Virgi Tail Scrap
 

Anyone have any further info on the Virgin A340-600 which has had a tail scrape at IAD yesterday. Believe its quite bad ?

Air France Tailscrape
 

I believe Air France did a tailscrape with their A340 last Wednesday at CDG on departure. Some friends took a walk over to view the damage after it returned to the gate from it's return back to landing.

Haven't seen any mention on the PPrune yet!

Virgin A340-600 tailstrike @ IAD.
 

I am surprised that there has been no posting on this one? Anyone know more?

A Virgin A340-600 landed at Dulles last week and hit the tail causing damage to the underside of the rear fuselage. It caused a cancellation and passenger disruption.

The airplane was ferried to Montreal unpressurised for Air Canada to do the repairs as Dulles does not have the facilities to do extensive sheet metal repairs.

It appears that the -600 has tail strike protection for the over rotation, on take off, situation. ie. when the struts are extended and there is lift. But, not in the case of a hard landing when the struts are squashed and the tires compressed. It hit well forward of the tail strike protection device and scuffed through the skin in several places. The structural damage did not appear to be too bad but still very expensive. I understand the landing was a good one at 1.3G which although not severe caused the damage and a nose high attitude may not have helped.

Not been there or done that, but got close I am sure!! There for the grace of etc.

Picks found here:

A Virgins Dirty Bum

:}

Storm in a tea cup. Don't know what all the fuss is about.

Speaking of tail stikes, noboday has mentioned the fact that a Malaysia Airlines 777 had a tail stirke at Zurich On departure on 28th June. Check out airliners.net for the photos of the actual strike occuring.

Speaking of tail stikes, nobody has mentioned the fact that a Malaysia Airlines 777 had a tail stirke at Zurich On departure on 28th july. Check out airliners.net for the photos of the actual strike occuring.

What happened there ! I meant to say the tail strike occured on july 28th in zurich !

Well, 'topman' - we got the (3) messages, but YOU obviously did not see this?

Most assuredly NOT a 'storm in a teacup'! A heavy landing is bad enough, but one which also causes a serious tailscrape will probably have very expensive repercussions involving extensive damage assessment and a specific repair modification programme.

Remember JAL123? After a tailscrape landing, a botched Boeing repair was carried out to the rear pressure bulkhead. When this ultimately failed in flight, 524 people in the B747 aircraft perished.

But WHY did this barely-controlled crash onto the IAD runway occur in the first place?

The A340 kicks a.s.s
 

I've seen footage of Airbus testing A340's, by taking it down a runway: with the tail scraping along the ground. It didn't kick up many sparks, and looked pretty safe. Maybe this goes to show how tough these airplanes are.

If Airbus are bringing out the A380 soon, then surely this is a good sign?

E

When you see the films of the airplanes dragging tails during testing you are most assuredly not looking at a stock aircraft.

They put a large wooden slipper over the contact area, hence the no sparks, the wood is ground away...

Banging the tail is not a nice safe event and results in serious damage to a stock aircraft..

Cheers
Wino

Tailscrape testing.
 

We should perhaps remember that these tailscrape tests are carried out in the take-off configuration with lift being generated by the wings.

The IAD incident was a very different scenario with a 1.3G landing, the struts and tires compressed and possible a nose high pitch angle.

Two very different situations and the later is not one that is normally tested too often.

Any chance this could be evidence of deeper handling problems experienced by 340-600 crews?