Hard Landing - was it serious?
Hey all,
I recently flew r/t from IAD to Heathrow on Virgin Atlantic. The flights were generally a very good experience, but the return landing at IAD was the most violent I can ever recall firsthand and I'm curious to get some context on the severity of the event.
The weather around IAD was clear but rather windy, and the last ~20 minutes of the flight were quite turbulent. The Cabin Crew must've been alerted by the cockpit that it would be rough - they practically ran to their jumpseats and strapped in a good 15 minutes before touchdown, and didn't move again. Several passengers needed their spuckbeutels, including two in my party.
On final approach, there was quite a bit of yaw motion and porpoising. When we touched down, the aircraft bounced back into the air and began rolling toward the right. For about 1.5 seconds, I thought "this could be the end" as I tried to peer out the window to see how close we were to a wing strike. Suddenly, we slammed down onto the runway violently... so much so that a couple overhead bins opened, and the headphones on my lap were jostled to the floor. The first few seconds of rollout were rather violent as we got back on centerline. Notably, there was no "Welcome to IAD..." over the PA for several minutes
This was a Virgin A330. I fly quite a bit and I'm a bit of an Avgeek... but having never experienced a landing like this before, I'm curious to hear others' perspectives. How routine would this be? Should I have bought the pilots a round of scotch?