WATCH: Landing Made Difficult by Powerful Winds in Oklahoma City
Luciana Mangas March 24, 2016
A United Airlines pilot had a difficult time in landing the plane in Oklahoma City this past Wednesday, The Washington Post reports. Following the blizzard that put over a foot of snow on the ground in Denver, Colorado, the Southern Plains are getting hit by roaring winds that reach 40-50 mph.
The video was captured by a helicopter from TV affiliate KFOR and shows the moment the United Airlines Express plane tries to land at Will Rogers World Airport, fighting against the force of powerful winds.
It seems, at first, that the plane is going to land as usual, but a gush of wind throws it off course in the last 30 seconds, making the landing quite a challenge for the pilot. At one point, it looks like the plane is going to miss the runway altogether and land on the grassy field on the side, but the experienced pilot managed to take control and put it down safely.
Randy Bass, a consulting meteorologist who specializes in aviation, explained how the pilot overcame the difficult situation:
“The pilot will try to fly directly into the wind for as long as possible, then turn at the last moment to line up to the runway for landing … If he had tried to approach the runway straight on, the crosswind would have blown him off to the left of the centerline as he was trying to land. Chances are he would have been pushed off the runway with a high likelihood of an accident if he wasn’t able to abort the landing. He did exactly what pilots are trained to do in that situation.”
[Screenshot, video: KFOR]
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Doesn't looks to be struggling. Its a crosswind landing, just looks different. He has to crab into the wind to stay centerline and he did so perfectly. ITs more difficult than no-wind but as long as the cross-wind is within the limits of the air-plane all pilots are trained heavily on this. Crosswind landings are normal operations, they just look different to the un-known.
Looks like a pretty standard, well-executed, crabbed landing to me. I've done many of those as a glider pilot (where you don't get a second chance to make a first impression...on the runway), and a fair few on single-prop. Once you've got your head around flying the plane up to 45deg off angle, getting the airspeed right so that when you "kick off" the yaw with respect to the runway you don't stall out early, and keeping the wings level when you do, it's really no big deal. Any pilot who can't...isn't a pilot.
Well, that definitely is the focus of a lot of initial pilot training. At first, when you're learning how to takeoff, fly, and land, the focus is on just being able to understand how and why, and to do so safely and under control (insert the adage of "any landing you can walk away from is a good landing"). But once that basic understanding of how to do the final approach, flare, and touch down are understood, the focus quickly shifted (at least for me) to always be on centerline. And among many other aspects of landings on the practical checkride, one of the key ones is to keep the airplane aligned with the runway center. My landings are still far from perfect, of course. I profess to be no expert. Every time I watch the pros do it, I'm always in awe of how they're able to hit the 1000 foot markers and maintain centerline, and look forward to a time in the near future that I'll be that good.
I'm no pilot., but I think the pilot gets extra points for landing right on the center line.
If we remove the bizarre frame of reference and had been able to see this landing from a more "normal" and stationary viewpoint, it would have looked like any ordinary crosswind landing. However, since the helicopter was above the flight path, and moving from one side to the other, you get this weird shifting of perspective, hence the "looks like the plane is going to miss the runway and land on the grass." It was not blown off course by a gust of wind. The runway just appears to rotate counterclockwise as the helicopter moves right to left. He was more or less on centerline the whole time, doing a pretty good job of crabbing into the wind. This would be a difficult landing, no doubt, but this was very much a normal landing.