How not to land at TGU

[misd-agin]

YouTube - Toncontin Feb 2009 - Risky Landing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJoXMcehrYo)

[misd-agin]

Touchdown point is about 2700-2800' remaining, at 3300' elevation. So net S.L equivalent runway length remaining is probably around 2500-2600'.

[con-pilot]

I used to fly 727s in and out of there. You are right, that was a very poor decision not to go around. I always landed around first 500 feet of the runway. Sometimes the landing could have been described as a controlled crash and sometimes I greased it on.

He floated way too far down the runway.

I actually enjoyed the challenge of landing there, when the weather was nice. :p

[con-pilot]

After going to this;

Impressive but unsafe approach and landing.

thread I realized that was my old outfit. I bet I know who was flying that aircraft. He always used way too much runway trying to impress people with his smooth touchdowns.

(Now why the hell he wants to impress prisoners with smooth landings I'll never know. Once I made a rather firm landing in the 727 and as I walked down the asile to the aft airstair a prisoner looked at me and said, "That was a ****ty landing". I looked at him and said, "Do you really think I care what you think about my landings." :p))

They don't have any 737s any more, it is all MD-80s now.

[TopBunk]

Interesting video.

It would appear that he crosses the threshold at about the correct height but then touches down about 11 seconds later after a prolonged flare. That would equate to a touchdown at about 900 metres (or 2900 ft) past the threshold which is well outside any reasonable point, and more so given the limited LDA. Whether or not he was carrying extra speed is unknown, but as a B747 (and ex B737) pilot what I can say is that a go-around should have been executed.

A known problem in aviation is that of being task driven biased towards success, which can make the go around a more difficult decision.

One can compare this incident, imho, to that of the MD11 crash in NRT recently. In both incidents, it all went wrong at the very last minute, when the natural tendency is try to recover the situation when it should be to throw it away and to try again. The problem is for the human brain to process the information in the 1 or 2 seconds available, having compared it with all your mental models built up through years of experiences and rating it against those experiences and deciding how it fits in against your judgement of the 'safety box'. Another factor might have been the thought of having to fly the challenging approach another time.

That judgement is what we as professional pilots are paid to exercise on a daily basis, and we never know when we will have to make that critical decision and sometimes, like this and at NRT, can get very little time to make it in.

We are all human and fallible. In this case, and that in NRT, the guys probably got it wrong, the difference here is that they got away with it ----- JUST.

[Jdotrock]

YouTube - World's Most Dangerous Airport - Honduras (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-SQBgea0oA)

[Doors to Automatic]

I'd say touchdown is even past 3000ft. They were very lucky to get away with that. Looks like they were carrying a bit of extra speed which they struggled to bleed off.

[bubbers44]

Taca killed a bunch of people in an Airbus going off that cliff two years ago. Only 5400 ft. is available after the threshold and they used most of that up getting on the ground. They are lucky to be alive. It was a charter to return illegals to Honduras. Fun airport but you have to have your sh%t together. It is my all time favorite airport.

[PBD 1]

How pleasant it was to see the Captain taking his time during the taxi back to stand to allow the F/O to get his thumb into the back pages of the QRH to look up the Brake Cooling Schedule! Well done!:D