What was this pilot doing??? It's unbelievable...

[topgundom]

Hi all,

I was just looking through some of those photos on airliners.net when I came across this one:

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/149179/L/

Now, I know there are loads from Kai Tak with some dodgy landings but WHAT THE HELL IS THIS GUY DOING????????????

This one is so extreme that I can't even work out if it happened on landing [sic] or if he swung out too quickly from the hold point.

Oh hold on I just checked it again and I saw it was the second of two. This is the link to the first one here:

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/149180/L/

He was on approach.

Can anyone explain this madness? I'm not a heavy jet pilot but this seems unbelievable. Perhaps I'm being unfair?

The wind sock is from the right but it's not showing much more than twenty knots by my reckoning.

If anyone has an opinion on this I would be very interested.

Perhaps another Malaysia airlines pilot might shed some light on the circumstances, and what became of the Hong Kong threshold aerobatic display team.

;) ;) ;)

[dorosenco]

- a good landing is when all passengers walk away unhurt.
- an excellent landing is when you can re-use the aircraft.

I guess it was a good landing ...

:}

[Spitoon]

I'm no expert ...... but I believe it's called an accident. :\

[mattpilot]

there was a video somewhere of the entire landing... can't find it though

[topgundom]

Yeah Mattpilot,

that's gotta be worth seeing.

post the link if you can find it. :ok:

found a website with some stuff on it.

http://www.najaco.com/aviation/videos/videos.htm

[angels]

Think you'll find the video was of a ropey KAL landing. There was a thread on it a time back called 'Real men don't go around' or something like that.

BTW - I used to live in Hong Kong and would often take my son on to the roof of the car park at Kai Tak where you had a superb view of the planes approaching, performing their split-arse turn and landing.

The amount of close calls I saw were frightening. The worst was an Air Canada 744 who turned too late and nearly landed on the terminal (he went around) and an Air India (76?) that came in too slow and just cleared the lights. He landed about 10 metres onto the runway.

[muppethead]

Not much wonder he made contact with the hard stuff, look at the second picture and you will see the wind sock is blowing a 15-20 knot tailwind!!!!

That could explain a lot of things.....

[scroggs]

To put it in context a little: the runway at Kai Tak was 13/31. This aircraft is landing on 13. The approach for 13 involved an 'IGS' segment (a 40 or so degree offset ILS to an intermediate point about 2 miles from the threshold), followed by a visual right turn to line up with the runway. I can't remember the minima, but they're not relevent in this situation.

The wind shown by the windsock is all across; there's no significant tailwind at touchdown - but there would have been throughout the IGS approach, giving a high groundspeed at the start of the final turn, and thus requiring more than normal bank to achieve the required turn radius. That turn wasn't that sharp (there are far worse in the world - Gibraltar 09 and JFK 13R, to name but two), but it seems to have caught this guy out! He appears to have gone well through the runway centreline and tried to get it back but has arrived at the touchdown with right bank on and tracking significantly right of the runway track. With the long zoom used on this photo exaggerating the offset, it's difficult to judge just how much off heading/track he was, bearing in mind that the crosswind would have required an amount of offset to the right to allow for drift.

Interestingly, the earlier photo gives no clues as to whether he's on the centreline at this point or not. His heading at this point may well be consistent with the drift required by the crosswind. It's also impossible to judge how turbulent it was on this approach. Was he affected by windshear/turbulence on touchdown - sufficient to ground the No4 pod? Or was he, as most of us have leapt to conclude, still trying to achive a transition to the right to make the centreline?

I haven't seen the report of this particular incident, but it's worth pointing out that things are often not as obvious as they seem!

[topgundom]

yeah scroggs,

I think the point you make about the high power zoom lens foreshortening the photo is a good one. I never thought of that.

I know that it was a tough approach and that there are always things that one may be unaware of without actually being there.

Can you imagine being a passenger?

Can you imagine the CC's announcement as they taxied (or walked) to the gate: "We hoped you enjoyed your flight and look forward to seeing you on another Malaysian scheduled service in the near future. Good Afternoon..."

[mattpilot]

;)

i'm guessing the fotographer must of been pretty far away given the 4 red on the PAPI.

But then again, i don't know if thats a standard glideslope or not.

[Coastrider26]

Isn't this the same aircraft that did a go-around after a similair landing? I think there's a third picture somewhere...

[angels]

Further to my earlier post I've found the link to the ropey landing. Click on this (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=67196&highlight=dont+go) to get there.

The actual video link is on the first post. It's scary!

[mattpilot]

i guess i should of just looked up my old posts :) - thanks angels!

[angels]

Ho ho mattpilot, hadn't made the connection that it was you that posted the original link!

Good to know it's not only my brain that falls out occasionally!:ok:

[Man Flex]

Scroggs,

You say that the turn onto 13 at Kai Tak was'nt that severe and not as extreme as the turn at Gibraltar for 09. What is your impression of the turn onto 05 at Funchal?

Could we have these approaches graded in terms of challenge and difficulty?