DHL Boeing 757/200 emergency in Costa Rica...
 

Evident,y they took off, lost their left hydraulic system and this accident occurred on their return to the Airfield. Looks like they landed fine.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....1e40247a4d.jpg

Hang about- what is Qantas doing at San Jose- doesn't American fly that sector for them?

Hard to say for sure but it looks like he might have been running out of stopping distance. It would certainly explain the smoke from the wheels. What I don't understand though is how they wouldn't have picked up a landing performance issue when they ran the checklist and diverted to somewhere with a longer runway if necessary. I believe they had only just taken off so they should have had plenty of fuel. On the other hand, the B757 does not have a fuel jettison system so I wonder if they were heavy (or even overweight) for this approach?

Pure speculation of course.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....3a1bece74.jpeg
From https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/577598...-014_final.pdf

Mayday call had loss of left hydraulics
 

Mayday call had loss of left hydraulics. Gear doors down, RAT out? Only brakes on one side? Flaps partially down? Challenging situation to be sure.

video https://www.reddit.com/r/aircrashinv...tm_name=iossmf

My thoughts exactly!

The “landing” was fine, the Ground loop at the end into the ditch caused the tail to break. Intentional? Stuck brake on that side from over heating? Who knows…

If they only lost the L hydraulic system they should still have had normal braking, which is powered by the R system. The apparent lack of braking and no reverse thrust on either side might suggest they lost both the L & R hydraulic systems. They might have been left with accumulator braking only, with no anti skid.

Loss of the Left Hydraulic System should cause none of those symptoms. Normal brakes still available, two Hydraulic systems still available. I flew B757/B767 from 1994-2005 and loss of Left Hyd system in the sim was a fairly regular scenario. Run the checklist, check landing performance and plan accordingly. It was never more than a PAN call.

That said, there may be more to come out of this story yet.

Landed with a 10kt tailwind, partial flap (Hyd Sys L) , 3000’ elevation and heavy weight. Not surprising they were running out of runway. Landed Rwy07, wind 250/10. Only circling approach available Rwy25 with a displaced threshold. Probably should have looked at going somewhere else.

The FCOM gives a landing distance of approx 5,400 ft for Hydraulic System Left Inop, good braking, MLW, 3,000 ft elev, 10 kt tail, and 1% uphill slope. The runway length is 9,878 ft.

There should have been plenty of runway available if only the Left Hydraulic system was inoperative.

Landing was fine but from the video it looked that they had only asymmetric braking available which caused the 180 into the ditch. I think it was good airmanship to stick to the nearest, you never know what may deteriorate further. And they got out unharmed, only the airframe was sold to the insurance.

Rushed exit on taxiway Kilo with degraded hyd?
 

Could it be possible that they tried to vacate on the "high speed" taxiway Kilo with the degraded hydraulics? (From what someone posted above, the left sys has the nosewheel steering). We'll see. The good news is no one was harmed

Good landing , rollout good but fast, didn't look like #1 reverser deployed, how do brakes lock, aren't they ABS .
Got it on the ground while there's still some hydraulics left.

So, is that the 9th 757 lost in service? Broke in the same place as G-BYAG

Very lucky there was no fire, full fuel on board, #2 engine ripped upwards from wing going over the ditch, lots of white smoke after the red dust.

They had another 1000m of surfaced area ahead, more likely it was a loss of directional control. Rudder was deflected left throughout the landing roll.

Braking seems fine, going by the skid marks left behind. Seems like the loss of directional control. Not sure why it wasn’t slowing, clearly had anti-skid issues. They had quite a bit of runway left.

DHL Panama.
Their 757s have Pratt & Whitney engines.
Unclear from the video, given that it was filmed from the left side, if they were using the Right Engine Reverser during the landing rollout. Does not look like that they used the Left Engine Reverser. Not very familiar with this engines.
Can see as plausible cause that they might have used the Right Reverser, and did not stow it as the aircraft slowed down to slower airspeeds. Can see that as a plausible reason to explain the loss of directional control the way they did.

On a dry runway there is zero issue with using one reverser and directional control. It’s done all the time in normal ops with a reverser locked out. Unless they lost both left and right hydraulic systems braking will be normal. I can’t remember which ones but some spoilers are inop and if I recall you land flaps 20. Easy to float if your not careful. It did not appear either reverser was deployed but stopping should still not be a issue.

I just had this exact scenario at my yearly checkride. Loss of the left Hydraulic system, run a few checklists, land straight ahead, asymmetric reverser, but a non-event. No nosewheel steering so you’ll need a tow from the runway.

There is or was an item in B757 QRH for loss of left hydraulics that stated: DO NOT USE AUTOBRAKES. Not saying that is the case here but if they did it can seriously impair directional control as A/B can only give symmetrical braking.. A B757 left the runway in LGW (Gatwick) many years ago as a direct result of this, Airtours I think. Basically with asymmetric reverse any yawing moment can be exacerbated by brakes on one side releasing due to increased lift on one wing and this just multiplies, especially if any crosswind (which appears not the case here) and also if for any reason speed brake not rapidly deployed.

Terrey,
Is there reliable information that this aircraft was at a heavy weight?

Thanks.

This bought about the procedure to make sure that the Speedbrakes had fully deployed BEFORE using any asymmetric reverse thrust back in the day, so if the Checklist had been fully followed, that was in the "beware" notes.
In the video, you can see the speedbrakes extended but obviouly not all of them due to the Hydraulic failure

Correct. In fact the speedbrake requirement was in force for the LGW event but that airline omitted that very important point in their own company modified QRH

Shame you weren't there Terrey to save the day . . . . .

Sailvi767,
the nosewheel steering is inop with loss of left hydraulics, so even if rudder trim is used, I’m pretty sure it won’t affect nosewheel steering at all.

Perhaps the answer lies with why the loss of left hyd sys. Maybe whatever took out the left hyd sys also caused a loss of integrity to the right hyd sys or even the right or left bogie's brakes. It's been a while since I worked the 757. My knowledge is a bit rusty.

Whatever happened, if it wasn't for these treacherous 5m. terrain level differences within less than 50m from the high-speed exit taxiway, there would only have been a pretty much intact 757 standing in the mud.
If this would have been a high-speed RTO full of pax, veering off the rwy, these 'slopes' could have killed a lot of people...

Not necessarily - I have had a Left Hydraulic fail on a B757 and retained about 14% HYD in the Left system due to the standpipe. This 14% was enough to retain full control of the NWS and taxi clear of the runway.

As mentioned earlier, the B757 incident at London Gatwick some years ago, where the operator thought they knew better than Boeing and modified their QRH for Left HYD system failure, meant that the ABS was incorrectly selected for landing. The aircraft lost control directionally when THR RVR was selected and the aircraft departed the paved surface then regained it after a while.

It appears similar to this event (no ditches at the side of Gatwick’s runway!).

Not at all what I meant. There may have been a failure in the NWS system that without hydraulic power was causing a right drift. One poster stated that they had left rudder in from touchdown. If that was the case they either had a Nose gear issue or asymmetric braking.

Several more videos in AmuDarya’s linked Reddit page above.

Anybody have a link to a report on the Gatwick incident?

There is this... https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5422f0b6e5274a1317000327/dft_avsafety_pdf_501194.pdf

with an interesting comment on nationwide QRH custom.

An interesting point that may explain part of the rather sudden move to the right,

​​​​​andrasz too
after the stop the rudder is still deflected left,

also interesting too see the complete wrinkle/harmonica visible both before and aft of the wing, which may point to the production break locations, and ripping the fuselage open in the middle of the aft section, could point to wingtip touching ground first (ac pivoting on the NLG) causing the wrinkles, and ripping occurring when the horizontal stabiliser hit the ground, I wonder, quite a big dip there,

Wasn’t there a 757 accident in Guyana two or three years ago where there was a hydraulic problem. Could be an interesting comparison if someone has details.