“The TUI flight from Corfu "moved off the runway whilst landing" at Leeds Bradford Airport (LBA) on Friday afternoon, an airport statement said.”

It always amazes me the way the PR cretins come up with such drivel.

Sorry to intrude, but in the early 1980s I flew (as SLF) out of LBA on numerous occasions, mainly to Glasgow on a twin turbo prop (?).
The locals would have me believe that in adverse wind conditions, traffic lights held road traffic at the end of the departing runway, as a precaution in case the departing aircraft was struggling for height.
I know it sounds far fetched these days, but was there any element of truth in that story ?

On the inside AND outside

And see despite all this careful planning, it still CAN happen to anyone. No profesional crew set off that morning intending on having an incident. You can involve TEM all you want at the planning stage and guess what? That’s not enough sometimes to prevent undesirable states. Press TOGA? Why? On an approach that was undoubtedly stable at the gate, performance calculated for and aware of the current/big picture. Do you really think for one second that they thought this was the likelihood of continuing an approach?

Your attitude absolutely stinks and I’d seriously recommend paying some attention at your next CRM day. In the meanwhile, look at some case studies and that might hopefully start to shift that dangerous attitude of ‘it won’t happen to me’

There but for the grace of God go I. I have nothing but sympathy for the Captain - it could just as easily have been me.

Notable difference in the comments between those who think LBA is just "another airfield" and those (like me) familiar with LBA who know that it can be an utter bastard.

One little quirk is (was) the threshold of R/W 32. It has a (or had) a significant slope so as you taxied on and stopped briefly prior to take off, there was a tendency for the aircraft to want to roll BACKWARDS especially in a strong wind. As a training captain I would always advise catching that with power, not the brakes, which would possible tip the aircraft off the nosewheel.


The media still keeps saying "it skidded off runway". Maybe the term "weathercock", with those naughty four letters, wouldn't get past the censors. There are common species of birds that are sometime blanked out for similar reasons.

Ive flown into LBA many times and its not a pleasant place, careful planning and knowing limitations.

Whoever it was. It happens. Everyone is ok just a bit muddy. There but for etc. please don’t beat yourself up. They’ll fix the jet.

Yep, could have been anyone.

I have limited experience of Leeds, but what experience I have tells me it’s not an easy airport, and one that needs to be treated with respect. Much like Bristol. I imagine those that operate in there all the time will scoff at that, but familiarity breeds contempt.

Hopefully TUI management will be sympathetic to the crew after a bad day in the office.

The problem with heavy rain at Leeds, is that even if you can land comfortably in the 115% Factored LD, the technique for recovery from loss of directional control creates a huge decision problem:

We are supposed to release the brakes and cancel reverse to idle, then get back on the centreline and apply full braking and reverse.

Is the 115% enough to cater for this momentary drop of all retardation until control is regained? Personally I say not. We don’t practice in the sim for it (not at my company anyway) and a lot of captains are not even aware of the required technique (not their fault it’s just not reinforced or covered). Also, the startle factor takes a huge chunk out of capacity and reaction time when it hasn’t been drilled in to the brain.

Whenever I go to contaminated runways (such as the arctic circle) I always apply a massive increment to LDA if there’s a crosswind. The issue of course, is whether we have the balls to offloads bags etc to reduce weight before we depart.

As mentioned earlier, anyone criticising the crew this early hasn’t really been into Leeds in this weather.

It would appear that Joe Petroni has been located:

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....6cee5c091e.jpg

Thanks, Dave. Couldn’t find a detailed overlay…

Hear , hear to that !
I took 73s and 75s into. LBA on several occasions., and treated it with the greatest respect even on CAVOK days. Certainly a very challenging landing in strong, gusting crosswind, pouring rain and wet runway. I remember the TriStar runway departure too well !
And that sloping horizon can be very misleading.

Absolutely spot on.

Before its extension in 1982 runway 33/15 (as was) was only 1650 metres long and the traffic lights at the NW end kept road vehicles clear of the runway end, to protect the overrun area (R33) and road vehicles from jet blast or propwash (R15). Ops into LBA could be quite thrilling - low cloudbase, howling crosswind (no headwind to reduce groundspeed), short runway . . .


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....191eb66a2.jpeg

As a spotter in the years 74-78 and living in Guiseley I was back and forth along the A658 Harrogate Road on a regular basis. As was my Mother who taught at the Special School in the corner of Whitehouse Lane and Scotland Lane whom we accompanied from time to time.

I don't think there were permanent traffic lights, in fact I'm sure there were not. They may have been used temporarily on certain occasions.

There was an incident in the late sixties or early seventies when a Viscount approaching 15 clipped the top of the boundary fence. Nobody was aware until the outbound crew's walkaround found tyre damage.

There were also occasions when the airport sent a vehicle out to warn off people standing on street furniture watching take offs as the jets were running up against the brakes and they could be skittled over or suffer FoD.....

Yes, LBA was like that at the time, before the 1984 runway extension opened. Several UK airports had such traffic lights at the time, operated from the tower, and a couple still do, as the road is regarded as in the runway overrun area. Also avoids propwash/jetblast from departing aircraft departing in the reciprocal direction impacting light vehicles.

Traffic lights on the A road passing the 25 threshold at Northolt as I recall.

Leeds Bradford International airport is amongst one of the most challenging in the UK in adverse weather, its altitude means that it is often shrouded in cloud (often referred to as high speed fog) the bigger problem is the runway alignment is not toward prevailing winds, westerly or easterlies and that is down to its history as a departure airport for 2nd world war bombers at the factory (now warehousing) to the North of the airfield.

The runway dips up and down and in places has a cross slope, a combination of strong winds, cross slope can result in standing water, the aquaplaning speed (9 x square root of tyre pressure) would be below the touch down Vref of the event aircraft.

Looking at the pictures it would suggest that the mud all over the left wing could only have occurred due to full reverse thrust until a full stop, full reverse can lead to control difficulties in strong winds.

The Boeing V Airbus debate has some merit, but only in so far that landing weight on a like for like comparison will result in a Vref about 10 knts faster for the 737 because the tail clearance is significantly less on the 737 than the airbus.

The AAIB will confirm pilot experience levels, Tui have moved a lot of pilots onto the 787 and have been heavily recruiting new pilots onto the 737, the sim centres at Gatwick and Burgess Hill have been full of Tui TR courses (and still are) since Xmas

The winds on the day were generally from 070 degrees, given the runway was 14 and they have gone off to the left, then it looks like control difficulty during reverse thrust, hopefully auto brakes MAX had been selected and they didn't cancel it? very difficult to apply max manual and apply rudder inputs at the same time

Glad everyone was ok.
Best thing they can do at LBA is build houses on it!