Aircraft hits PERSON on runway!

hi everybody welcome to mentor and yet another video podcast as always I hope you're doing absolutely fantastic today on the video guys we're going to be talking about the horrible incident that happened yesterday in Austin Texas in the United States where a Southwest Boeing 737-700 reported having struck a human being on the runway just after landing now how can something like that happen what kind of security protocols are enforced in order to make sure that that doesn't happen and what can we as pilots do in case we see something on the runway when can we go around [Music] all right so what happened yesterday was that Southwest flight 1392 that went from Dallas to Austin in the United States had a completely normal flight they came in and they landed on runway one seven right in Austin and just after landing the crew reported that they had seen a person and they possibly had hit that person just after landing somewhere in the touchdown zone the aircraft rolled out normally tax it indicates there was no damage as to any of the people on board so any of the crew were the passengers however the left side engine nacelle was found to be severely damaged and later on they found a deceased male person on the runway so how can something like this happen the reason I'm even taking this up as a video is because I was going into aviation Herald and I was reading all of the comments and they seemed to be a lot of misunderstandings around what a pilot can actually see and what a pilot can actually do in a situation like this so first of all you have to understand that we the pilots we will have to and we must be able to assume that the runway we're about to land on is completely free of obstacles that means free of other aircraft free of vehicles and free of airport personnel and unauthorized people all right because there is precious little that we the pilots can actually do when we are in the landing phase we're coming in with a you know a 60 ton aircraft at 260 km/h and the thing that we are focusing on in making sure that this aircraft lands were supposed to be and that we can start decelerating and safely exit the runway that's our job that's our focus and this safety and security is maintained in a couple of ways first of all everyone that is on the manoeuvring area which we are calling you know the part where the aircraft on the new so the taxiways and runways have to be in contact with air traffic control that goes for every vehicle to go through every person and goes of course for every aircraft so in order for you to to be able to move around you need to have clearance to do so and that way air traffic control can make sure that we don't get any runway incursions by vehicles and aircraft for example all of the personnel that is working anywhere on the ramp or closer runway needs to have a reflective vest on and that's gonna be important you know in a while okay in order to secure that there's never any threats or unauthorized people on the manoeuvring area all of the airports are surrounded by high fences but what you have to understand is that these fences can stretch for miles and miles right tens of kilometers because a big Airport has an even bigger surrounding area and these airport parameters are tend to be guarded by airport police that regularly go around make sure to to you know check the fence to see that no one has tampered with it for example and to look for unauthorized people and also in some cases you have video surveillance of these fences so why did I talk about reflective vests done well this incident happened at 20 23 local time in Austin local time of sunset is 2014 at the moment which means that these this flights probably this approach during dusk and the beginning of darkness now as we're coming in we are starting to see the runway the the primary thing that we'll be looking at if I'm the pilot flying for example it's going to be the approach lighting which is lights that are kind of directing our view to watch the runway and then you'll have the papi lights that will indicate whether or not I am high or low on approach and in some cases on some bigger runways you also have a touchdown zone lighting area which is basically lights that's flush into the runway that shows where the touchdown area is you also tend to have a centerline in light indicating where the centerline is so this is what we see right in daylight you will have your peripheral vision you will probably see things roll so if someone is running towards the wrong way you might be able to see it depending on how focused you are and how turbulent it is and how much you're working but in darkness you will not see anything around the runway area you will just see the lights and possibly if someone is working with a reflective vest as we're coming closer and the landing lights are starting to illuminate the asphalt then we might be able to pick up someone running around walking around with a reflective vest but without a reflective vest we won't see them just like if you're out driving a car when it's dark you would just see a very limited area where your headlights are pointing it's the same for us when we coming in we have the main landing lights which is shining down in direction of the aircraft then we have the runway turn off lights that kind of shines out a little bit out to the sides but they're not that strong so as we're coming in over the threshold the landing lights are going to start illuminating the asphalt it makes it easier for us to determine the flare but it's not made to sit and scan for threats around the the runway that's not how it works and it cannot be it would be like you driving your car and constantly scanning the sky for falling things like you concentrate on where the threats potentially are and then you have to put your trust in the fact that the runway the approach is clear right that's why we have air traffic control that's why we have rules and regulations around who can move around on an airport so what about a missed approach done what if you actually do see a person on the runway prior to landing well the fact is that I have made a complete video about how and when we can do a go-around but in short you can execute a go-around which is where you abandon the approach and you know put thrust on and start going around for a new attempt at any point even off the landing until you have selected the thrust reversers so this means that theoretically if you're coming in landing in darkness and you see something further down the runway and you think that this is a major threat and you haven't selected the thruster versus yet you could execute to go around take off again and avoid the threat right but like these pilots reported this incident happened just off the touchdown in the touchdown zone area so this means that this aircraft would have traveled with about 140 knots about 260 km/h they would have just touched down seen the person and then it would have hit them okay they would have had a very very limited time to actually do anything to stop this from happening okay if they would have chosen to go around they probably would have hit the person anyway and if they which we don't know yet if they had started to use reverse thrust which we do immediately off the touchdown soon as we get main gear touchdown we select reverse thrust and as soon as you've done that you're committed to landing in that case there's no choice now if you want to see how our rejected landing looks like from the inside of the cockpit I'll give you an example here so the rejected landing is when you have passed your minimum and you just about land but for whatever reason it's choose to execute the go around here 300 approaching minimums check 200 minimums continue check 150 40 go around 30 slap 15 set go run trusts go run trusted set get up was here eight mentor three six zero going around I love check Allah flops five speed checked flaps five Phillips wants P check tune radio semester proach - and slaps one set flaps up speed checked 1000 - level sure [Music] right so that's what we do in case we have to do go around but like I said in this case it's very likely that they didn't have a choice of a go around or work that even if they did go around it wouldn't have made any difference they would have hit that person anyway so what about maneuvering them what kind of maneuvering can you do want to down the runway to try to avoid an obstacle the fact is that I an aircraft is not a Formula One car it is not built to do high speed maneuvering this is why the runway is straight all right we're coming in with a very high speed 260 280 km/h Landing would maybe 60 tons that's an enormous amount of energy the only thing that we want to do is keep the centerline and start using reverse thrust and brakes in order to decelerate and then once we're down to Texas speed generally around 10 knots or so then we can start making large Corrections as in large maneuvering now we do have the possibility to do a little bit of maneuvering at those speeds that's mainly going to be done by the rudder and by the rudder pedals so if you land and you see a deer for example or in this case a person well then you can make a slight correction a little bit of rudder which is exactly what the pilots in this case said that they did but the point here is that if you make a huge correction as and if you try to avoid this person you put a lot of rudder in well then you could lose directional control of the aircraft completely and our objective during any landing is always to try to safeguard the aircraft to do landing as safe as possible if that means that an obstacle suddenly comes up and we're gonna have to hit it and that's what we'll do you wouldn't try to roll off the runway in order to avoid a person or a deer or whatever it might be that has popped up on the runway that that we just cannot do so in this case I am guessing that the guys probably did put a little bit robbery and try to get a little bit of the centreline softly to try to avoid it but the person still managed to hits the the left end in the cell and as you can see by the way I'm going to show a picture now of the damage that came from the impact so if you are sensitive maybe you can skip this part right there's no gore here but it is you could see where the person impacted the engine and here comes a picture of that so as you can see there's some quite substantial damage to the left hand nacelle and that's understandable it was a male person like a normal male person with a good way maybe around the 80 kilos or so and if you hit something weighing 80 kilos at 260 km/h it is going to cause a lot of damage and obviously it is not survivable by the the person in question so so why did I do this video done well as I was going through our Herald and I was reading about this incident then I saw in the comment sections that was a lot of misunderstandings about what we the pilots can and should do in a situation like this and also what the onboard systems can do so one one comment that I saw was well couldn't they have seen this person on the weather radar and the answer to that is no that's not how a weather radar works first of all when we come in in an approach if we have the weather radar going the it would have said been set to pitch talk about five degrees because what we're interested in using the weather radar for is weather so to see if there's any cumulonimbus clouds and storm clouds of something in the missed approach area or an approach area if we would tilt that down in order to see what's you know ahead of us on the runway the only thing we get is bright red ground returns they've just be big red on the navigation display it wouldn't tell us anything so this it's impossible to use the weather radar for that now another thing that came up was teeka's I made videos about tea cask guys you can go and have a look at that there's a lot of videos on that subject but the main thing here is that in order for tea cast to work you need to be two of two vehicles in this case two aircraft both of you have to be transponder equipped because these two transponders they communicate with each other and the decide well okay if you go here I'm gonna go there that's how ekeus works in short and also teeka's does not give warnings at that low down so if we come in and we have let's say that there is an aircraft standing on the holding point with its transponder activated then what we'll see is a yellow or sometimes red signal on the navigation display same traffic but you will never have any commands okay because a teeka's come on that that altitude would be very detrimental to safety so teeka's obviously wouldn't work because no people have transponders on them and that's not what this system is about okay so I won't really highlight here guys that the victims in this horrible incident it's obviously the victim itself but the family and friends of the victim obviously the crew that's involved no one should ever have to be involved in an incident like this they are also victims in this I feel very very bad for the crew who was involved in this incidence and I hope that they feel okay and also of course the the the airport workers that had to come out and actually find the the body after this person of this which must have been absolutely horrible that's it guys if you have more questions about this about their crop or Airport security there are some things that I cannot talk about but some things that we can talk about and this is why I have created a motivation app so if you want to hear about news stories that breaks like this one and you want to come in and discuss it in a positive and a constructive environment well then get the app it's completely free to download guys you can come in there you can create your own profile with your own profile picture and you can go in and talk about whatever it is that you want having said that I hope that you guys are safe and healthy out there I hope that you take care of yourself have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time bye bye right guys I really hope that you like that if you want more content like that more radiation content well done check this out I hope that you have subscribed to the channel and that you highlight the little notification belt see you inside of the mentor aviation up and have an absolutely fantastic day provide [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Mentour Pilot

Views: 761,583

Keywords: Breaking aviation news, Southwest airlines, Southwest airlines hits person on runway, Aircraft hits person, southwest 1392, Aviation news, News analysis, Mentour Pilot, Mentour pilot Boeing 737, Mentour B737MAX, Mentour news analysis, Sothwest Austin, Aircraft incident, Airport security, How to become a pilo, Pilot life, Pilot view, Cockpit video, Nervous flyer, Nervous flyer help, Nervous flyer how to relax, Nervous flyer tips, Boeing 737, Boeing 747, Airbus 380

Id: 5qm_yEoiZWE

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Sat May 09 2020