I'll never forget the pilot

[Flapping_Madly]

Another of my very few flying stories.

Some years ago. Wife and I . San Fransisco to Detroit. Northwest 757.

Gliding gently in to land. I'd just said to my wife that normally the flaps started to stick up all over the place by now when the pilot came on and said the following (roughly) in the most EXTREME American drawl I have ever heard:-
"Hello folks--we godda prarblum. The wing flaps are not working ad all.
Now you folks are nodda worry yourselves at all. We are working on it and we gonna fly around a while to try t fix it"

There was no screaming but a lot of schreeching if you know what I mean. The woman acroos in front of me started to pray with her hands firmly stuck together.And stayed like that till we stopped at the gate.

The cabin crew lost their smiles but did not seem too bothered.

After flying around for about 15 minutes with no effect--we had a perfect view of the trailing edge the pilot came on and said:- " Hello folks. This is not gonna work so we are just gonna land it. Prarblem is we gonna land very fast. Now I don't want you folks to worry but the aircraft will be surrounded by emergency vehickles when we land. It costs nothing to call em out so we called em out "

And that was it. He certainly did land fast and there was a hell of a turn out of emergency vehickles --they even followed us down the runway someone told us in the terminal who had been watching it all. Probably more exciting for plane spotters than us really.

As we taxied in the cabin crew boss said " for those passengers flying on to (whereever it was) we will not be using this airplane" Almost everybody managed to laugh.

[Dushan]

Aviate, navigate, communicate. The 3 rules of flying. That inludes communicating with PAX. Any landing that you walk away from is a good landing. An excellent landing is the one whenre you can use the A/C agin:)

[eightyknots]

Flapless landing...............no big deal!

[Tony Flynn]

Flapless landing...............no big deal!

Pointless post...............no big deal!:rolleyes:

[scruggs]

Pointless post...............no big deal!:rolleyes:

Another pointless post........no big deal! ;)

[foxile]

Flapless landing...............no big deal!

Depends from which perspective you are looking from.... might have been for some of the PAX, and the emergency services seemed to have left their tea for it... :confused:

[A V 8]

Flapping_Madly,

Great post. I loved your spelling of the American dialect! Glad all was ok in the end.

Flapless landing...............no big deal!

Please remember that this thread was started in the "Passengers and SLF" section and that most people who read/post on this section are exactly that - SLF - and probably aren't as clued up on the workings of an aircraft as everyone else. So, a fast flapless landing and an announcement from the Captain confirming a problem was probably 99% of PAX worst nightmare come true. I'd like to think that you're not aircrew due to the lack of professionalism shown in your post.

Look at it this way:

Best case scenario - plane lands fast and taxys to the stand. Luckily, that's what happened in this occasion.

Worst case scenario - faster than normal approach, trying to get the aircraft on the ground, combatting ground effect and with less drag and loads of momentum, the airspeed will decay slower. Then, depending on the length of the runway and where the touchdown point was, there's the need for lots of reverse thrust and lots of breaking. The flight could end normally at this point, or, with increased braking, the aircraft could overshoot the runway or the tyres could burst - causing the aircraft to veer off the runway. Hence the presence of the emergency services.

So actually - it is a big deal.

[Max Angle]

Flapless landing...............no big deal!Actually it IS quite a big deal. Very fast approach speeds and a/c difficult to land accurately as it is easy to balloon during the flare due to the high speeds, if you float at 200kts it’s amazing how much runway you can use. On my first attempt I seem to remember using the entire runway (simulated of course) at Manchester to get a 737 stopped. If it's just trailing edge that are stuck then it's not such a problem, the slats make a massive difference.