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they where doing this in 1966.
Aracer, you're right, the max landing weight can be exceeded in abnormal circumstances However, there's a lot of energy to dissipate (meaning very hot brakes, burst tires, possible brake fires and evacuations) and if you're not careful you can over stress the aircraft. So it's not something to be undertaken lightly.
How is this such a major news story? Plane has fault, lands safely, no-one hurt. 5live was talking about little else all afternoon.
How is this such a major news story? Plane has fault, lands safely, no-one hurt. 5live was talking about little else all afternoon.
Planes are in the news, so every little story will be reported.
And, seeing as this ended well, it has turned out to be [b]good [/b]news - something that I for one am happy to hear about!
The photo of the landing on BBC news websites seems to show the starboard inner engine shut down.
Watching the 1st video, all four engines are running on landing.
[quote=TrekEX8 ]Aracer, you're right, the max landing weight can be exceeded in abnormal circumstances However, there's a lot of energy to dissipate (meaning very hot brakes, burst tires, possible brake fires and evacuations) and if you're not careful you can over stress the aircraft. So it's not something to be undertaken lightly.
I certainly wasn't questioning whether it made sense to dump fuel to decrease the weight in this case - clearly if you're only landing on 3/4 of the normal available gear you want the weight as low as possible (though I'd hope 3/4 of the gear would cope with a full weight landing). Though wobbliscott's explanation also makes sense, and I was aware of the requirements to cope with "expected" emergencies at >V1.
Aviation is something I know just about enough about to be extremely dangerous 😉
Hmmm, didn't really follow wobbli's thinking. Some a/c can't dump to below max landing weight, decisions become more difficult in that case.
What we can say, is that everyone on that a/c got off safely - although I'm staggered by the number of passengers who thought it better ti video/photograph/take selfies than take up the brace position. I must be getting really old....
He hammered that sucker into the runway on landing...it skipped twice before settling.
The speculation on more informed places then this is that there was a hydraulic failure, which also took out some of the flap deployment as well as some of the undercarriage, hence the hard-ish landing. But still speculation.
A hydraulic failure (bear in mind that a 747 has 3 independent systems) would/should cause the landing gear to gravity drop into its deployed and locked position.
A hydraulic failure (bear in mind that a 747 has 3 independent systems) would/should cause the landing gear to gravity drop into its deployed and locked position.
Yes, but (and I'm just repeating from PPruNe) it may have jammed against the door either on the way up or during the gravity deployment. There is some history of this happening before.
Great videos, that was certainly a pretty hard first touchdown, the starboard inner was [i]very[/i] close to the deck and the amount of flex in the wings not what you normally expect on a 747. A B-52 or DC3/C-47, yes; I've watched a DC-3 wings waving gently up and down from a passenger window, quite entertaining. 😀
And there was never a suggestion they weren't going to land. Just how.
Well, unless Branson's worked out how to get his planes to defy the laws of physics, that went without saying!
Aircraft call emergencies every day throughout the UK and beyond, what made this one any more special than any other emergency that happened? Media reaction on events like this is terrible, all it does is put the fear of death into people!