greenspinner

At HKT Airport on 20-Dec-12, ~2130LT, Air Berlin A330 Departure from HKT, then request air turn back for Emergency landing cause Engine 1 fire!.

A/C made a hard landing and 3 of main wheels burst. AOT declare Runway closure due to unable to move a/c off the runway.

JammedStab

I wonder if they did an overweight landing. I was told that on my craft, the autopilot is not approved for overweight landings. Is this pretty much standard among airliners.

Bearcat

Refer to QRH- airbus mention from memory non certified but you can do an o/weight Ldg upto 227t?

gtseraf

I'm not sure what the autopilot approval has to do with this.

last I checked pilots were trained to manually fly aircraft, or have the standards dropped so low that the a/p has to be used for everything.

alidad

Bit difficult to do an autoland RWY 27 when the localiser is offset by about 2 degrees from the runway course

PA-28-180

" Last I checked pilots were trained to manually fly aircraft, or have the standards dropped so low that the a/p has to be used for everything. "

Unfortunately, Gtseraf, seems they have in many cases. Check the thread on the temorary loss of control because the captain didn't have an operable FD.....

DouglasFlyer

...and is CAT I only...

Coastrider26

You can do an overweight landing on the autopilot but one of the items mentioned in the QRH is that the rate of descend on touch down can not exceed 360 ft/min.

DouglasFlyer

Our QRH A-333 says in the chapter "overweight landing":

"An overweight landing is authorized up to MTOW.
Automatic landing is certified up to Maximum Landing Weight (MLW). Autoland flight tests have, however, been successful up to 229 tons.
Depending on the situation (e.g. emergency or other) and provided that the runway is approved for automatic landing, the flight crew can decide to perform a autoland up to 229 tons."

In my opinion you have to have a good reason to conduct a AL with overweight - i think it wouldn't be good airmanship to try it on a CAT I ILS with an offset LOC...

joe two

there is no reason at all to do an autoland anyway

DouglasFlyer

...fog... ?

MANTHRUST

Was it foggy?
Did they do an auto land?
We're they overweight?
Have I missed something?

BOAC

How CAN we have a thread without the 'METAR Poster'?

Dg800

Can I run for the position of 'AvHerald poster' instead?

Incident: Air Berlin A332 at Phuket on Dec 20th 2012, engine fire

BOAC

You got it T&C are crap.mind you, but STILL no actual

Shot Nancy

HKT 09 has RNAV, VOR or visual approach. 27 has RNAV, offset ILS, VOR or visual approach. Ergo auto land not possible.
Please, no more mention of auto land.

4468

Tyres normally burst due to excess energy (heat) being applied to the brakes during deceleration after landing. Not purely by any overweight issues. A wind report (available to the investigation team) will assist in explaining any decelaration 'issues'. It may also give an indication as to why the crew took off from 27, and landed on 09. As the pax did not evacuate on the runway (but are reported to have used mobile stairs) an unextinguishable fire, requiring immediate landing, looks unlikely?

JW411

Dear God; why would anyone in their right mind even attempt to do an autoland in these circumstances?

Hotel Tango

They didn't, so it's irrelevant!

EcamSurprise

An Autoland? TEST PILOTS!

Quite amazing how many of the above post so knowledgeably and completely ignore the fact that they don't even know if it was foggy and that they can't auto land at HKT anyway..