Air Japan/ANA incident at NRT

[Germanflyer]

2 White 2 Read,
Try and read a post sometimes before you so foolishly type!
"Outlived its expectancy"....
Ever heard of that....?!
Happens on long haul flights when TAFs change during the course of a 14 odd hour flight.
My advice.....stay in bed. Cause that's where you should be!
And try not to get airborne. Cause I don't think you ever will. If god forbid your destination predicts rain showers at your destination....!!
Cosy.

[J.O.]

How nice it is to be able pass judgement from the comfort of your easy chair.

[2 Whites 2 Reds]

Bit of an OTT reaction there Gestapo.

The odd rain shower isn't what we're talking about. A typhoon...IS!

Lets review your previously posted info:

Clue number 1

+/- 20kts windshear

Clue number 2

And the turbulence was huge. Moderate to moderate/severe turbulence REPORTED by 4 airplane before me from 500 ft to touchdown. I observed Moderate/Severe all the way down from 500 ft to touchdown

Clue number 3

[quote]And BTW the winds reported on ground were 220 to 250 at 28 gusting 44 kts. That's a direct crosswind for the runway in use-16R.
And the winds were spot on![QUOTE]

Well that's more than sporting and, given the gust, I'd hand that to the left seat to do if he/she hadn't already taken it off me. But not necessarily a show stopper.

Clue number 4

Airport should have been temporarily closed.
I'm not surprised this happened. Odds were that something like this was inevitably going to happen today.

And the Grand Finale

[QUOTE]Only the best pilots made it to terra firma today before 9 or 10 am local time.[QUOTE]

I won't be dragging this down to a scrap in the mud. But clearly you didn't fly a stable approach...and neither did this chap. We've all wrestled the thing to the ground on gusty rainy days (or in my case, nights). That doesn't take "the best pilots to get down to Terra Firma".

The best pilot's would have been hitting the GA buttons when they saw the ASI going up and down by 20 kts at 500ft!

[Hotel Tango]

The aircraft refered to as KLM by B-HKD was in fact an ASIANA B767, HL7264.

ASN Aircraft accident Boeing 767-38E HL7264 Cheju Airport (CJU)

[A380 driver]

Just heard the ANA 767 had damaged his nose wheel strut too besides twisting and cracking the fuselage. Landing was beyond 5g's.
And great job there Gestapo. I tip my hat to you and the likes..
Was around at the time and yes, the weather conditions were anything but flyable. With not too many alternates available at the time of approach, one has to exercise his command authority and justify an approach.
Of course one always has the option to discontinue if the approach gets nasty.
Good job to all those who made it safely and I feel sorry for the ANA crew.
Looked like quite an unstable approach from what I saw on youtube.
Let's see the full extent of the damage once the report is out.
Off now.

[The Dominican]

All of you claiming that because of the turbulence during decend and the gusts at altitude would have chosen to divert, you are a bunch of hypocrites, the numbers that you are interested in are the gust factors bellow a couple of hundred feet, it was reported at +/-15KTS. You are telling me that every time you get a 15 KTS gust report you divert? Give me a break!

[gtseraf]

Could we change the thread name, remove "Air Japan" from it. The flight was an ANA flight operated by Japanese ANA pilots. Air Japan is a seperate operation, mostly foreign contract crews. Air Japan does do a lot of 767 flying for ANA but not this particular one.

In my experience, a landing into Narita on 16R when the winds are blowing like they were on this day can be one of the more difficult and unpredictable I have experienced. If I remember correctly CX badly damaged (wrote off?) an L1011 years ago.

The turbulence and windshear caused by the gusty winds from that direction make for a very interesting and challenging approach.

I'm not surprised this doesn't happen more often. The Fedex MD11 accident was on 34L in similar conditions.

Narita really needs a runway 04/22 to allow operations when the winds are like this.

Let's be thankful we only saw a bent aircraft and no loss of life.

[Fratemate]

I think Gestapo may have hit a bad spot in the weather early on, because it certainly was not the end of the World when I landed (before noon). NH956 normally arrives around 1300 and by then it was pretty much a standard NRT day and one the crew will be used to.

I know the aircraft has Air Japan written on it but I agree with GT, can the title be amended to absolve the fine, upstanding pilots of AJX from doing anything naughty yesterday

[Offcut]

I'm sure that every airline is different but where I work, below stable approach gate (1000' AGL in widebody) Go-around is MANDATORY for the following, -5kt/+10kt TTS, automatic windshear callout, more than one dot high/low. Also, you cannot even contemplate an approach if the crosswind exceeds the aircraft max. (777 = 38kts dry runway). It seems to me that according to Gestapo, several of these conditions would have been met, and known about prior to commencing the approach.

[RobertS975]

This landing did remind me of the more unfortunate landing of the Fedex MD11 at NRT several years ago:

Fedex Plane crash at Tokyo Narita Airport captured Live - Fedex Plane crash in Tokyo captured Live - YouTube

[gettinbumped]

I don't know what the rules are in Germany or Japan, Gestapo, but I'm guessing that there is a restriction against flying into known Severe Turbulence as there is in the United States.

So by (publicly) boasting about your superior airmanship while landing behind 5 consecutive reports of Severe, I'm guessing that diversion or holding wasn't an option due to the Typhoon? I'm assuming you declared an emergency before commencing the approach? If you decide to land with those reports in the US, that would be the only legal way to do it.

[stilton]

Yes, what has caused damage to a B767 would probably have been fatal in the Md11

[FullWings]

I've just been watching the linked ANA video in slow motion and the initial touchdown doesn't look too bad. It's on the RH gear, which I presume is the upwind one if they were landing on RW16 in 220-250 winds. The aircraft then skips back into the air, maybe due to a gust or excess speed then pitches down *significantly*. I can't make out the elevator position but it does seem like that was a pilot input rather than an effect of turbulence. The rest of it looks like a classic PIO from a bounced landing as it touches down the second time nose-first in wheelbarrow fashion. I reckon that was what did the damage.

[DaveReidUK]

I assume it will be repaired and returned to service.

Boeing have done plenty of these repairs on the 763.

Given the damage, it's interesting to speculate whether we would be saying that had it been a 787.

[FireWorks]

So, it was a human error ?? ....pilot

[Flightmech]

Yes, what has caused damage to a B767 would probably have been fatal in the Md11

I wondered how long it would be before you arrived on the scene with your inevitable comment

[keesje]

Nervous SLF:

Sorry to intrude but how do you experts think a 787 would fare in the same conditions?

What Everyone Wants to Know but is Afraid to Ask because usually it ends up with You Just Don't Understand and Boeing has a good safety reputation..

[Wirbelsturm]

Sorry to intrude but how do you experts think a 787 would fare in the same conditions?

Simple answer is that nobody really knows outside of computer modelling.

The problem with woven composite structures is that they are excellent at energy propogation thus leading to stress transfer to just about any point within the bonded structure. Thus an impact at point A will cause energy propogation to point B leading to delamination at point C.

One way to monitor this is to weave small conductive wires into the carbon weave and then use a measured current across the weave. Any change in the return value indicates delamination.

Personally, from my experience, I think the 787 would have fared well in the landing but the investigation for damage would have been long!

[Fratemate]

I don't see how some of you can turn this into a pissing match about different aircraft types and who has got the biggest. Simple matter is if you flare too late, bounce and then chuck the stick forward, the bloody machine is going to bounce on its nosewheel and that's going to hurt it no matter whether it's a Boeing, MD or Airbus. It's also going to cause any aircraft to bend at its most bendy bit and whether it shows up as crinkles or not, the aerial conveyance is going to be buggered.

[DaveReidUK]

I don't think anyone is arguing about the cause and effect. But the point is that a tin aeroplane, having been bent at its most bendy bit, can subsequently be unbent/unbuggered, albeit very expensively, as in the case of those two 767s.

But a 787, on the other hand, subject to the same forces, clearly isn't going to just crinkle prettily - and if we're not talking about replacing frames, stringers and skin panels, what are the implications ?