Wow!Passengers scared?Must have been..

Furryanimal said:
This clip has apparently been shown on news outlets around the world.
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yep I saw this on the news a couple of days ago..the gale force winds of 92mph at Heathrow during storm Corrie caused the plane to land awkwardly. the Pilot was a star, he held that beast together and brought it down again just a minute later very safely ..!!.. Thankfully on the news we were spared the Plane watcher dialogue...lol
 
A couple things that I noticed: the plane was too far past the threshold markings before it attempted to land. It also appears to me that he was going to fast for his landing and never idled the engines before touchdown, once he touched down on one side and the plane began to yaw, his only choice was to TOGA and try again. Are we sure that the first officer wasnā€™t the pilot flying the plane? This appears to me as a pilot with not a lot of landing experience. Maybe some time in the simulator would be helpful to the pilot flying. The tail strike was very minor and I doubt if any damage may have occurred.

Even if he landed with crosswinds, we should have seen some yawing before touchdown, so I am kind of doubtful that the wind had little to do with his landing. I have seen and myself done landings in crosswinds. The very first thing we do when landing with crosswinds is to slow the plane. When this plane touched down, his speed appeared to be excessive. This is why I am a bit skeptical that the wind had little to do with this landing. If the first officer did the first landing, it may have been possible that the Captain decided to do the landing on the second attempt.
 
The entire industry is insane. They work pilots like dogs. They don't spend enough money on maintenance. All one big recipe for disaster.

No pilot should be allowed to fly after working 12 hours straight. I think a lot these guys routinely work 18 hour shifts.
 
JonSR77 said:
The entire industry is insane. They work pilots like dogs. They don't spend enough money on maintenance. All one big recipe for disaster.

No pilot should be allowed to fly after working 12 hours straight. I think a lot these guys routinely work 18 hour shifts.
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This issue has been discussed among pilots ever since ever. The FAA restricts commercial pilots flying passengers be allowed to fly only 8-10 hours per day. Pilots must be given at least 12 hours between shifts, but I think that number has changed since I retired. Pilots flying freight have different restrictions. I think their hours are based on how many hours they can fly in a calendar week. It used to be 60 hours in a week, but that may have also changed.

Pilot fatigue has always been a big issue with the FAA and airline companies. With a shortage of pilots, companies want pilots to be able to fly a 12-hour day. To me, thatā€™s a bad idea. The stress after flying just 8 hours is bad enough. If I was still flying, I wouldnā€™t want to fly 12 hours. Pilots make a lot of money and the enticement to fly more hours to make more money, excites the younger pilots.

I flew with a newer female pilot a few years before I retired. She told me that she wanted to start a family, but the airline told her if she missed 20 consecutive weeks of work, she would be placed on probation pending her becoming requalified. I knew that was correct, but she wasnā€™t happy that she had to go through the testing again. I told her that the FAA required that, not the airline. I donā€™t think she ever came back after she had her baby, or at least she didnā€™t come back to United.
 
I guess if you live there you're used to it. No worse than waiting at a RR crossing for a freight train that can sometimes take a half hour or more to go by.
 
Storm Corrie left a trail of damage across the country and I'm quite prepared to believe that a gust of wing caught the pilot unexpectedly.
If the F/O was flying, then I would have expected that the captain was sufficiently confident of his/her ability to land safely.

On the point of pilot duty / flying hours, I believe that this is strictly regulated in Europe, and I would imagine, the USA.
 
oldman said:
Am I seeing this correctly? They use railroad boom gates to stop traffic for a plane to land? How many times a day does that happens?
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yes they do.. and no I have no idea how many times a day.. but the traffic gets stopped for an average of 10 minutes at a time, which in holiday season..causes quite a long line of traffic on the road, and hundreds of people waiting to cross.. and at rush hour, there can be as long as half hour wait...for the traffic...and pedestrians

https://www.gibraltarairport.gi/content/air-traffic-statistics
 
Itā€™s beautiful, but I am waiting for the first runway incursion. Some drunk may try to go around the gate and a plane may meet the car at the same time.
 
Capt Lightning said:
Storm Corrie left a trail of damage across the country and I'm quite prepared to believe that a gust of wing caught the pilot unexpectedly.
If the F/O was flying, then I would have expected that the captain was sufficiently confident of his/her ability to land safely.

On the point of pilot duty / flying hours, I believe that this is strictly regulated in Europe, and I would imagine, the USA.
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All pilots must have an ā€˜xā€™ amount of landings and takeoffs per 90 days to comply with FAA regulations and for the pilot to retain his ATP certificate.
 
oldman said:
Itā€™s beautiful, but I am waiting for the first runway incursion. Some drunk may try to go around the gate and a plane may meet the car at the same time.
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my Daughter used to do her monthly grocery shopping in Gib... so she's driven over that crossing , and waited in the queue, many times... Most people who live in Spain try and avoid going into Gib during the tourist seasons
 
Kind of like people avoiding going to Florida in the winter, unless they have a home there. The state gets a bit overcrowded.
 
Hereā€™s another story of scared passengers. (Some may not find it interesting.)

We were landing in Denver during a snowstorm in late February and was almost blizzard conditions. This was at the old Stapleton Airport. The winds coming down off the Rockies into Denver can make landing a challenge at times, but now add a snowstorm to the mix and itā€™s a stressful situation.

Iā€™m flying the plane and the first officer is taking care of the communications and watching the gauges, etc. We were in our final approach, about 10 miles from the airport when the traffic controller reports winds have increased to 25kts at 240, which in this case was our tail. So, I knew we were going to get shoved down the runway upon landing. I immediately reduced speed to 160 with full flaps and kept the rudder and stabilizer at normal points for landing. There were no crosswinds.

Just a moment before touchdown, I idled the engines and right after touchdown, I engaged the thrust reversers. The runway was clear, so we had a good landing, taxied to the gate, retracted the flaps and shut down the engines. What I didnā€™t know was that the flight attendants were dealing with many scared passengers. Some were throwing up, others were crying, a few even yelled we were going to crash. I couldnā€™t figure out what started all the commotion.

I came to find out that ā€œSky Newsā€ was on the monitor at the time and they were talking about a plane in Germany had crashed due to similar weather conditions and one person freaked out and then we had the domino effect where one person starts and the others follow after. Our flight attendants were not happy. BTW, that was the last time that ā€œSky Newsā€ showed any plane crashes.

When I opened the cockpit door, I expected to see a lot of smiling faces, not a freak show going on.
 
Old man, what a fabulous save! Actually piloting the plane instead of letting computers do the flying!
Iā€™ve been aboard 2 scary approaches. First was on an old Mowhawk twin engine commuter plane going from NY CITY to Albany. Looked out the right side window about 1/4 the way up and the engine on this right side was giving off black smoke. Pilot dropped down to about 500 feet and flew it straight up over the Hudson, right over the bridges. . I guess the thinking was fewer people would be hurt than if it crashed on the densely populated land. And Iā€™m thinking, well at least Iā€™m good swimmer. (In 1972 a. Mohawk had actually crashed with fatalities outside Albany airport). So we made it to Albany, landed far from the terminal with all sorts of emergency vehicles waiting.
Big round of applause and cheering for pilot.

2nd was coming back to NY city from Rome, Italy. About an hour out pilot announced ā€œa light had come onā€, he was dumping fuel and heading to Heathrow. The interior reeked of it, sickening, and seemed like it took forever before safe to land.All I could think about was that all the gifts I had got for everyone would be at the bottom of the ocean. He put us down safely by some distant hangar.
Then more discomfort, thehangar only had single stall mens and ladies rooms, and we hadnā€™t been allowed to get up on the way there.
 
I only ever saw pictures of a Mohawk. Thatā€™s going back a lot of years. Dumping fuel is always a bad sign that something is terribly amiss. According to MapQuest, itā€™s about 900 miles from Rome to London. If the plane was about an hour out from Rome, that may be about 4-500 miles leaving about 400 miles to London. I have to assume that the pilot dumped fuel over the North Sea or other large body of water and not over a populated area.

The important thing is that the pilots landed safely and everyone was fine.
 

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