I'm not a pilot guys, but I would have to say kudos to the pilots for getting the planes down safely under difficult conditions :D

Being a lifelong photographer though, bear in mind that the compression of the super-duper ghetto blaster telephoto lens that is being used greatly exagerates the effect. There appears no forward motion, and shows just the side to side motion. Maybe from the flight deck its not so bad ?

Aircraft are designed for exactly that for crosswind landings. For the last time, at least as far as I am concerned, all of those landings were safe and well within the design specifications that the aircraft were designed and built.

Not to mention, those landings were not, repeat not, "real hard on the landing gears". :rolleyes:

It is quite obvious that you are not a pilot or not an experienced pilot.

I wondered about that comment myself. I don't know about the 757 as i'm not rated on it, but on the 737 we are certified to land without removing any crab with up to 40kts crosswind. It is not recommended on dry runways (but very much recommended on wet runways), especially narrow ones, but it is possible and does not cause undue stress on the landing gear.

Can the moderators move this thread to the techlog forum so that we can have more experts weighing in on these landings. They remained on the runway but the holes in the Swiss Cheese were lining up. Plus it was a pretty dry runway and with that kind of stress on the gears, I wouldn't like to be the one taking over the aircraft for the next leg.

On the 727 you could land with over a 20 degree heading difference from the runway heading on dry or wet runways in a crosswind. I'll have to dig out my old manuals for the exact difference. And trust me, there were many times I used all that was allowed.

Oh, and the landing gear never fell off. :p


(Neither did the front. ;))

There are experts weighing in. There are also amateurs and flight simmers weighing in. It is easy to tell which is which.

Except that the gear has been designed, TESTED and CERTIFIED, to handle much higher loads than produced when landing at the maximum certified crosswind limit.

That it is not recommended on a dry runway doesn't have to do with stress on the landing gear. Just that one can get close to the upwind runway edge very fast if not corrected soon after touchdown. Mind you, that is of course a required advise for narrow runway operations (less than 30m width) which is the limiting factor on our landing performance.

On this video i saw no one approaches the upwind runway edge, rather the opposite.