Hydraulic Failure???
 

If they did not have specific indications of hydraulic failure that would affect the flight controls, going "all the way" may have been the best option given that it would be daylight on landing in Krakov while landing after burning down fuel in the U.S. would have had to be after dark.

Well once in a while we can speak on a positive note...

Congrats to the flight deck and cabin crew on a perfect job.

Glad everything turned out the way it should... Well, well done!

i just saw it- superb work ! here crew coordination, coolness and the following of procedures seemed to work perfektly ! the flaps seemed to deploy and he nevertheless seemed to keep the approach speed higher to prevent a high nose pitch up and a hard tail strike with gear up landing.

Cpt. Wrona has 15.000 h experience,
fortunately, not only on "fly by wire" aircraft. :)

Well I have no idea of the specifics of teh 767 but unless I can positively establish that the failure will not escalate I would be rather worried about crossing the Atlantic under such circumstances...

Looking forward to more info on what happened here :)

Gimili Glider's capt was a real glider pilot and so were the two captains in the Transat fuel incidents IIRC

What has FBW got to do with this incident? Or is this supposed to be a cheap shot at Airbus? Remember Air Transat 236?

What fantastic role models for our industry are these guys!!

The crew on the Hudson did a fantastic job and I reckon these boys just about take number one spot as much bigger beast and on runway just like normal landing.

This is why our colleagues on the flight deck deserve respect and reward.

Well done the cabin crew for the evacuation as well.

well. the "glider" experience is of course a pure speculation so far- BUT ... having a natural sense for pitch, airspeed and descendrate as raw aerodynamical data is NEVER wrong, regardless what kind of aircraft.

surely the 20 years 767 experience was priceless in saving lives. this pilots will have a big sallary boost or an open door in every other airline- the copilot included :-)

vctenderness,
Whilst in no way wishing to detract from these guys great landing, I would take issue with putting their achievment in the same league as Sully.

He was handed a glider, with no prepared site to land on, & pulled off a textbook deadstick arrival in a bloody river, in the middle of a city.

These guys performed an immaculate gear up landing on a runway, with adequate time to prepare, with full thrust/normal controllability available .

Great performance, but don't sully Sully's justified reputation by comparing the two.

Well done the LOT crew :D but we are really talking apples vs oranges, even if Ptkay believes we have just witnessed the arrival of the new Messiah.

And a warning for the 787 from LOT incident
 

Superb piloting by Captain Wrona and his crew and glad that foaming helped lower fire risk.
However there is a clear warning here for both FAA and EASA regarding 787 potential fire and FST hazards in a similar situation. Ignition temperature for aluminum is 2000 degrees F, but less than 600 degrees F for epoxies used on 787, 580 degrees F to be precise, thus less than 1/3rd that of aluminum.
Even with foaming which greatly helped in this LOT incident, epoxy based fires ignited on both composite nacelles which defines the low auto-igntion temperatures hazard. A lot of runways do not employ foam which only worsens the situation regarding skin friction heating and auto-ignition. This is why the FAA was urgently requested to perform a belly up skin friction heating test as part of a Special Condition, but they refused claiming "simulations were sufficient". In case of of 787 one can anticipate both nacelle and fuselage skin friction fires with consequent much more severe results re fire and resultant FST. They can't say they have not been warned.

vtenderness
 

Now you are going too far. This LOT crew carried out a text book non normal landing and assisted by cabin crew doing their job very well too. Kudos to them all.

However, this incident is in no way comparable to the Hudson A320 ditching-not even close. The LOT crew, as far as we are aware at this time, had an aeroplane with malfunctioning landing gear but was otherwise serviceable. The A320 crew had no thrust and so very very limited control of their flight path.

I would not detract one iota from the LOT crew's skills and teamwork in achieving a great success but please let's keep things in perspective.

According to Flight International, LOT have stated that the centre hydraulic system failed. Whilst not an every day event, it is not that unusual either. I experienced the same (leaking spoiler actuator) on the centre system about 5 years ago.

This requires use of ALTN flap (20 versus 30) and ALTN gear. What will be interesting to discover is why the gear failed to extend on the ALTN system.

On a slight side note about the options available to Sully: The river he chose was on the ebb and therefore very smooth. Had the river been in flood, there would have been a very choppy surface. That does not detract from what he did.

The Polish crew (flight and cabon), with the ground crews and pre-landing support do indeed show where the money goes.

No need to compare the Hudson river case with this. Both are very good examples to the whole industry that we still need real pilots with real flying experience built up from the basics and that experience cannot be replaced by various courses..(MCC's;) or zero to ATPL in a year things;))

outstanding stick and rudder flying!
congrats to the crew! both air and ground crew!

Great job, glad that worked out.

BTW the AF447 FO held a glider license...

this would not have happened on a fbw airbus at least !!!
there is no such "electric" alternate, gear lowering back up is a good old style mechanical thing ;-)

Captain did a great landing,

And he did nothing wrong..

But the engineers might be abit worried, center hyd failure should leave the gear able to gravity fall as long as there is electrical power available, ie if you have an unlikely complete electical failure before the battery is gone lower the gear, the up locks are controlled electrically.

So a center hydraulic failure will not leave the aircraft in a gear up situation.

Boeing paid people alot of money to think this through, and its never happened before, the imparla's an old girl now and this is a first.

767 VS 757 hydraulic systems are very different.

Well done to all the crew.

thank you all for sharing extremely good words about us Poles.
yes we happen to have quite a few brilliant individuals, not only Curie, Chopin, Copernicus, Malysz, Kubica or John Paul II, but lots lots of nameless hard working people in every job in every corner of this planet.
the problem is though we don't work in teams, we don't organize, we are heroes not conquerers.
the whole air traffic in Poland is frozen at this very moment, no one knows when the body of B767 will be removed, all inbound flights are either diverted or on hold. my colleague is now stuck in Rzeszow, no one is able to tell him when and if he will board a flight to WAW.
another example is that from 230 people saved from the plane almost no one had passport with him, so majority had to wait 5 hours standing in the corridor just in front of immigration because border guard won't let them in without papers - as one of them reported.

I hope, 50 more years and maybe we will catch up.
Today, again, kudos to the pilot and the crew, who did their job in absolutely western standard.

I am not making gods out of these pilots.
I just said, perfect landing, a perfect greaser as usual...
I am also not bashing Airbus FbW, but confirming the need of real flying
experience, as mentioned in the above quote.

There are more and more pilots, called by the old foxes from LOT,
"the thumb pilots".

They know only how to use their thumb to turn some knobs on the AP.

As opposite to "stick and rudder" pilots, hailed in the post: