Aerolineas Argentinas low level flyby on revenue flight

[Captivep]

That is definitely the airport right in the centre of Buenos Aires, not the international one (which is presumably where he was being paid to fly to)...

[Basil]

Not impressed! Who does he think he is? Captain Schettino?

Edited to say: If as reported.

[starling60]

For all we know could this have been previously agreed and approved by AA?

[pontifex]

I seem to remember that an AF pilot tried to the same sort of thing at Habsheim in an A320 some while ago with rather less success. At least this time the guy had his gear down which simplified matters somewhat.

[Sheikh Your Bootie]

I think you will find there was some sort of Festival going on, fill your boots with these flypasts.

The Aviationist » Watch this: How insanely low you can fly a civilian jet liner!

[gcal]

Many moons ago and a DC10-10 with 380 bums on seats + crew out of LGW for MCO and a low level fly past at the Biggin Hill airshow.
No hullabaloo no fuss and the punters got a bit extra for their money.

[pontifex]

Actually he didn't. He thought he knew all about the beast and pulled some cbs he thought to circumvent AB safety protocols that would not let the ac go below a certain height without the gear down. (i forget how high that was.) Unluckily for him those cbs also controlled other functions hence his elegant descent into the trees. It did prove how relatively strong an AB was though.

[Ozlander1]

Originally Posted by wd-15717

But if this really did happen at Aeroparque (SABE/AEP) then there's no scheduled A343 service there -- that is the in-city commuter airport.

Long-haul flights go to Ezeiza (SAEZ/EZE) outside the city.

One thing to say it was just a go-around for fun and then proceeded to land -- another thing to have done it all at a completely different airport.

Well, if you're at the wrong airport, you about have to do a GA.

[sleeper]

I think you will find there was some sort of Festival going on, fill your
boots with these flypasts.





The Aviationist » Watch this: How insanely low you can fly a
civilian jet liner!

Interesting. Notice all military aircraft, even the fast jetjockeys, fly higher than the civilian B737.

[misd-agin]

Fighters were flying wing on the 737. The last place they want to be is tucked in and below his wing at low altitude.

[Aluminium shuffler]

Strikes me as pretty damned stupid and arrogant, approved or not, passengers or not - a little bit of turbulence off a hangar or a bird down an engine and you have no height or time to correct a resulting flight path variation. Airliners are too big and have too little agility/responsiveness to be doing that sort of flypast. A few hundred feet is one thing, but a few tens of feet is another - it looks clever, but anyone with a small amount of wit knows how stupid it is. It's the same as boy racers in their hot hatches and on their bikes.

[skkm]

Actually he didn't. He thought he knew all about the beast and pulled some cbs

Looks awfully like landing gear sticking out the bottom of the A320 in question to me... Air France Flight 296 - Airbus A320 Crash 2 1988 France - YouTube

[HOMER SIMPSONS LOVECHILD]

a little bit of turbulence off a hangar or a bird down an engine and you have no height or time to correct a resulting flight path variation. Airliners are too big and have too little agility/responsiveness

Just remind me how we are supposed to land these things .

[con-pilot]

Noting to get excited about, he was just having the tower do a visual gear check.

[J.O.]

I seem to recall a story of a captain from a certain Asian carrier who was dismissed after conducting a similar manoeuvre at BFI on a delivery flight with a brand new B777. He'd been given the okay by his boss riding in the back but was subsequently axed when it made the news back home and some higher-ups were embarrassed.

It looks innocent enough but I have to wonder of the sensibility of doing it, given the tendency for innocent looking stuff to go viral on social media these days. Wanna play? Go rent a Citabria on the weekend.

[Jorge Newberry]

The pilot's name is , ex boss of the pilots union and thick as, erm, thieves with the government, the same govt that owns aerolineas, so connections like that bring privilges.

[broadreach]

Thank you for the replies, pro and con. It was posted a bit tongue-in-cheek: thirty years ago as a passenger or in a jumpseat I was much more gung-ho; at 68 I'm a bit more conservative regarding my own skin and that of others - for some reason I like more "perfectly safe" layers.

Just to clarify: the flypast was over the domestic Jorge Newberry runway in Buenos Aires and the aircraft then went on to land at Ezeiza. Miami-Ezeiza is what, around 11.5 hours?

[Captain Dart]

Ironic really, the captain involved in the Post #37 flypast had been a member of Cathay Pacific's infamous 'Star Chamber' that fired a group of pilots 'for no particular reason' 'pour encourager les autres'. The 777 had company passengers and a trans-Pacific fuel load on board.

And he ended up fired himself.

[Kengineer-130]

Thats nothing, I flew on a BA737 a few weeks ago, LHR to ABZ, the crew were useless. They got so low the wheels actually hit the runway, and the aircraft had to stop and taxi to the gate to inspect for damage! . Who do I sue for being put in such danger?

[DozyWannabe]

Originally Posted by pontifex

Actually he didn't. He thought he knew all about the beast and pulled some cbs he thought to circumvent AB safety protocols that would not let the ac go below a certain height without the gear down. (i forget how high that was.)

Sorry, that's not the case - for one thing there are no CBs to "pull" that will force the Airbus FBW systems into a different control law. The plan was to override A/THR by holding down the disconnect buttons, but apparently he didn't get around to that (a point obscured by a mistranslation of the report, apparently). There are definitely no protections stopping the aircraft from descending without the gear down - they'll keep the aircraft from stalling or going into a spiral dive whilst airborne (i.e. above 100ft RA), but that's it.

What prevented the Alpha Floor protection from activating was being well below 100ft RA, and the reasons for that start with the crew being incorrectly briefed - they were expecting an approach to the paved runway, not the grass strip, and the charts they were given were incorrectly photocopied - the tree graphics at the end of the grass strip were of a greyscale too light to transfer. Finding themselves off-course, fast and high, the Captain elected to try to salvage the first approach rather than turn back and try again, and in doing so he pulled the throttles back too far, causing the engines to spool down. The combination of ending up lower and slower than the intended profile with the engines spooled down meant that by the time they noticed the trees were an obstacle there was not enough time for the engines to spool up and begin building up airspeed, and the crash was at that point inevitable.

The flyby in this AA case was a very different matter - the profile AoA was well short of demonstrating Alpha Prot, the runway had no obstacles at the far end, and it does at least appear that the manoeuvre was properly briefed and executed - you can't compare it with AF296 in that regard. As has been pointed out, it was far more akin to a scheduled go-around than an airshow flypast.

I did recently find this demonstration (to the best of my knowledge without pax aboard) of a correctly-briefed and performed demonstration of Alpha Prot and Alpha Floor on an A330 - compare and contrast! :

You Tube