Fitch

I had to pop over to Amsterdam this week, and came back into LGW tonight on BA2763. I wish I hadn't bothered, for a few reasons:

• The ageing aircraft (G-DBCC) which for some reason was stiflingly hot the whole flight
• The guy sitting in my row who gaily hoiked my stuff out of the overhead locker to put his in, then got all offended when I challenged him on his bad behaviour
• The pilot who made a pigs ear of the landing - one of the worst I've experienced in years - and this on a calm, clear evening !
• The unbelievable queue at the Border, which took 35 minutes to get through
• The idiots at Moneycorp who couldn't find my order in the system and were thus apparently utterly incapable to selling me any currency because "computer said no".

On the other hand, the new BA lounge at AMS is very nice, although quite a trek , and my cab driver was cheerful...

Phew, glad I got that off my chest, I can sleep easily now

FlightDetective

So basically a normal trip then?

The heat is to make you sleep... lol - not a fan myself, I hate hot a/c

ExpatSomchai

No the heat works the opposite for me and makes me consume copious amounts of semi premium alcohol.

EuropeanPete

Where did you find semi-premium alcohol on a BA flight?

ExpatSomchai

Stop flying the flag Pete. Is Monopole premium?

South London Bon Viveur

Presumably a 737? They are old but I love them and I shall miss them when they go. Sounds like a crap journey but short haul from LHR is rarely much better

BA6501

DBCC is a 319.

cornishsimon

Ex bmi A319


cs

Joely

Wow that's pretty impressive unpleasantness, what did he do with your stuff and what did he say when you challenged him?

Physci

Well you and I had different experiences (admittedly I was in row 1):

• cabin temperature was fine
• didn't think anything was wrong with the landing

I should add that I was on 2762 out to AMS with the same crew and that flight was fine as well.

I do agree about the passport queue - the egates seemed to be playing up so I opted for the "non egate" queue and was through in 15 minutes - the egate queue didn't seem to be moving and it did look like they were having to reset the machines.

adrianjc32

.....

GSTBK

What do you mean ageing aircraft? It's only 11 years old.

DoctorDoug

The original poster criticized the pilot for a hard landing ("The pilot who made a pigs ear of the landing - one of the worst I've experienced in years - and this on a calm, clear evening !")


I was surfing on another forum and came across this post from a pilot who was landing approximately the same time as the original poster (albeit at a different London airport). While the OP may be an expert at landing aircraft (in his own mind), sometimes what we see as passengers is not what the pilots are experiencing at the pointy end.

Coming into EGLL later that evening, we had about 30kts on the tail while passing the FAF, landing on 27L. When we were cleared to land, we were told the wind was around 300 deg at 10kts, and that the previous lander had reported that it was a smooth transition with no shear.

Lesson one for me was to distrust positive pireps if our own specific environmental cues are telling us otherwise. In our case, the wind came around to the north west as we came through about 500 feet, while maintaining much of its velocity. Then at about 100 ft it abruptly dropped off to 8-10 kts. <<METAR EGLL 041150Z 31009KT 9999 SCT035 SCT043 08/01 Q1030 NOSIG>>

The result taught me my second lesson, resist the temptation to reduce too much power if you start to experience increasing performance windshear down low. If that happens, as long as you're meeting the stabilized approach criteria, it's better to be erring on the side of 2 or 3 KIAS high on your speed with your engines remaining somewhat spooled up, than to be right on your speed, at or nearly at idle power (needing to keep the power at idle is unstabilized anyway).

Third, it taught me to take my intuition and combine it with observations, so that if the worst case manifests (in this case, decreasing performance windshear on the heals of performance increasing shear, say in the last 100ft or so), you already know what you're going to do about it. I'm not sure how much power we had on when we touched down, about 55%-60% maybe, but it was still only an average touch-down at best. Of course, the F/As still made a crack about how we needed to make softer landings. LOL. I bit my tongue hard.

Physci

And as my comments above show, different passengers on the same plane may have different experiences/perceptions.

Fitch

The baggage molester was a typical DYKWIA. In line with my policy of not allowing a-holes any room in my head, I have already forgotten him

Interesting that the landing should seem OK from the front. I was in row 10 which I think is pretty much exactly above the undercarriage. The perspective from there was:

• quite a lot of "jockeying around" in the final seconds of the approach
• prolonged flare which took us further down the rwy than usual
• banged it down on left-hand gear, wobbled it onto right-hand gear
• really banged it down onto nosegear then stood on the brakes...

Comment from my immediate seatmate (not the DYKWIA): "Bloody hell, that was a First Officer landing wasn't it ?"

The quote above from a pilot is very interesting and if ours were battling the same, then fair play to them for getting us down safely ! I make no claim to aviation expertise beyond Flight Simulator, but I am able to compare last night's experience with the roughly 100 others I have sat through in the last couple of years...

Cabin was definitely hot down the back though - I was in a t-shirt but sticky the whole way over...