But as LSLGuy already noted, it totally depends on the wind direction. A “nose down configuration” only functions as such when the wind is flowing nose-to-tail, as it would in flight. And since this airplane has the terminal building in front of it, that was the one direction the wind was not coming from.
Just a note: This is one big advantage that rotor craft (i.e. helicopters etc.) have over fixed-wing. Doesn’t take too much to secure their rotors. My brother could ‘tie down’ his gyrocopter with just a string…
Yeah, our cargo 146s have a stick up their arse when loading and unloading but our passenger 146s don’t. The difference? The cargo ones can only be loaded from the rear, so the first container will initially be loaded at the tail of an empty aeroplane and then pushed forward, that’s when you risk the tail settling.
Sigh. barring a tornado ,storms are predictable in their wind direction. when I secure a plane (or re-secure) I position it to it’s best advantage. It truly isn’t rocket science. When I belonged to a club we either sent out a member to check on the planes or had the FBO do our bidding.
So you never noticed that a hurricane is a rotating vortex? What do you suppose happens to wind direction as this rotational cyclone system moves through, at different locations relative to the eye of the cyclone?
There can also be significant changes in wind speed and direction as ordinary fronts move through, too.
And I’d still like to know how a nose-down configuration “would have kept the plane in the video planted” since at no time would the wind have been blowing nose-to-tail, unless it was coming directly out of the terminal building that the plane was parked in front of!
- Thunderstorms aren’t predictable.
- Hurricanes are well endowed with thunderstorms.
- Large aircraft often can’t be positioned into wind.
And there’s no capability on a large airplane to put the control surfaces anywhere other than where they end up. Nor to lock them in place once they’re there.
Once hydraulics are off on Boeing and Airbus products the elevators and ailerons will droop as the pressure bleeds off. If spoilers had been up they will slowly droop down. McD-D aircraft are mostly flown by trim tabs and the elevators and ailerons are free to flap in the breeze. Rudders are the same except that they’re mostly unaffected by gravity and instead will be pushed downwind, whichever way that is, opposed only by residual hydraulic pressure, if any.
Trailing edge flaps on Boeing and Airbus products will stay where they’re set, whereas trailing edge flaps on most McD-D products will droop as the hydraulic pressure that holds them up bleeds off. Leading edge flaps/slats on many models will remain where set, but at least some leading edge devices on some models are also held up by hydraulics and will sag as the pressure bleeds off.
Absent hydraulic pressure any freely positioned hydraulically driven surface will be free to move. But at the same time the hydraulic system will behave like a car’s shock absorbers, damping the rate of movement. So stuff will move, but not flap wildly from stop to stop.
The aircraft in the OP’s vid was a cargo plane, and we can’t know whether there was a building right in front of it, behind the camera POV, or whether the aircraft was sitting out on an open ramp.
My airport plays host, daily, to a pair of cargo 757’s, one white with some blue and red, the other white with some brown. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to decipher the owner/operators.
The white, blue, and red 757 has its nose gear tied down with a strap as soon as its engines are shut down. The predecessor 727 had the tail stand, which isn’t available for the '57. The original method, when the 27/57 switch happened, was to use a “U” shaped trailer weighing in the neighborhood of 50,000 lbs. The trailer (lovingly referred to as a “pet rock”) was pushed around the nose gear with a tug, and a large strap passed through the nose gear linkage. The theory is any attempted tail-stand will be stopped by the pet rock and strap. We have been told that is a company-wide policy, and is rigidly enforced with all '57s for that cargo airline.
The pet rock went away in the past year and was replaced with a large amount of concrete in the ramp and a flush-mounted anchor point on the ramp itself, just like a tiedown for a Cessna 152.
The white and brown 757 is not tied down in any manner. Tail-tip prevention is handled by careful loading and offloading of the unit load devices (cargo igloos), staging them at certain points to maintain weight and balance in a nose-heavy configuration.
The ramp folks for the brown airline have mocked the white, red, and blue airline for their pet rock and tiedown system, claiming that Boeing does not rate the nose gear for tension, only compression. They anxiously await a tail-tipped 757 with a nose gear strut dutifully strapped to the ground beneath it, no longer attached to its airplane. I don’t buy it, but I’d love to see the pictures when it’s done.
I have also seen, with my own eyes, a yellow cargo 727 tail tip due to snow. I was very surprised they hadn’t flown it out prior to the storm, but I don’t run an airline. That plane did not have a tail stand installed when it tipped.
Awesome first-hand report by an expert from the field. “Pet rock” is great; hadn’t heard that one before. Reminds me of the pix of the sea lion (?) with his favorite bucket. Just inseparable buddies, the sea critter & his bucket. That jet just loved that rock the same way.
My primarily passenger airline used to have a few dedicated freighters and a few quick-change freighters. They ran a separate airline-wthin-the-airline dedicated to freight. This was mostly back in the 707 / 727 days.
727-100s were especially prone to tail-sitting. Most of the additional length in a -200 is ahead of the main gear, so they’re relatively less tail heavy. Regardless of sub-type the cargo 727s always used tail stands.
We had a policy, used throughout the 30 years we had *passenger *727s of always lowering the tail stairs as a tail stand. Once we parked, the stairs went down before the cargo holds were opened. And they stayed down until the cargo holds were secure for departure.
Once the stairs were down, the stair support struts would lock over-center and they were strong enough to keep the nosewheel on the ground in all but the most extreme misloading scenario.
A google search for [727 tail stand] will show a few pictures of sky-high noses. Oops. Under [727 tail support] there’s one pic of a FedEx 727 with a post under its posterior.
My current employer used to operate some B727 freighters. I wish I’d had a chance to fly one but I was a few years too late.