PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Mike Pence's plane skids off runway at LGA
Old 4th Nov 2016, 10:56
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RAT 5
 
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Landing closer to the Threshold than the 3-400m touchdown zone was a question for judgement on the day, and only on a very clear visual approach. A Devil's Advocate comment might be: "if the 3 most useless things to a pilot are 1. runway behind you, 2. sky above you & 3. fuel in the bowser," then why is No.1 only for takeoff?
OK, I know all the arguments about obstacle clearance and safety zone penetration, and beat it into my students for years. Now, OFDM that includes 'below G.S' data has stamped that out on ILS. However, I remember a day many years ago, before Big Brother, going into Inverness (short) in winter (patches of ice & snow and an 'finger in the wind' BA assessment) with no headwind, even swirling: (a previous F27 had said it was OK) we decided that leaving excessive tarmac behind us at touchdown was not desirable, and we might 'pinch a bit'. This was before OFDM and an NPA in any case. Neither of us considered this a dangerous or destabilising manoeuvre. Risking going off the end was considered the worse option.
RW32L MAD has a huge displaced threshold. The displacement is a short runway in itself. Totally clear of any obstruction. So what would you do if you had an anti-skid landing to make? Would you leave 300-400m behind you when Mk-1 eyeball says the air underneath you is clear & free. I'm not talking of death defying dives, never; but equally I can't say never to pinching a bit. There need to be mitigating and extenuating circumstances. As a matter of course on a clear & dry day with fully functional a/c? No.
Watching the landings in ST. Maarten makes one wonder. Look at the wheel height over the beach B747 and wonder if they've flown on the slope all the way down. Pinching a bit on that runway, in such a high eye height, would be fraught with danger. If you do it correctly, on speed, with a head wind, on a clean & dry runway with all the buffers included, there should be no problem to the skilled.
There were some very short looking runways in the european tourist network where we took B767. They did look short at 2-3 miles out, but the brakes are made for MTOW RTO's so stopping a light weight landing was never a problem, if you arrived on schedule and not 5 secs late. 2 seconds early was not required.
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