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Quote:

Originally Posted by Vulcan

http://www.flightlevel350.com/

The KAL 747 landing at KaiTak is a classic and has been around for quite some time.
It still amazes me that he managed to pull it off.

Would he have landed this way due to extreme cosswinds?

That MD80 flight is terrifying! I am surprised the pilots didn't lose a couple inches of height on that landing, dang! The 747 was impressive, too.

We had a China Airlines airbus (packed with passengers) leave grooves in the snow berm at the end of the taxiway here a couple years back... yep, that's right, the taxiway! The pilot apparently got confused and thought he was on the runway. Oy!

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlombard

I'm amazed the engines stayed on. That would be SCARY AS HELL to see that behind you in the coach cabin!! Suddenly the whole back end is torn off and you're looking out the back of the airplane, to the outside seeing the tail following you while sparking. Yeesh! :eek:

My understanding of this clip is that it was a test flight and there were no pax on board...basically the crew made no attempt to flare, intentionally, and BAM! disaster...

N674UW

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlombard

I'd be throwing up. THAT is why they tell you to fasten your seatbelts on landing. Crap like that can happen. Anything loose must have been FLYING around inside of that cabin. I mean, did you see HOW HIGH and how many times that nose litterally BANGED off the runway? I was expecting to see the landing gear collapse. That wasn't just a hard landing, that was avionic punishment of the worst kind. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty when I saw that crazy approach.

Um, I really don't think it was a real landing. See above.

As for the MD80, the reason for the accident was because the intentional straight fly-on was flown at an unintendedly high sink rate - someone got the numbers wrong, IIRC.

The MD-80 tail loss was during flight tests of the aircraft at Edwards AFB in May 1980. It was proposed that the aircraft be put back together again and delivered to Swissair, who had ordered it. However Swissair refused to accept it, and it became a McDonnell Douglas test aircraft for some years. It was retired for scrap in 1991.

Apparently they were testing maximum-descent rate landings and the VSI instrument showing rate of descent was defective, leading them to come in much harder than calculated. It was a touch-and-go landing, and the crew were unaware of the tail loss and had apparently throttled up the engines to take off again on touchdown, having to be called off by the tower. Of course as they had lost their elevator (at the top of the tail) they could never have lifted off.

The following month a second Swissair plane was also damaged in a similar manner during a test flight at Yuma Arizona; although the tail did not detach the undercarriage collapsed. During its recovery, again to be repaired, a crane lifting the aircraft overbalanced and fell, cutting the fuselage in two. That one was scrapped. It was the tailplane from this aircraft that was grafted onto the first one.

Lot of bad luck in the MD-80 test programme it would appear. McDonnell Douglas had to build 2 new aircraft for Swissair.