JetBlue plane tips backward at JFK Airport gate after ‘shift in weight and balance'
The 757 is 235 in high density, the A321 Neo is 240 for some airlines.
The 75 was see likely to tip because it disembarked fro. door 2, so it emptied from the middle first. The 321 is a doors 1 plane, so the front cabin empties first. Put that together with an aft loading for bags and you can get into trouble if the baggage handlers aren't on their game.
I have to say I never thought it would actually go though!
I remember years ago, sitting on the flight deck and all the light came on and the ECAM went nuts. The aircraft had pitched up enough to set off the ground/air logic. The captain ran out side and low and behold they had started unloading the front hold first.
The 75 was see likely to tip because it disembarked fro. door 2, so it emptied from the middle first. The 321 is a doors 1 plane, so the front cabin empties first. Put that together with an aft loading for bags and you can get into trouble if the baggage handlers aren't on their game.
I have to say I never thought it would actually go though!
I remember years ago, sitting on the flight deck and all the light came on and the ECAM went nuts. The aircraft had pitched up enough to set off the ground/air logic. The captain ran out side and low and behold they had started unloading the front hold first.
Gnome de PPRuNe
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'Ang on a moment lads, I got a great idea...
Tail prop in use?
Question. Where and when you DO have a removable tail prop, is it, and the rear fuselage mounting point, strong enough to take a serious 'tail sit'? Asking because on Electras I was told the prop was a crude indicator only, and that it would puncture the fuselage if really used in earnest. Standing by to be enlightened!
Thread Starter
I am still puzzled about what caused this incident.
Looking at the photo in Post #1, and according to all news accounts, the passengers were disembarking, obviously through the front door, when the aircraft tipped. So their movement would have been forwards, tending to depress the aircraft nose. No?
And the only baggage handling equipment seen in the photos is working at the very rear of the plane, also reducing the weight in the tail, assuming they are unloading bags.
I must be missing something!!
IB
Looking at the photo in Post #1, and according to all news accounts, the passengers were disembarking, obviously through the front door, when the aircraft tipped. So their movement would have been forwards, tending to depress the aircraft nose. No?
And the only baggage handling equipment seen in the photos is working at the very rear of the plane, also reducing the weight in the tail, assuming they are unloading bags.
I must be missing something!!
IB
I am still puzzled about what caused this incident.
Looking at the photo in Post #1, and according to all news accounts, the passengers were disembarking, obviously through the front door, when the aircraft tipped. So their movement would have been forwards, tending to depress the aircraft nose. No?
Looking at the photo in Post #1, and according to all news accounts, the passengers were disembarking, obviously through the front door, when the aircraft tipped. So their movement would have been forwards, tending to depress the aircraft nose. No?
That's not to say that it's the reason for this incident - I would assume that pax were not exiting at the instant that the aircraft tipped, otherwise we'd have had some interesting eye-witness reports.
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Thread Starter
Well, the good old Daily Mail had some additional information. I have hilited the most interesting bits in Red.
I don't know how accurate any of it is.
"Passenger shows the terrifying moment from inside JetBlue plane as it TIPPED backward at JFK.
TikToker Sinead Bovell was among more than 100 passengers getting off the Airbus A321 from Barbados as its nose tilted into the air
JetBlue blames a 'shift in weight and balance during deplaning'
A passenger on board a JetBlue plane at New York's JFK has shared footage of its terrified passengers after it tipped backwards as they got off leaving its nose in the air.
TikToker Sinead Bovell was among more than 100 passengers aboard the Airbus A321-231 as it touched down after a four-and-a-half hour flight from Barbados on Monday evening.
They were disembarking through an air bridge at the front of the plane when the nose suddenly lurched into the air and its tail smacked onto the tarmac.
'I was seated maybe three quarters the way back into the plane,' Bovell told her followers.
'And when just over half the plane exited, or maybe a little bit more, the plane abruptly tipped backwards so quickly and so intensely that the tail of the plane hit the pavement of the jet bridge and part of the door broke.'
Her video records an airline stewardess ordering passengers around the stricken aircraft in an apparent bid to right it.
'Very slowly, little by little, move towards the middle of the airplane, cause apparently everything is like it tipped up,' she tells them.
The airline blamed a 'shift in weight and balance during deplaning', and sharp-eyed travel bloggers noticed the front cargo doors already open while passengers in the rear seats had yet to exit.
Her video records an airline stewardess ordering passengers around the stricken aircraft in an apparent bid to right it.
Frightened passengers struggled to stay upright as the plane see-sawed on its back wheels
'We had to strategically exit the plane two rows at a time, take a break, two rows at a time, take a break,' Bovell told her followers on TikTok
No injuries were reported aboard the eight-year-old plane which had just finished its four-and-a-half hour flight from the Caribbean.
And industry experts said that such incidents are not uncommon when aircraft have been badly loaded.
'Luggage is seemingly being removed through the forward cargo door, so maybe a lot of weight had already been removed there, while there was a significant amount of cargo in the rear,' suggested travel blog website onemileatatime.com.
'Passengers disembark front to back, so perhaps passengers weren't moving forward that quickly.
'This was probably the perfect storm in terms of having too much cargo and passenger weight in the back of the aircraft, while not having enough cargo and passenger weight in the front of the aircraft.' "
I am not sure about luggage already being removed from the forward hold, as it does not look like that in the photos, but perhaps that entire operation was finished?
And the TikTok video is not really interesting because it is taken 100% inside the plane, so no sense of tilting is seen at all.
IB
I don't know how accurate any of it is.
"Passenger shows the terrifying moment from inside JetBlue plane as it TIPPED backward at JFK.
TikToker Sinead Bovell was among more than 100 passengers getting off the Airbus A321 from Barbados as its nose tilted into the air
JetBlue blames a 'shift in weight and balance during deplaning'
A passenger on board a JetBlue plane at New York's JFK has shared footage of its terrified passengers after it tipped backwards as they got off leaving its nose in the air.
TikToker Sinead Bovell was among more than 100 passengers aboard the Airbus A321-231 as it touched down after a four-and-a-half hour flight from Barbados on Monday evening.
They were disembarking through an air bridge at the front of the plane when the nose suddenly lurched into the air and its tail smacked onto the tarmac.
'I was seated maybe three quarters the way back into the plane,' Bovell told her followers.
'And when just over half the plane exited, or maybe a little bit more, the plane abruptly tipped backwards so quickly and so intensely that the tail of the plane hit the pavement of the jet bridge and part of the door broke.'
Her video records an airline stewardess ordering passengers around the stricken aircraft in an apparent bid to right it.
'Very slowly, little by little, move towards the middle of the airplane, cause apparently everything is like it tipped up,' she tells them.
The airline blamed a 'shift in weight and balance during deplaning', and sharp-eyed travel bloggers noticed the front cargo doors already open while passengers in the rear seats had yet to exit.
Her video records an airline stewardess ordering passengers around the stricken aircraft in an apparent bid to right it.
Frightened passengers struggled to stay upright as the plane see-sawed on its back wheels
'We had to strategically exit the plane two rows at a time, take a break, two rows at a time, take a break,' Bovell told her followers on TikTok
No injuries were reported aboard the eight-year-old plane which had just finished its four-and-a-half hour flight from the Caribbean.
And industry experts said that such incidents are not uncommon when aircraft have been badly loaded.
'Luggage is seemingly being removed through the forward cargo door, so maybe a lot of weight had already been removed there, while there was a significant amount of cargo in the rear,' suggested travel blog website onemileatatime.com.
'Passengers disembark front to back, so perhaps passengers weren't moving forward that quickly.
'This was probably the perfect storm in terms of having too much cargo and passenger weight in the back of the aircraft, while not having enough cargo and passenger weight in the front of the aircraft.' "
I am not sure about luggage already being removed from the forward hold, as it does not look like that in the photos, but perhaps that entire operation was finished?
And the TikTok video is not really interesting because it is taken 100% inside the plane, so no sense of tilting is seen at all.
IB
While I was at Gatwick until fairly recently, I lost count of the number of reports from concerned U2 Captains about A321s nearly tipping,
235 seats, standard procedure was to load the first 150 bags into the rear holds and any more than that in the front. Standard offload procedure was always to open both hold doors straight away, but unload rear first. Standard procedure was also to always have rear steps and to start offloading punters from the rear first. However, due to staff/equipment shortages this didn't always happen, resulting in the nose lifting, sometimes alarmingly so. In an ideal world, a full ramp team would be in situ for airrival of the aircraft - get the rear steps straight on, belt loader and baggage carts ready at the rear hold and get offloading the bags ASAP.
But it wasn't an ideal world and at the height of summer, the ramp team was still probably just finiishing pushing another aircraft out. By the time they arrived, exasperated dispatchers/cabin crew have already started kicking the punters out through the front jetbridge.
235 seats, standard procedure was to load the first 150 bags into the rear holds and any more than that in the front. Standard offload procedure was always to open both hold doors straight away, but unload rear first. Standard procedure was also to always have rear steps and to start offloading punters from the rear first. However, due to staff/equipment shortages this didn't always happen, resulting in the nose lifting, sometimes alarmingly so. In an ideal world, a full ramp team would be in situ for airrival of the aircraft - get the rear steps straight on, belt loader and baggage carts ready at the rear hold and get offloading the bags ASAP.
But it wasn't an ideal world and at the height of summer, the ramp team was still probably just finiishing pushing another aircraft out. By the time they arrived, exasperated dispatchers/cabin crew have already started kicking the punters out through the front jetbridge.
I have operated B757-300s for a very long time, never been an issue, never known one to have tail tipped and neither the B757-200.
