Perhaps they should have had this pilot:
Not that being on that plane wouldn’t have had me puckering up enough that I wouldn’t have gone to the bathroom for a week, but there are tons of videos on youtube of pilots sticking landings like this.
I always liked this one.
When the passengers on the leading side have a better view down the runway than the pilot, something is seriously, seriously wrong.
Not always. Cross-wind landings ARE tricky, but trained for, routinely. You want fun, do it in a B-52: the wheel “trucks” can be set up to (as I recall, it’s BEEN 25 years) 15 or 20 degrees off the centerline. In cases where you need that much crabbing for the landing, the jet crosses the end of the runway well right or left of the runway.
If you think it looks scary from INSIDE the jet, try being the Supervisor of Flying, underneath a crabbing jet, with your truck 10-20 feet off the side of the runway on the taxi-ways. . . . (grin)
It’s perfectly normal. I’ve only got about 60 minutes of flight time under my belt and even I’ve done one of these landings (assisted, in a very small plane).
That said the angle was so acute on the Birmingham flight - I know I wouldn’t want to risk millions in equipment and hundreds of lives on it.
When things like this happen, I just pretend it’s a roller-coaster ride. I love roller-coasters.
Ha! I had that about 8 years ago landing at Gatwick. Coming into land and all of a sudden I’m looking at runway. Needless to say I had to prise my fingers out of the arm rest.
I was in a severely crosswind landing at Reagan National about 10 years ago. When we came in, I swear he had the nose of the plane pointed directly at the terminal, but the pilot straightened it out and greased it in as we touched down with impressive skill. I later found out that another flight had several people seriously injured due to turbulence and I whacked my head on the side of the plane a few times myself. Not an experience I care to repeat.
I’ve been in a few pretty hairy landings in Bermuda. One time when I realized where the runway was vs. where the plane was pointing, my boss and I just gave each other a “So this is it, we’re going to die” look. He was in the Air Force and I really wanted him to look a lot more comfortable with the situation than he did.
"The Fast & The Furious 8: Airport Drift"
Yes. While I wouldn’t call cross-wind landings this severe as routine (Salgak didn’t BTW) pilots do routinely train for such things. There are tolerances and procedures for these landings and any pilot worth his or her salt should know straight away when the landing is outside that. That said, it will never cease to amaze me what a skilled pilot can do with a heavy aircraft.
Also impressive? Coast Guard at-sea helicopter operations during heavy seas. These dudes are not paid enough.
You mean Washington National? Yea, when I was a kid I heard some pilots’ association had awarded it the Secret Black Star for airport deadliness.
NOPE
nopenopenopenopenope
I kind of want to see an jumbo jet grind a rail after watching that.
I’ve noticed one’s tolerance for terrifying things goes way down after having a kid.
Five months in, I have about five times as many lights on my and my wife’s road bikes than we had before.
The B777 has a crosswind limit of 40 knots. Looks scary, but it’s done all the time.
Even though they practice them in simulators, stiff crosswind landings must still be a clencher for any airline pilot. There’s a heckuva difference when you’re sitting at the pointy end of 100 tons of aluminum which is about to impact the Earth and the difference between a hairy landing and a crash is what YOU do in the next few seconds.
I’m going to guess that Boeing put swivels on B-52 landing gear to reduce the need to roll into the wind- which could result in the upwind wingtip striking the ground.
I had an experience like this in a Cherokee 6 coming into Skagway, Alaska. Years of flying around Alaska (as a passenger) in small planes in conditions varying from suboptimal to OMG, and that was the one and only time I really thought we were going to die. I didn’t really get scared till I saw that the pilot was scared. I didn’t stop shaking for a full day. That video took me straight back to that feeling.
That’s a pretty cool video. I can see the exact moment when I would have wet myself had I been on board.
