They ARE heroes.
That is an amazing piece of flying, to keep that big airbound bus from turning turtle in that wind.
Of course, it does beg the question, of exactly how much paint thinner the Air Traffic Controllers were thinking in letting the thing approach.
Truly an amazing example of pilot skill.
I'll bet those guys' sphincters were so tight, you couldn't have driven a pin up 'em with a sledgehammer.
One thing, though: Surely that "150 mph crosswind" is a misprint. That would be a Category 4 hurricane. There's simply no way that footage could have been taken with a hand-held camera in a 150 mph wind. Even a 150 kilometer per hour (94 mph)crosswind is a bit much to believe.
If I were to guesstimate, though, I'd say that was at least a 60 mph gust.
Every report I have including two newscasters talking on CNN speak of "winds gusting to 150 mph."
Not KPH. MPH.
*shrugs*
I am perfectly willing to believe localized microbursts busting downwards, hitting the runway and spilling sideways in the aftermath of thunder-cells, could easily have that high a velocity.
Microbursts are, in effect, mini-tornado's. And a tornado normally spins at speeds in excess of several hundred miles per hour.
Kind of looks like Hillary's campaign....
My ggoooodddd....
(And we gave up trains for this???)
Three cheers for the pilots.
Well done by the pilots..but whether it was a 60 mph, 90 mph, or 150 mph crosswind, the question still bears asking: What the hell was that airship doing in the air at that time with such a dangerous cross wind to begin with???
Good thing I still don't fly...
Anthony
Stupid HALOSCAN... STOP ARGUING WITH ME.
GRRRRRR.
(Trying again to post.)
Microbursts -- which I'm going to assume caused this near crash -- are very localized.
You often don't know they're there.
I'm going to quote from the wonderful Patrick Smith's Ask the Pilot column in Salon, this one published Sept 21, 2007. To paraphrase his opening paragraphs before I get to what I wanted to quote for everyone, Smith is talking of the crash of Flight 262 at Phuket in Thailand, a twin-engined McDonnell Douglas MD-82 trying to land during a storm after a short hop from Bangkok. In the fire following the crash, eight-nine of 130 people died, including both pilots.
Here is Patrick Smith from Salon:
In this space a few weeks ago I described how the maneuver of converting a landing back into a climb is, in the vast majority of cases, perfectly routine. The transition can be abrupt and rough on the senses, but it's perfectly natural for an airplane. I have personally been at the controls for dozens of such maneuvers over the years, in airplanes large and small; they occur for any number of reasons, few of them imminently hazardous. In some instances the airplane will actually make contact with the runway before again lifting off. Even a full-on, unintentional bounce, though it doesn't happen often, is recoverable. Depending on the situation, the crew can opt to save the landing and bring the plane back down, or apply power and climb away. So long as parameters of airspeed and attitude (i.e., alignment and position) are maintained, safety is more or less assured.
But what happened at Phuket was not your typical go-around or bumpy touchdown. The plane encountered highly unstable conditions from which escape was either difficult or impossible. How it got there is the question.
Officials are citing wind shear as a possible reason. "Wind shear" is a frequently heard buzzword in the aftermath of air disasters, but not everybody understands what it means. Allow me to borrow from a previous column:
Wind shear is a sudden change in the velocity and/or direction of the wind. Garden-variety shears are very common and rarely harmful, but a particularly virulent form, called a microburst, can be dangerous. Microbursts are localized, downward-flowing columns of air, typically encountered at low altitudes -- even while still on the runway -- in and around powerful storms. As the air mass descends, it disperses outward in different directions. Planes are not "slammed to the ground," as you'll sometimes read, but can suffer dangerous loss of airspeed and lift if a headwind suddenly shears to a tailwind during takeoff or landing. During the 1970s and 1980s, microbursts were accountable for a trio of tragedies in the United States that helped usher in a new generation of wind-shear detection technology.
The worst wind shears are now relatively easy to avoid, but the technology is not foolproof and the judgment of pilots remains important. Reportedly, the pilots of One-Two-Go had been issued a wind-shear advisory by the Phuket control tower. Additionally, the MD-82 is equipped with an onboard wind-shear warning system. The plane crashed anyway. Why? Apparently the airport's on-site detectors were inoperative, leaving the controllers to provide a less precise caution based on simple wind readings. Did the crew knowingly continue into dangerous conditions, or had they made a sound decision, based on the available information, only to be victimized by a rogue downburst they may not have reasonably expected? Or was it something else entirely? Nobody knows for sure.
As the investigation goes on, the media will continue its condensing of the facts, not wasting valuable space with nuance or useful explanations. We will be told that wind shear "caused" the crash, or that stormy weather was likely "a factor." Indeed it likely was, but lousy weather alone doesn't bring down planes. Lousy judgment during lousy weather is the more precise culprit.
From what I remember about microbursts, aren't they usually associated with severe thunderstorms? It's overcast, yes, but it's a high overcast, and if you watch the video closely when the jet passes over, you can see blue sky peeping through. Plus, the visibility's quite good.
Watch the video: It sure looks to me like the wind is fairly constant, from the point that the camera picks up the approaching airliner. At least, the jet crabs at a near-constant 15-to-20 degrees from the moment it becomes visible.
They got into trouble when they tried to straighten out of their crab/sideslip into the crosswind, that last second before touchdown. And that's gotta be a tricky maneuver in a high wind (it sure as hell is in the flight sims).
Coming in, you can see that the right wing is a bit lower than the left, because the pilot's giving it a little right aileron in addition to lots of right rudder. When he or she straightened out, it looks like they either slightly overcompensated or some trick of the wind caused the right wingtip to come up too far. Tipping to the left like that, presenting not just the hull but the underside of the wings to the crosswind is just like slaloming in 12 inches of powder, you could see that jet shedding airspeed. By the time the pilot regained control, the aircraft was going so slow it almost stalled out.
Sorry to be so long-winded, but the point is, it doesn't look like there was some sudden hurricane-force peak in the wind at the exact place and moment the plane was trying to touch down, just a high, gusting crosswind that made the landing very, very tricky. (The fact that the pilot was having to both sideslip and crab a big passenger jet at that outrageous angle is the best testimony to that.)
I'm not trying to tear down the pilot: That was a damn near miraculous recovery. I'm just saying that -- regardless of what the CNN newsbots may regurgitate -- there's no way in hell that was a 150-mph crosswind.
150 kph/94 mph, that I can believe a lot easier. My guess was about a 60-70 mph gale, and just maybe the wind was suddenly gusting 25 to 30 mph above that in the immediate vicinity of the plane at touchdown.
But of course, I'm not a real pilot: I only play one on the computer. If we have one of the real ones lurking about, it sure would be nice of them to chime in right about now.
150 MPH winds? Even if those are just gusts...jeeez. The weather in the Northern Hemisphere has just been going utterly bonkers of late!
This article claims that it were crosswinds with 90 km/h (56 mph) and has an editor's note at the end that earlier versions contained the 155 mph information.
The first landing attempt was made by the 24-year-old co-pilot and the subsequent maneuver in which the landing was aborted and the plane took off again for a second attempt was conducted by the more experienced 39-year-old pilot.
Now I know that co-pilots have to get their experiences, too, but does it have to be during a storm?
Thanks, Thomas.
It's nice to get something right, once in a while. 
I've been on a plane trying to land in 50mph sustained crosswinds. It didn't tip this much, and the wing didn't touch down, but we were definitely in a similar situation. I am a nervous flyer at best, and this was the scariest thing I've ever experienced.
It was an Air Jamaica flight. The pilot got us back in the air and told us he was "negotiating with the tower for a better runway."
"Negotiating." I guess that's what little airlines have to do.
Air Jamaica pilots are awesome. I've had Continental pilots miss the Montego Bay approach and have to circle around again, getting caught in dead-drop downdrafts. That's pretty scary too. But the AirJA pilots put that down like kittens' feet every damn time.
Now if they could only get their planes to take off something approaching on time from Jamaica, I'd fly them again.
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