B737 Slides off Christchurch Runway

[ozziekiwi]

I don't remember seeing this on PPRuNe

From Yahoo New Zealand

QUOTE

A plane has slid off a runway and come to a stop on a section of grass at Christchurch Airport, surprising those on board.
Fairfax reported that the flight from Auckland on March 6 went astray on landing due to heavy rain and northwesterly winds.

Passenger Peter Jacobson, who is also a pilot, told Fairfax that the wind forced the Boeing 737 to land on a shorter runway than usual.


"It felt like a normal touchdown and normal braking, then ... I felt like the plane was trying to turn right, but it was still going straight ahead.
"We ended up on the grass, completely off the runway."


An Air New Zealand spokeswoman told Fairfax that the aircraft “momentarily lost traction” while turning from the runway on to a taxiway to taxi to the gate and “crossed an area of grass for a short time”.


"The aircraft underwent a thorough inspection but required no further engineering attention."


The Civil Aviation Authority is investigating the incident.


UNQUOTE

[quadradar]

I was surprised how long this news took to leak out in this age of Twitter / Instagram etc. :rolleyes:

[IsDon]

Well it did happen in New Zealand.

It takes a long time for a carrier pidgeon to cross the dutch against the prevailing winds.

[OverRun]

Viscous hydro planing. The surface doesn't even need to be 'wet', just damp. The aggregate micro texture has been destroyed. No idea why Christchurch rwy should be giving this problem.

Unless, and surely not, some half-wit recently applied a rejuvenator to the runway surface and destroyed the micro texture and thus the medium-low speed friction.

The Kiwis are normally pretty good at the pavements stuff - I can't believe they could have messed up so badly.

The world of friction and wet runways is being 'wrung out' right now, and we'll be looking at things a bit differently in the years to come.

[framer]

A statement from Fulton Hogan in December stated the company had applied Gilsonite to 400,000 square metres of the airfield at Christchurch Airport so far to help reduce its ongoing maintenance costs.


Is Gilsonite a rejuvenator?

[Australopithecus]

Back in the day, a colleague at QF got a lesson in all weather operations by sliding a 737 into the grass taxiing to the runway at CHC. Black ice was the culprit, and the embarrassed crew were unsuspecting enough to have just a couple of knots more mojo than prudent for the friction levels that they eventually discovered lacking.

In their case a lovely set of furrows ploughed into the soft dirt for all to see, a cup of cold tea, finis. Now of course we have social media and the many internet sites for casting aspersions from a distance.

The only time I got a 737 going sideways (zero friction, crosswind) it took a skilled proctologist to retrieve the seat cushion. Its not a whole lot of fun, and I sympathise with this crew.

[OverRun]

Yes, Gilsonite is a component of several rejuvenators.

If anyone wants to read why rejuvenators are a problem on runways, then this might be instructive:

http://profemery.info/papers/PIARC_rejuvenation_friction.pdf

[Ollie Onion]

Gilsonite doesn't seem to have caused any issues for any other aircraft on that day. There have been rumours circulating about this for quite a few days. I assumed it was rubbish as I thought that there was no way this could have slipped through the medias net if it was real. Air NZ obviously have some great PR people, can you imagine the headlines if this was any other operator.

[jarden]

Is Gilsonite a rejuvenator?

More like a lubricator in this instance!

[tasdevil.f27]

Hobart applied a coating to there runway a few years back, then a 737 ran off the end of it in bad weather. They ended up doing the overlay earlier than they had hoped.

[NZScion]

Interesting, something very similar has happened again, this time to a VA 737 landing at CH on runway 29. There's a blurb about it on Avherald (http://avherald.com/h?article=486306e3&opt=0).

[framer]

It will be an interesting report to read not so much for the VA side of things but for the Airport side of things. I will be very interested in the wind and the choice of runways/ approaches available to the crew.

[clack100]

NZQN has similar standing water issues at present also with water well over 3mm (up to 10mm) in grooves on the runway. Lot's of diversions when the runway is wet.

[scroogee]

Significant works program in play at CH at the moment and for next 18 months or so. 02/20 often operate as reduced length, which may influence runway use/choice.

[OverRun]

My cousin, who knows the ramp handler at Townsville well, said that he was told by the ramp handler in confidence that all the rejuvenator/Gilsonite was subsequently blasted off the runway using high pressure water blasting. My second cousin, who works as a ramp handler at Christchurch Airport, denied that the runway was ever treated in the first place. My third cousin, twice removed, at Air New Zealand, denied that Christchurch Airport has a runway. My fourth cousin blamed the pilots in each case.

[feenix]

Does anyone know which ANZ B737 aircraft it was?

[Chris2303]

Incident: ANZ B733 at Christchurch on Mar 6th 2015, runway excursion on landing (http://avherald.com/h?article=48347677&opt=0)