Story here.
Sounds like the pilot did pretty damn good.
Wow, that plane went a long way on the ground. That’s quite a lucky, and skillful, landing.
Looking at the aerial photo of the airport, the plane actually traveled a very short distance on the ground - looks to be maybe ten lengths at best, so it would have been an exceptionally hard stop. Of course, any distance at all off pavement is a long distance for one of these birds.
It sounds like the plane lost all hydraulics and electronics, so it’s a bit of a miracle that the pilot was able to keep any control whatsoever. If they hadn’t been on final approach and able to just keep gliding, this probably would have been a complete loss of all on board.
Yes, but could it have glided to a safe landing…on a treadmill?
Damn Boeings. Now that they’ve tried hang gliding, you know base jumping can’t be far behind.
I know there’s no particular reason to worry, but I’ll be traveling to Paris next week on an Air France 777. Hope this was a one-off problem.
It’s way too early to make statements like that. Airliners actually glide very well, and from cruising altitude they’ve got a pretty good radius to reach an airport. And I think there’s an APU or ram air turbine to power the hydraulics. Depending on the cause and the location, losing engine power isn’t a death sentence.
Still, damn fine job by this pilot. Engines out on approach, landed short, gear failure, and no fatalities? Yeah, I’d buy him a pint for that.
Just seen the news story - the passengers on board weren’t aware anything other than a bumpy landing had occurred (until after they’d stopped, anyway).
Absolutely amazing nobody was hurt - I’ve seen footage of similar incidents where the plane skews, then rolls or flips and breaks apart - usually involving loss of life. Incredible.
Well, I HOPE the flight crew was outstanding, as it would seem there’s an equally good chance that some kind of crew error might have killed the engines in the first place. I have zero evidence of this, just sayin…
What? You think some ditzy Flight Attendant accidentally hit the big red “Engine Off” button?
Most likely.
I also view these things as proof that even if things DO go wrong you can still walk away unharmed.
According to passengers interviewed by the BBC, at least some of them thought it was just a bumpy landing and didn’t realize there was anything wrong until the emergency slides were deployed and they got a look at the plane from the outside. Now THAT’s a smooth landing under the circumstances!
Actually, what I’ve heard is that the plane lost “power” - that doesn’t mean there was a hydraulic problem. You have the electronics go out in regards to things like navigation and radio and still retain control over the airplane. Also, airliners have axillary power sources for just that sort of occasion so the pilots can maintain enough control to get on the ground. I"ll leave it to the Big Iron pilots on the SDMB to explain the details.
Is this realistic? I know we have a number of pilots and avation professionals on the boards, so here’s a question. What could a flight crew do to cause this type of failure? Ground crews, maintenance, fueling crews, etc. I can see, but actual flight crews? I can’t think of much.
Joke time.
What sound does a 777 make when it bounces down a runway during a crash landing?
Boeing, Boeing, Boeing.
Enjoy,
Steven
It certainly seems premature to be praising the flight crew, when we don’t know what the problem was.
Regardless of how they got into the situation, managing the actual landing/touchdown as well as they did is a demonstration of skill - airplanes in similar situations have crashed, cartwheeled, lost all aboard… What we’re praising (at least what I’m praising) is how well they managed that initial contact between aircraft and ground that resulted in such minimal injuries to those aboard. It could have ended very, very badly and it did not.
Even if they caused the problem, they still managed to mitigate it enough to get everyone home with what seems to be no serious injuries. About the only way I can see this NOT reflecting good on the crew is if the airplane had no issues and the pilot simply missed the runway. If there was a loss of power, regardless of its cause, they still managed to cope with it enough to save their crew and passengers, and that’s no small feat.
Enjoy,
Steven
Right --it’s proven from experience that, as long as the essential controls will operate properly, modern airliners that lose all thrust can glide from operating altitude to a proper landing given favorable weather conditions and an adequate field within the glide radius. Losing the engines on short approach, as is alleged here, would be more dangerous than losing them at cruise, as you’d have a much smaller margin of time and room to enact recovery procedures.
From the description of the approach/impact perception (about “dropping”, “nose high”, “belly-flopped” “like an unusually hard landing”) it sounds like they ran out of airspeed and stalled seconds short of actually making the runway. But then again, the way a lay witness perceives the behavior of the airplane is not necessarily reliable.
But how do you know that they managed the situation well? Perhaps it was a low-risk situation that they managed badly? I don’t think that a pilot should automatically get a medal for a crash landing. Leave that to the accident investigators.
Would a sudden up-gust of wind cause such a stall?
Although I do not fly airliners I am a licensed pilot. Losing power close to the ground and landing short of the runway is a potentially deadly situation in any aircraft. Mechanical/power problems on landing is not a low-risk situation. You have extremely little or no margin for error, you must make choices very quickly and absolutely correctly the first time (there are no do-overs) in a machine that is not operating properly. Granted, a lot of the success here involved lining up properly on an open expanse of grass because once the wheels hit, were ripped off the airplane, and started skidding the pilots weren’t really able to steer, but they had to steer a multi ton crate to the proper line and then make sure it touched the ground at angle that would allow for the safest deceleration possible.
No, a pilot shouldn’t automatically get a medal for crashing. They shouldn’t even get one for landing well in a normal fashion. However, passenger accounts state that at least some of them thought it was only a typical bumpy landing and weren’t aware they’d missed the runway and how seriously damaged the airplane was until they went down the emergency slides and saw the airplane from the outside! Under the circumstances that is an extraordinarily smooth touch down. That would not happen on its own nor would it happen with a clumsy or unskilled pilot at the controls.
IF - and that’s a big if - the flight crew is responsible for getting into such a dicey situation in the first place they should, of course, suffer the consequences of any incompetence or screw ups. Even under such circumstances, however, it will not detract from the fact that they made a very successful landing under such serious circumstances. No deaths? No major injuries? There are airplanes that made emergencies landings with full power available and full working controls that can’t claim the same.