Found this security cam video of a very messy landing by an All Nippon Airways 767. It bounced on the main gear, then came down only on the nose gear before finally settling completely on the runway.
The video shows the damage at 0:40: the fuselage skin forward of the wings has been severely crumpled.
Can this sort of damage be repaired in an economical fashion? I’m imagining a lot of teardown, a ton of inspection throughout the rest of the aircraft, and a whole lot of work to replace the parts that are actually found (or suspected) to be damaged.
Considering overall cost of replacing it outright I would think it would be repaired if it could ferry to a local with the ability to do the work.
In the USA I think it would, but I have no idea if the facility exists.
Repairs enough to ferry it to the right place would be key IMO. Major fuselage is a whole nuther ball game in large A/C repair. Not like an engine swap or something a lot easier to do in the field.
That’s basically trivial damage compared to some repairs they’ve done.
I did the Boeing Tour many years ago. One at one plant guy bragged about a jet in India that belly landed. Crushed the entire bottom of the fuselage. They shipped out the parts and the techs. Some months later, they flew it back to Seattle for final repair and refitting.
The main question is the age of the plane. Not going to do something like that on a really old model. A 767 should be new enough that anything like this is no brainer.
United Technologies handles Air Nippon’s repairs. Normally UTC does ANA’s repairs at their facility in Singapore - I couldn’t find any reference to if they were able to get JA610A to Singapore, or if they rolled it over to a suitably large hangar at NRT.
I interviewed for a job with Boeing AOG (aircraft on ground) group about 10 years ago. In the room I waited for the interview, there were pictures of planes that had been fixed by AOG over the years. Some looked like the plane should have been junked but were fixed. One of the interviewers told me of a job replacing the complete 47 and 48 sections (basically the back 1/3 of the plane) of a 747 in the Phillipines. I decided the slight increase in pay over job inside the 737 factory was not worth all the travel.