Military AircrewA forum for the professionals who fly the non-civilian hardware, and the backroom boys and girls without whom nothing would leave the ground. Army, Navy and Airforces of the World, all equally welcome here.
I've seen German Transall's practicing take-offs and landings on a smallish GA field in my neighbourhood with an 800 m runway, and it was absolutely effortless. They have also been said to do the same on another airfield here in the area with a 735 m grass runway.
I reckon it was deliberate. Anyone here flown into really short strips?
I've flown into plenty of short strips, usually grass or dirt, in the dark, in a bigger aircraft than that, marked out with far less than that runway and I've yet to mong it as badly as that (there's still time of course).
I'm assuming they had a dispensation to ignore the displaced threshold (hence the fenced off road) however the fact they were pretty much at taxi speed abeam the PAPIS suggests that this was in no way "intentional". Too flat an approach, misjudged aim point and pilot error is what that was.
A German newspaper stated that there wouldn't be an inquiry as it was the aircraft's last flight (or aircraft type's last flight, my German's not that great).
I expect the pilot will still get a ...(insert currently PC term for female pilots getting a bollocking).
Thanks for the C-130 vid ORAC - oh for the days when what you thought up in the bar/your garage could still be tried out a a major engineering company the next day.
'I'm assuming they had a dispensation to ignore the displaced threshold (hence the fenced off road) however the fact they were pretty much at taxi speed abeam the PAPIS suggests that this was in no way "intentional". Too flat an approach, misjudged aim point and pilot error is what that was.'
'Course it was pilot error, and who among us have not had that shaky hand bit in the pub after making an almighty cock up? (And not getting caught or dead). To err is human. I have yet to meet the perfect person.
Did a series of freeze frames on the clip from post 35 and it shows clearly that the gear touched down after the road, but before the runway and it seems that the grass between the road and the runway is an embankment with a peak height of a metre or two above the runway height and the main gear just kisses that peak, if there was no bank the trajectory would have been on target for the threshold.....interesting perspective gotcha rather than a vanilla land-short.
