Saw it happen in front of me today. Basically he was demonstrating a kai san (?) approach (steep approach from 1000' used in Sarejevo etc to avoid small arms fire). He bounced heavily, and appeared to land a 2nd time on the nose wheel. Lots of tyre smoke and then the nose gear collapsed. It skidded on its nose for about 800m with a small fire under the fuselage. Came to a stop and the fire was quickly put out. All rather expensive.
The flying program was interrupted and had to be hastily reaaranged, but luckily it happened in the first 2000' of runway so they were able to get some stuff away (firefly, hawks, helicopters, harriers etc.) Took 4 hours to finally reopen full length but the flying programme did resume in full, and in the end not too much was lost! Still a good day out. Feel sorry for the Italian Captain though, not a good day out for him!
Last edited by Propellerhead; 20th Jul 2002 at 20:09.