WineList

Ok - apologies if this sounds a bit silly, but how do you steer a plane on the ground, and more precisely immediately on landing? Is it true that most incidents happen whilst taxi'ing to/from the stand?

SpurMan

Fine steering is via the rudder pedals, but there is a tiller on each side for the Captain or first officer to make sharper turns. (least there is in the 744)

Steve_ZA

I'm sure someone will be along with a better explanation but essentially you use your feet to steer which turns the nose wheel and operates the rudder. I'm not sure when the rudder ceases to have any effect after landing.

clarkeysntfc

LHR seems to have done 2 end changes today. Starting out on easterlies, then switching to westerlies, now back on easterlies. Must've been a busy day for our ATC friends!

paul.goffin

Maybe related to the Windsor fly pass?

BOH

Yesterday I was on the BA704 to VIE which was an A320. However there was no vacant "B" seat in the first row behind the C curtain

The first row behind the C curtain was row 5 and A, B and C were all occupied. I didn't think this was allowed due to H&S? Has this rule been relaxed now?

angatol

I asked this question a few weeks ago. You would have been on an aircraft with "space saver" seats, which don't need the vacant B seat.

Swanhunter

If the A320 is fitted with non-converting seats (which a number of the newer models now have) then there is no need for a squashed B seat in the front ET row.

WHBM

If I recall correctly the final Concordes landed sequentially, one behind the other, on one runway.

However the final two Tridents, back in the 1980s, did land absolutely parallel. There was discussion whether one was a second later than the other. Of course, if we were in the USA both runways at Heathrow's spacing would be used completely independently for landings and takeoffs without a second thought, and with complete safety.

There is a poster over on PPRuNe who wrote he held the record, six end changes in one shift !

Higher speed directional adjustment is done by the rudder pedals, and slow speed by a steering tiller connected to the nosewheel, which can also be pressed to a sharp angle by the pushback tractor (there are limits to this, and a couple of instances of the A320 nosewheel becoming jammed sideways when lowered for landing have been traced back to the pushback tractor exceeding these limits on departure). Some aircraft types have a tiller on both sides, others on the captain's side only, which means the captain always has to do the ground taxi. The rudder gradually becomes more effective as speed builds along the runway, but is always connected to the pedals - you can see it moving to full deflection both ways as crews do their pre-takeoff checks to ensure it is operating freely.

SpurMan

Was set up initially for a sequential, but ending up being a parallel.

Transcript of the great job the ATCs did organising that is here on PPRuNe:

http://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-106125.html

Scott Pilgrim

The official final three Concorde arrivals were in trail on to 27R.

A few days prior to that my (then) X Watch approach colleagues found that a scheduled JFK arrival was arriving back at LHR at the same time as one of the final tour flights. It was easterlies, nice weather wise and an opportunity too good to miss so...



The above is a rather close up shot of the radar taken at the time. The horizontal blue lines are the 09L (top) and 09R (bottom) centrelines. The centrelines stop on the right at 1nm from the runway thresholds. From the right the first vertical line is 2nm final, the next 4nm, the just visible third 6nm final.

The two Concordes are on about a 5 mile final at 1,500ft and 1,600ft, the Kuwaiti 103 ahead on 09L is just inside 1nm final at 300ft. The green 'snowflake' is the position of the aircraft, the brown diamonds the trail history.

Ahhhhh, memories.

Gratuitous picture below is returning from JFK on a fam flight in '95. The Captain had gone for a piddle leaving me, on jump seat, an unobstructed view of the panel. M2.00 and cruise climbing through 55,000ft. Happy days.

Heathrow Tower

WHBM, it's me, and it was seven runway changes in a shift!

In my defence, it was a day when two separate CB cells passed through, so we had a wet runway all day which is not good when landing in a tailwind!

Scott, my brother was lucky enough to be plugged in with SD when BAW9021 and BAW2 landed on easterlies together. Lucky swine!

I still miss Concorde, it was the only aeroplane that all the ATCOs in the tower would stop and watch on take off. As much as it pains me to say it, it was retired at the correct time, the number of occasions when it would have to turn to stand after going tech was increasing almost weekly by the end.

HIDDY

Here's one for the ATC boys and girls..(are there any girls?).

What's the smallest aircraft to land at LHR?

OPebble

Rumour hath it that pilots of other planes queuing for take off would yield position just so that they and their PAX could watch the Bird take off!

In those days I often used to be shopping in Reading on a Saturday am and without fail everyone used to stop and watch as she went overhead just after 10:00.

Heathrow Tower

OPebble, only really happened during the
At few weeks of Concorde (and I assume when it was new!)

Hiddy, apart from helicopters and business jets, then the smallest tends to be the Beech King Air that calibrates the Instrument Landing System and runway and approach lights.

The smallest aircraft on the schedule is probably the Embraer 145.

Although there is, of course, the legendary Chipmunk.....dawn broke one day and the was a Chipmunk on the grass by the northern runway, nobody knew how it had got there.........

And yes, there are girls!