Cathy A330 Hover In Mid Air At Air Show
 

Is this possible, Mods not sure if its ok here

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d16_1320894540&p=1

Don't know I have taken off and then reversed down the runway in a light aircraft its all to do with the head wind.

Thankfully it was a tail wind for where I was going.

The A 330 won't be hovering it will just have a much lower than normal ground speed which will make it look as if it was.

Looks dramatic from the ground, but it's air speed that counts - not ground speed.

I guarantee you he was very close if not behind the power curve. Do you hear those throttles working? An engine failure there would have sucked. I'll bet also that he was very light.

"Cathy A330 Hover In Mid Air At Air Show"
All aircraft that hover tend to do so in mid-air. They can't hover on the ground, can they? This Airbus did not hover.

"LiveLeak.com - 230-ton Airbus A330 Stopping In Midair"
The title of the video is something of an exaggeration - it didn't stop (or hover) in mid-air. It did, however, do a slow fly-by, both in airspeed and groundspeed terms.

:ok:

Top stuff. Flyboy328 took our advice! Slow pass into the wind. :ok:

Is this possible? Hmm...dunno...if I thought it possible i'd have posted a vid of it doing it.....



....oh.

:rolleyes:

More likely to be a 140 Ton 330.

Anyway, after the AF447 tragedy such a display is simply insensitive.

It's raining, it must be Farnborough!

Rgds Dr I

This was at Farnborough, way back, IIRC just before the 330 entered airline service. I was there.

It was a slow flypast, which was accentuated by it's size, but it certainly wasn't hovvering :hmm: At the time of course, we weren't as used as we are today to seeing large Airbii doing this at airshows (and in Bruce Dickinson shows, etc)

The other thing I remember about the display that day was the weather, it was carried out under an Cb!

No wonder they're paid so well at Cathay!

No difference to a seagull into the wind really. What is all the fuss about?

I remember at Farnborough many years ago seeing the late Gordon Corps throwing the original FBW A-300 around and what he was doing was highly impressive in terms of high angles climb and steep turns.

Amazing what you can do with only 2 up and just enough fuel for a circuit.

(about the same era I saw Bill Loverseed do something very un-impressive in a Buffalo)

I also remember an early type Airbus (poss the A340?) almost coming a cropper at Farnborough some years back - curved approach with a very late flare. The pilot in question had to really fight to keep it together on touch down. Can't be a***ed searching YouPrune to see if there's a video.

Like this..... ???

Did demonstrate the structural integrity of the fuselage tho....

Eagle: "No difference to a seagull into the wind really. What is all the fuss about? "

Exactly.. On one of my first days of training (CCR) I noticed a bird doing a 'hover' and asked my instructor (Thanks Tim!) "how is he doing that?"...went into a LOOONG talk about aerodynamics, wind, angle of attack, ground speed AND AIR speed..among other things...very informative...:ok:

Would the A330 crew be demonstrating the famed "alpha max" , though above tree top height this time ?

The original FBW A-300??? :=

Exactly - especially if this was, as mentioned, just before introduction into service.

A big plane will always appear to be travelling slower for a given true speed. First time I lived in a city large enough to see 747s regularly on the approach paths, my impression was they were flying at "dirigible" speeds. Later, of course, I knew better.... ;)

Yes "Pattern" I still get that visual impression today when the "big" birds are overhead on approach and T/O - you wonder how they're still in the
air, but as you state, their airspeed is a match for the smaller craft that
visually appear faster....all good fun though.