PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - For engineers -- When a bad landing a heavy landing ??
Old 26th Apr 2004, 07:29
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chuks
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Germany
Age: 76
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Wrinkles tell the tale...

Back when I was driving a bug-smasher out of Miami International I used to gawk at the heavy iron that was coming in for maintenance at a facility next to my ramp.

One that caught my attention was a 727 with such a set of wrinkles along the lower fuselage behind the nose gear that they were quite obvious to the naked eye from a distance of about 20 feet. The aircraft belonged to a military-operated civil airline from South America and I was told it had been flown in for a routine check when some sort of 'Wrinkles? What wrinkles?' conversation ensued. Turns out someone was late on the round-out but didn't bother making a report. They ended up scrapping the aircraft as uneconomical to repair.

And in Nigeria (where else?) a BAC 1-11 had been slammed back on the runway when the stickshaker actuated after liftoff, going deep into the over-run on 19L and then being simply dragged out of the bundu, cleaned off and put back in service. Some time later they found a rather large crack in a wing spar so that the airplane was scrapped.
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