KC 46 tanker landing at Paris Airshow
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The U.S. military showed up 75 years ago along with the military forces of other nations uninvited.
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Funny, I thought military pilots were meant to be the best trained and much more skilled at hand flying than us mere autopilot dependent civilians. Well that’s what they insist anyway....
Once upon a time, novice BOAC VC10 pilots flew something like 40 landings under training, with plenty of manual circuit flying. Whereas today the emphasis appears to be on SOPs and autoflight systems monitoring, with aircraft largely flying themselves, so much so that the airlines have discouraged much in the way of manual flying skills, deeming them unnecessary in day-to-day flying. As a result , some 'children of the magenta' would be quite out of their depth flying something as simple as a visual circuit.
Some military operations require a higher degree of manual flying, it is true. But emphatically not the type of approach flown by that KC-46A at Paris. Start the final turn with the RW threshold 45 deg behind you, control speed, rate of descent and configuration throughout the turn until you roll out on the centreline at about 600ft 2 miles out fully configured and stabilised at the correct speed. Not exactly demanding. But something that KC-46A crew seemed to be unable to manage.
Some military operations require a higher degree of manual flying, it is true. But emphatically not the type of approach flown by that KC-46A at Paris. Start the final turn with the RW threshold 45 deg behind you, control speed, rate of descent and configuration throughout the turn until you roll out on the centreline at about 600ft 2 miles out fully configured and stabilised at the correct speed. Not exactly demanding. But something that KC-46A crew seemed to be unable to manage.
Start the final turn with the RW threshold 45 deg behind you, control speed, rate of descent and configuration throughout the turn until you roll out on the centreline at about 600ft 2 miles out fully configured and stabilised at the correct speed.
No, beardy. Was that really an instrument approach to sidestep? I admit I only had to do those a couple of times (e.g. Frankfurt easterly sidestepping to the right hand runway for Rhein-Main AB) and at a couple of other major airports and agree that the angles of bank required to make a positive sidestep were probably greater than you would normally need on a conventional approach, but on each occasion we landed in the right place at the right speed...
Out of curiosity, has a sidestep ever been necessary at London Heathrow?
Out of curiosity, has a sidestep ever been necessary at London Heathrow?
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Out of curiosity, has a sidestep ever been necessary at London Heathrow?
Whichever way you look at it. Landing that far down the runway, and that far off the centreline is no advert for great handling skills. The right main gear is pretty clearly over the grass at 50’, and the aircraft not even lined up with the runway. Possibly reflecting that, the last couple of hundred feet appeared very much on the ragged edge of the handling pilot’s ability curve.
That was much closer to being an incident, than it ever needed to be. Even arriving at an air show.
No, beardy. Was that really an instrument approach to sidestep? I admit I only had to do those a couple of times (e.g. Frankfurt easterly sidestepping to the right hand runway for Rhein-Main AB) and at a couple of other major airports and agree that the angles of bank required to make a positive sidestep were probably greater than you would normally need on a conventional approach, but on each occasion we landed in the right place at the right speed...
