TAILSTRIKE! Can an aircraft hit the tail?

hi everybody welcome to Metro in general video podcast as always I hope you're doing absolutely fantastic today on the podcast guys we're going to be talking about tail strike why do they happen when do they happen and what is that funny-looking bump at the tail of the 737-800 stay tuned [Music] [Music] right guys in order to understand the tail strikes we are going to have to go back to the design of the 737-800 which I'll do in a second but the first thing that I wanted to ask you it just like in the last episode I want to ask you a question how much tail clearance do you think that the 737-800 has when it's doing a perfectly correct flap one departure all right writing the answer below and I will give you the answer to watch the end of the video so like I was saying the 737 when it was constructed was like I've been mentoring before it was constructed to be fairly close to the ground to be easy to handle for ground crew now the 77 200 and 100 was fairly short and that was the design that was the purpose you know that was the purpose design of the 737 but as the years grew by boeing wanted to stretch the aircraft to enable more passengers to be seated and make it more you know more of a money-making machine for the airlines basically now when you stretch an aircraft and it's low to the ground to start with it means that as it is rotating the tail is going to be closer to the ground okay so the 737 800 and 900 are very susceptible to tail strikes also the longest versions of the 737 and this is why you see at the end at the back of the aircraft the tail of the aircraft that it has a little shoe fitted to it now that tail skid retail shoe is there too you know it's basically put in exactly the point where it's calculated that the tail might hit the runway in case of a tail strike and it's made out of a honeycomb material a crush and crushable material and it has a little bit of a gradient on it okay you will see it's colored both in red and green and depending on how much the tail shoe has been pushed in during a possible tail strike engineering will be able to know approximately how bad the tail strike has been okay that is the purpose of the shoe if you've ever seen it while you've been boarding Croft now risk factors when it comes to tail strikes okay the major the biggest single risk factor for tail struck during takeoff is an incorrect load sheet it is people sitting in the wrong places during during the take-off this is why you're always told to get back to your seat before takeoff and landing or simply the incorrect weight being given to the flight crew on the flight crew not picking it up the reason why this is important is because I'm going to do a specific video about weight and balance calculations later on but what you need to understand is that flying an aircraft is like balancing a plate on your finger so what you want is you want the majority of the weight being put over the the center of gravity of the aircraft okay this is why you will see if the aircraft is not full that most of the passengers are seated around the center of the aircraft and if there's people sitting in the front there will be an almost equal amount of people sitting in the back of the aircraft as well this is because when we rotate we want the aircraft to be balanced we don't want it to suddenly start rotating by itself which it would do if you have too much people sitting in the back but also the weight is very important and that is important because we are calculating our takeoff speeds as in the speed when the aircraft will actually be able to fly now if it turns out that a couple of tons has been omitted by whatever reason and the pilots do not pick it up means that the pilots might start rotating the aircraft before it is ready to fly and when we do so the aircraft of course will just continue to rotate but it will not take take off and eventually the tail will strike the runway alright so that is the tail strike on on takeoff it can also be caused by an improper rotation technique we are supposed to rotate with about two-and-a-half to three degrees per second if you rotate quicker than that then even if the speed is correct you might actually hit the tail before the aircraft has time to get itself airborne trimming during rotation is also risk factor now we don't see that very often but obviously if you trim there's going to be a delayed effect on that and it might cause it to just suddenly pick up during the tape so crosswinds I've done a specific video on that if you check out the crosswind technique both the landing and takeoff videos that are made I've talked a little bit about that as well but crosswind techniques because the fact that you might have a little bit of spoiler deflection because of aileron input might also decrease the tail clearance okay that is tail strikes on takeoff okay now the way that we handle a tail strike on takeoff is depending on if we know about it or not now the pilots might feel that they feel a bump during rotation technique in that case we know that we're not going to climb very high we're just gonna level off do the quick reference handbook secure a checklist and return but we might also not feel it because the aircraft is so long and it might just be a small tail strike well in that case the people who will know about the tail track is going to be the cabin crew the cabin crew are the ones sitting in the back they are trained to listen force for strange noises during the takeoff roll and if they hear something they are likely to talk a little bit too with each other like did you hear anything well I'm not sure yeah they did hear something is sound a little bit strange okay and then they are supposed to tell their cabin chief the number one or the purser that's the same person it's just different terminology the person will then contact the pilot okay now this will all take a little bit of time and during that time if the pilots haven't noticed that they've had tail strike they will be climbing like we normally do at a rate of maybe two and a half to three thousand feet a minute so when the cabin crew does eventually ding us and we contact them and they tell us well you know the cabin crew in the back think that they've heard something during the takeoff well then we will level off the aircraft okay when we take up the QA checklist the curate checklist will take it will tell us to depressurize the aircraft now it does so because they might have become depending on how bad the tail track is there might be some damage to the aft bulkhead and we don't want to pressurize the aircraft basically it's like blowing up a balloon and if there's a damage to it that might aggravate the damage okay so the curator tells us depressurize the aircraft and go can land at the nearest suitable airport the problem here is that if we haven't heard anything and it's taken a while for the cabin crew to contact us we might be up above 10,000 feet the courage assumes that the pilot knows about the tape strike so it doesn't tell you to do to him to descend before depressurizing so you have to use your common sense here so if you depressurize above 10,000 feet we're gonna get a cabin altitude warning we are going to get potentially the masks dropping if you're up above 13,000 feet so what we are telling people to do and this is still going to be up to the captain of course is to possibly descend down to 10,000 feet first then depressurize the aircraft and then nice and slowly descend back to the airport of departure or any suitable Airport the reason you want to descend slowly is because now since you've depressurized the cabin we'll descend at the same rate as the aircraft does and it might become very very uncomfortable for the passengers if you descend very quickly and then you go back in also consider talking to air traffic control yeah as for runway inspection they might find tail scrapes or markings like a paint markings for example on the runway and that is further going to just reaffirm that you've actually had a tail strike now tail strikes on landing them well taste track on landings first of all is much more rare okay a tail strike on landing can happen for example because you've done an unstabilized approach we've been having to hide the sand trade maybe the trust levels has been closed during the approach maybe you had to do a much steeper flare than what were you used to because you're not stabilized and all of that can lead to a tail strike on landing a tail strike on landing is potentially much more damaging for the aircraft and that is because it is likely that the tail will hit the runway before the landing gear does and if it does the tail is going to absorb all of that energy and that is much more than you would during a tail sock on on takeoff so if you have a tape track on landing it's going to be very very expensive repairs and potentially a complete write-off of the aircraft that's how bad it is so other things that might cause a tail strike on landing might be for example a bounced landing you coming in you land a bit too hard the aircraft bounces up now as it bounces up if the trussed up is a close at this point means that their speed is now running off if you don't continue to flare in order to hold the aircraft off I called it enough it in the flare the the tail might hit before the landing gear does so if you are landing off one of those who can probably have to add a little bit of thrust in order for the aircraft stay balanced land nicely and then start with the landing roll now if you decide to go around from bounce landing you have to also be careful because pilots have a tendency to get a little bit stressed if they do bounce landing and then go around and they tend to rotate a bit too quick to get away from the runway you have to fight that urge okay Tolga go around flap fifteen set go around trust and then a nice two and a half to three degrees rotation just like during the takeoff and that will bring you safely away okay there are also some functions to the speed brake that might cause a tail strike on landing but I'm not going to go into the specifics of that there the only thing you need to know is that if you do a bounce landing and you close to trust levels within 10 feet of landing altitude the speed break might come up that might cause an increase in pitch which in itself causes to tail strike so if you ever find yourself in that position then Tolga go around go up and do another attempt right guys that is tail strikes both on takeoff on landing I hope that you like that one I also want to mention like I promised in the beginning of the video the kind of tail strike clearance or the tails clearance you have on a normal takeoff so if you're doing a normal takeoff with flaps one at the correct speed the tail clearance that you will have at the closest point is about 31 centimeters about this much okay the whole aircraft is done rotated and this is how close the tail will be to the runway during normal operations okay if the speed is too low that is going to decrease okay or if you wrote it too quick that's also decrease now with flaps 5 you have slightly more you have about 51 centimeters of tail clearance which is why we use flaps 5 generally if you have a lot of crosswind for example and also if you have a lot of crosswind we tend to use a bit more trust than the minimum needed during takeoff all of that is to give yourself some margins during the takeoff guys I hope you like that one make sure that you get the free mentor aviation app ok you have the links to the app here in the description of the video there's loads of people in there and we are talking a very if there's anything that happens like for example these horrible accidents that have been happening recently I will send out pooches I will tell you all of the information coming in so it's a good way of keeping up-to-date with what's going on or just to go into the chat check out the video hang out with other aviation enthusiasts and just enjoy so get the app now and talk to me and other pilots in there have an absolutely fantastic day guys and I'll see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: Mentour Pilot

Views: 660,206

Keywords: aviation, avgeek, avnerd, Mentour, Mentour Pilot, Flight, Flying, Fear of flying, How to become a pilot, pilot life, pilot view, flight training, landing, takeoff, Tailstrike, Tail-strikes, Boeing 737, Boeing 777, Boeing 787, Airbus, Airbus 320, Airbus 380, Inspiration, best youtube pilot, youtube pilot, Flight school, Mentour Aviation, Inspirational speaker, Pilot, Commercial aviation, aborted takeoff, tailstrike on takeoff

Id: 04WSTEFsncw

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 16 2018