'm planning to land I use the upper gust limit, not the speed without the gust. You can't count on the elements cooperating and playing nice while you're landing.

I will also mention that many airplanes CAN handle a crosswind component above the demonstrated crosswind component (that figure means a trained test pilot in a new airplane managed that degree of crosswind without a crash - it's up to the manufacturer if they want to push the limit during testing or not). However, that's not fun, not at all, would probably scare the shit out of a non-pilot (and probably a lot of actual pilots) and is really getting quite foolish. You don't want a foolish person in the cockpit. That limit is typically set low enough to give you some margin of error, not to allow you to go all the way up to the ultimate limit.

What tower was calling at the time is what really matters.

I wish I had your faith in the Tower.

Remember that Wicked flies for the US Air Force - it's a different world compared to either private pilots or the airlines. Me, I often land at fields that don't have towers and my weather information is either from a tower located at some distance, an automated unit at the field (which may or may not be well positioned) and may be old, or, on occassion, my own judgement based on how the corn in the fields is blowing. Back in my ultralight days we'd sometimes carry streamers attached to and wound around clothespins - over a field with no weather reporting you toss one of those down and observe how it falls. I doubt anything that primative was being used, but there is the possibility of equipment not being in working order, misspeaking by a controller, or various other things. Which is why incidents like this are investigated. If the pilot screwd up that's one thing - if the weather machinery or the tower are issuing bad weather reports that's a possibly on-going problem.

ATC in North America and Europe is top notch, but by god it's not their lives in they fuck up.

Old aviation "joke" - how is ATC and being a pilot the same?

If the pilot fucks up, the pilot dies.
If ATC fucks up, the pilot dies.

[Glass Pearl Player]

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...

He said "Das ging beinahe in die Hose", literally: "That almost went into the pants", Leodict translates it as "That was almost a complete flop". The rest of the dialog mentions that the wing apparently touched tarmac and that the runway/airport would soon be closed.

The article mentions that the plane landed safely at the second try, did they really mean at the same airport?

[about a Cherokee landing in 55 knots of headwind]

Wikipedia claims the stall speed to be 54 knots, does that mean it could have been a landing with zero ground speed?

[Broomstick]

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...

He said "Das ging beinahe in die Hose", literally: "That almost went into the pants", Leodict translates it as "That was almost a complete flop". The rest of the dialog mentions that the wing apparently touched tarmac and that the runway/airport would soon be closed.

The article mentions that the plane landed safely at the second try, did they really mean at the same airport?

If there was another runway more appropriately aligned for the wind conditions, certainly. From what I've heard, yes, the final landing was on another runway at the same airport.

Even more reason to slap the pilot - if there was a better runway onthe same airport he should have asked permission to use it. ATC does not fly airplanes, pilots fly airplanes. If the pilot wishes to make a request he/she may do so, and in my experience often gets what they ask for, particularly when its a reasonable request.

[about a Cherokee landing in 55 knots of headwind]

Wikipedia claims the stall speed to be 54 knots, does that mean it could have been a landing with zero ground speed?

Yes.

It is even theoretically possible to land an airplane with a negative groundspeed, which would mean you're rolling backwards when you touch down, but I'm not aware of any actual attempts. It is most certainly Not Recommended.

I myself have both hovered (zero groundspeed, airspeed above stall) and flown fixed wing aircraft backward relative to the ground by the simple technique of pointing the nose into a steady wind and reducing airspeed - but I was thousands of feet off the ground at the time, and the winds at ground level were considerably less, well within a safe range for landing.

So far my record for backward flight is -10 mph/9 knots/16 kph relative to the ground in a Cessna 150 at minimum controllable airspeed (MCA). A C150 stalls at 48 mph/42 knots/77kph. The idea with MCA is to stay just far enough above stall speed to still be flying the airplane, but no more. If you do the math that means the wind was at least 58 mph/51 knots/93 kph. I can not, actually, give you a true airspeed because at that airspeed and in the necessary configuration the airspeed indicator in a C150 is wildly inaccurate. In fact, it's usually registering "zero" for complicated reasons I probably can not adequately explain, but having a lot to do with where the sensor is positioned on the airframe.

In the case of the guys in the Cherokee that I mentioned, however, they did not attempt a vertical landing. Their airspeed was, if I recall what they told me, up around 80-90 mph, which gave them less than the usual groundspeed but enough airspeed to maintain adequate control. But yeah, a brown moment for them. Consider that anything above stall speed CAN lift you back into the air - they weren't just worried about getting on the ground, they were worried about staying on it. Very dangerous. At any time between when they touched down and when the airplane was put into a hangar the wind could have flipped them end-over-end and there wouldn't have been much, if anything, they could have done about it.

[FSTargetDrone]

Did I hear my name?

Yes'm! And thanks to you and Wicked Pilot and the others for the information here. Fascinating stuff!

Damn, never knew planes could fly sideways.

Yep, they can! Sometimes we do it delibrately, for fun (but not too close to the ground)

A slightly tangent, for those interested and who don't already know, the B-52 has main landing gear that can pivot to a limited degree to help alleviate the problem of landing in crosswinds:

An interesting feature of the B-52 landing gear greatly eases the problems posed by crosswind landings. Both the front and rear bogies can be set at angles of as much as 20° to either side of the straight-ahead position. In a crosswind landing, consequently, the aircraft can be headed directly into the wind while rolling down a runway not aligned with the wind. Only the front bogies are used for steering on the ground. Although the wing spoilers obviate the need for an approach chute on the B-52, a 44-foot-diameter braking chute is provided for deployment in the landing rollout.

[Wicked Pilot]

I'm not a jet pilot, but I believe Wicked is - my information is that jet engines do not move from low to high power as rapidly as piston engines.- combined with the inertia of such a large mass as an airliner, it can be very difficult to change direction quickly. An airliner is not as maneuverable as a smaller airplane. There is a noticeable lag between going to full power and turning a descent into a climb.

Spool up time is notoriously high in the older turbojets, though I hear the newer turbofans have greatly improved upon the situation. In any case the earlier one calls a go-around the better.

One very easy solution around this problem is the use of speed brakes or thrust attenuators. With these an aircraft can maintain a higher power setting on final, and thus in the event power is required you simply retract them.

Luckily this isn't an issue for me, when I push the throttles up the fuel control sends more gas to the engine which makes it want to turn faster. The props however in an attempt to maintain a constant rpm flatten out their angle, thus taking a bigger bite out of the air. In all the engine never changes speed so power comes practically instantaneously.

In theory, the pilot has the right to refuse to land on a runway and to request a different one (assuming there is another one at the airport).

This is a hasty generalization so call it as so, but it seems like more European airports are single runway or parallel than what you'd find in North America. I'll see about pulling up my Jepp account tomorrow and take a look at it.

Remember that Wicked flies for the US Air Force - it's a different world compared to either private pilots or the airlines.

It's a different mission definitely, but the fundamentals of flying are all the same.

And I've put down on dirt fields in Africa with no ATC, Wx, or anything but some SOF dudes with a UHF. And I had to do a low pass prior to scare any monkeys off the surface.

[Sea Skimmer]

This is a hasty generalization so call it as so, but it seems like more European airports are single runway or parallel than what you'd find in North America. I'll see about pulling up my Jepp account tomorrow and take a look at it.

I checked Google earth, Fuhlsbuttel Airport has two runways which cross at what looks like an 80-85 degree angle. The plane was landing on runway 23 which runs more or less NNE towards SSW, the other runway is oriented NNW to SSE. Both runways are almost completely hemmed in be dense suburban areas too. Hmm, seems the place has been operational since 1911, and is the oldest operational airport in Germany, and one of the oldest in the world period.

[Wicked Pilot]

That checks with what I have. Runway 15/33 is 12,028x150, runway 05/23 is 10,663x150. Runways 05, 23, and 15 all have precision approaches, runway 33 has a non precision. Current NOTAMs seem to indicate that there is construction going on and that 05/23 closes nightly.

There are also noise abatement procedures in effect at that airport, namely that landings are not normally premitted on 33. If winds where out of the northwest and tower wasn't granting 33 then that would setup a bad crosswind situation. If that's the case they have a lot to answer for.



If anyone knows what the status of that runway was at the time of the incident, what runway the landing took place on, and the exactly the winds where being called, that would all be helpful.

[Spin Echo]

That checks with what I have. Runway 15/33 is 12,028x150, runway 05/23 is 10,663x150. Runways 05, 23, and 15 all have precision approaches, runway 33 has a non precision. Current NOTAMs seem to indicate that there is construction going on and that 05/23 closes nightly.

There are also noise abatement procedures in effect at that airport, namely that landings are not normally premitted on 33. If winds where out of the northwest and tower wasn't granting 33 then that would setup a bad crosswind situation. If that's the case they have a lot to answer for.



If anyone knows what the status of that runway was at the time of the incident, what runway the landing took place on, and the exactly the winds where being called, that would all be helpful.

Runway was 23. The ATIS was reading:

EDDH 011220Z 29028G48KT 9000 -SHRA FEW011 BKN014 07/05 Q0984 TEMPO 29035G55KT 4000 SHRA BKN008

[Wicked Pilot]

The weather's good enought for both the localizer and the GPS approach to 33, even with the tempo group. So I will speculate either noise abatement, which would be utter horsehit if true, some sort of airline policy restricting non-precision approaches, which is also horseshit if true, or lastly some sort of greater wx hazard on the 33 approach course that we simply didn't see in the video. That would be the more reasonable explaination.

[Broomstick]

Personally, I'm voting for the "horseshit" factor here - Europe takes its nosie abatement regs very seriously, and far too many bureaucrats lack understanding that a "non-precision approach" =/= "non-safe". Then again, it's easy for me to sit here after the fact and say that I'd tell the tower "Hey, guys - given conditions I think it would be safer to use that other runway, How about it?"

Of course, we don't have all the information.