Monday, July 27, 2015

I'm still not sure how he made that work


This is definitely one of the hairier cross-wind landings I've seen lately.  It's a KLM Boeing 777 at Schipol Airport in Holland.





I'd say that was just a mite twitchy . . .

Of course, one of the things that makes such landings possible, rather than disasters in the making, is modern undercarriage technology.  Here's a video of a Boeing 767 making a very hard landing at Birmingham in the UK.  Note how the undercarriage absorbs the impact - it's repeated in slow motion near the end of the video to illustrate the point.





That's some pretty good engineering.

Peter

7 comments:

Mike said...

Add "pilot" to the growing list of jobs I could never do.

Old NFO said...

I 'think' the 777 was getting back on centerline... Probably a gust from his right pushed him a bit. And Oleos and tires have come a LONG way!!!

Rev. Paul said...

I'd still rather see it from the terminal than from a seat in coach.

Uncle Lar said...

That KLM pilot was either very good, very lucky, or both.
It would appear that the plane recovered from a severe tilt and leveled off precisely as the wheels touched down.
Bad hand at the controls or a final surprise gust and that could have gone very wrong indeed.

Mike said...

Rev. Paul,

Amen to that!

Anonymous said...

We used to sit at the end of the long runway at KAMA and watch the B-52s land in high crosswinds. It's a bit like watching a Helio-Courier taxi past in a cross wind: I see it, but I still don't quite believe it. (The landing gear pivots and the nose stays straight.)

LittleRed1

Will said...

LittleRed1:

I'm guessing that the added weight and complexity of the 4 main gear system used on the B-52 is why they aren't seen on airliners. I wonder if there are performance restrictions with their system, that are not obvious?