United 737 Wing Hits Runway on Landing

[Music] hey hello that wingtip did hit the ground but then the pilots went back flying again why would you go flying if you were already missing part of your wing and how dangerous was that here's a full video I like the way she said hey that we hit the ground anyway this is taking place in LaGuardia there's two major airports that serve New York City LaGuardia and JFK I still fly into JFK LaGuardia is too small of an airport to service to 747 but I used to fly in there all the time at the Regionals they were landing on Runway 1-3 which is not that common of a Runway and this is what the approach plate looks like going into Runway one three as you can see at the top it's called The River visual which means the pilots are using landmarks to gauge exactly where they're supposed to be in order to get lined up with the runway you can see we're flying over the Hudson that's the river that we're flying over so we make sure that we're on top of that but then you see landmarks like Empire State Building Statue of Liberty but this is the best part right here when we turn here at zlinger and I hope I'm saying that correct because all these different fixes especially in different cities mean different things sometimes they're the name a famous person that's from there or the sports team that's there or a famous athlete anyways they all have these different fixes that are named after people or things and sometimes you'll say it wrong and then you don't realize exactly what that name or what that fix is supposed to be called until the controller reads it back to you but I'm guessing that's how you say this here at zlinger the plane is going to make a steep right hand turn and that means the people that are sitting on the right side of the plane here are going to have an amazing view all the way in all the way up the city and then this bank as they come down they'll have a view of Central Park and everything all the way down the first time I flew this approach I was the one flying we were I was not expecting to go into Runway one three I was so busy I was I was kind of new when I was flying in there I was so busy with everything that was going on that I didn't even have a chance to look out the window because I was so focused on what was happening flying the plane and getting all coordinated because it's not a normal approach that I was used to flying into when I would go into LaGuardia and the funny thing was is that we turned then we came in we landed it was a pretty smooth landing and I told you before when I used to fly passengers a lot of times I'd like to stand by the door and let people say goodbye to people say get off the plane and I was standing there and everybody that was on the right side of the plane I could tell who was on the right side because they'd say oh my gosh that was the coolest view of the city I've ever seen thank you so much for taking us that way like I had any say so in what we were gonna do but they were like oh my God that was so so cool and I was thinking I was like oh yeah cool glad you liked it I was so busy I never really paid attention to have a chance to look out the window to see how cool it was and and I've actually never seen it as a passenger and the few times that I've done Runway one three I was just focused on what was going on flying the plane I didn't really have a chance to because you're at a low altitude you're getting ready to land a lot of stuff was going on so I didn't really have a chance to just stare out the window not like I normally just stare out the windows or Landing but you get what I mean I freeze framed this picture here so you can see that this is Runway one three as it is on the ground here and the important thing to realize as you look at this picture is that the one and the three are directly in the middle of the runway and that means you as a passenger should never be seeing it like you see here the pilot should be seeing as we're coming in and landing and the main landing gear should be directly over that what should not be over that is the wing tip that means that the rest of the plane the body of the plane is off to the side of the runway possibly Off The Runway in some airports so you should never see Runway one and three like that and never have the wing tip touching it because that means the plane is really far offset to the left the other thing to see is look where the wing starts to hit the ground this is at the very start of the runway now Runway one three is a relatively short Runway it's only about seven thousand feet long but Pilots regardless of how short the runway is we're typically aiming to land a thousand feet down the runway there's markers down there we call them the thousand foot markers they're these big bars that we're aiming to land on and the reason that we do that is so that way that thousand feet behind us is a buffer in case something were to go wrong now if these Pilots were to do what you'll see sometimes general aviation Pilots do which is aim to land at the very start of the runway or on the numbers as we say if these Pilots had aimed to do that and then miscalculated they would have hit well before the runway even started the wing would have actually went down and hit right around here which is a very sharp edge at the start of the runway and that would have been a lot worse because it would have spun the whole plane around it would have been a real mess now you're wondering they've already ripped off part of the wing why are they taking off and going around well my guess is and again I'm not up there my guess is that they made the decision to do the go around before the plane actually took off it takes a few seconds for these engines to gather enough power to Second enough air and actually take the plane back up in the air again so even though we're moving it's not instantaneous on a smaller plane on a propeller plane when you add the power it boom it's instantaneous but on a turbine engine it takes a few more seconds for things to spool up in order to get the aircraft back up in the arrogant bigger the engine or bigger the plane the more spool up time so I'm at 747 if you need to make a go around you hit it to make a go around it still takes one or two seconds for everything to spin back up so you can go in the air so they were Landing short Landing to the side banged everything was going wrong they probably made the decision before that wingtip struck and hit the ground but it took a while before they could get back up in the air again listen as you can hear the engine start to actually pick up power even though the wing is on the ground meaning they already knew it was going to be a bad landing listen here hey hello truthfully they should have done a goat around earlier they waited way too long there was no way for the plane to safely land in the middle of the runway they were short they were in a bank there was a bunch of things going wrong and they should have never even got that close to the ground a go-around should have been attempted probably 50 or 100 feet earlier because the the amount of correction that was going to be needed to get centered was going to be too great and they were going to be at risk of dragging the wing which is exactly what happened they would not have been lined up with the runway there my guess is they had somewhat of a cross run and because they didn't have the correction in they got blown over to the side and then tried to make too late of a correction get in but I'm just looking out the window and I don't have a lot of information and know that but that would be my guess if maybe what was going on now for those of you that are nervous flyers and you're looking out your window and you're seeing something like this going on which I'm guessing will probably never happen in your lifetime but if you were to be this lady and you were to be a nervous flyer and she sounds pretty calm all considering she just watched the part of the wing get shaved off but you would be if if you're a nervous flyer wondering how dangerous is this we're about to take off and part of the wing is missing so here's the thing to know these wing tips aren't really essential when it comes down to the lift that is generated by the aircraft it does help to agree with some things but really they're there for fuel efficiency fuel is very expensive especially jet fuel so by having these winglets out there they're really designed more to make the plane more fuel efficient so there's also stories over the years of military aircraft where they've had large chunks of their wings blown off in combat and were able to continue to fly so the aircraft are designed obviously commercial aircraft are not designed for parts of the wing to be blown off but the amount of lift and the things that these planes can do with a lot of damage to them is incredible and that's because the engineers design things so it's not just right at the very edge of possibly working there's a huge safety margin when it goes into designing these aircraft the wings the engines a lot of redundancies so even if you were to have a chunk of your wing missing the aircraft would probably still be able to fly fine not ideal but you'd be able to come back in and land again there have been cases where there's been an explosion or something that has gone wrong part of the wing is missing and they were able to still fly and land fine so if you were to be looking out your window and you were to see something like this happen your plans probably going to be fine now the whole Wing is missing okay you're in trouble but just part of the wingtip is missing you're not going to be able to fly a long distance because you're going to run out of gas soon but the wing will still be generating enough lift for you to get back around and land again so I wouldn't worry about it too much if you saw it happen again now from the captain if the captain was flying or if the if the first officer was flying here the captain is probably going to take the controls somewhere right around this point and come in and land the plane himself because he is going he or she is going to want to be in control of that Landing if it's windy or this other pilot is now rattled and if you're the first officer and that was the captain Landing the aircraft then what you're thinking is I'm definitely not opening this door until everybody's off the plane because for sure everyone's going to think that I did that Landing so those would be going on from the two pilots perspective but if you are looking out the window and you do see something like this happen don't freak out [Music] thank you [Applause] [Applause] all right [Applause] [Applause] something that I was kind of laughing about here was you'll notice like as they were rolling out and getting ready to exit the runway the plane was jerking back and forth like that and I know from experience what happens is these planes get an auto brake setting and you have to push on the brakes to release the auto brake setting otherwise the plane will just basically come to a complete stop and it's a real tough strategy about how much you push down in order to get the brakes to release so you kind of have to press a little bit hard so if you don't do it smoothly you get the nose of the plane going up and down and it's kind of an abrasive thing so after everything else that was going on obviously this wasn't a passenger aircraft but if you're flying passengers and you do have Auto brakes it's kind of tricky sometimes and you'll feel it as a passenger the plane's rolling out it's smoothly landing and then at the end there's this like jerk and you saw the nose of the aircraft go down take a look at this you see that jerk right there that's probably because the pad is pushing his feet hard on the brakes to release the Auto brakes and so you see that big jerk down the nose so you as a passenger have probably felt that before that's what's going on that's what it looks like from the outside it's harder than you might think there are other ways to do it on a Boeing aircraft they aren't and my Airlines procedures to do it there are there is a way to get it to smoothly release out but they don't really care so much about the smoothness as they do about the plane safely Landing so they don't want you to do this special strategy if you will to make the auto bricks go off smooth because they don't want you to do something by accident and then create an actual problem so they'd rather just have people jerk a little bit obviously you shouldn't be having a drink in your hand or anything like that you'll be happy to be landed especially if your Landing was that wobbly to start with now I've never flown this aircraft but you might be wondering what all these things are in the aircraft these are just different antennas and all kinds of cool stuff and I wish I could tell you you what kind of cool stuff is on there but I'm not cool enough to know those things but that's why it looks different than a normal plane all those things are different antennas and Radars I don't know what they do but I'm guessing I'm guessing it's something really cool and maybe maybe one day somebody who I'm flying that fly Seas can come and tell me when I'm flying them on their plane I promise I won't tell anybody people don't believe I'm a real pilot anyway so even if I did tell them on one of these videos people would never believe me all right let's talk about this playing as a crabs in here you can see the plane is not lined up going directly down the runway the plane is facing us and I'm guessing the runway is 20 to 30 degrees to the right when the wind is not coming directly down the runway the plane comes in at an angle the plane is always going to end up facing the direction of the wind so in this case you can see the wind would be off to the left-hand side of the plane and the runway was going to be off the right hand side because they're going to be turned at an angle and then when the plane is coming in at an angle like this we call it crabbing because crabs don't walk straight ahead they walk at an angle now there's several things that go wrong along here starting with this point right here where it looks like the pilot flares a bit too much and probably has some extra speed because of the amount of wind and so by adding that flare you can see the plane goes up in the air again right before it plops onto the runway now I have done this Landing more than once so I can tell you exactly what it feels like from the pilot or or as a passenger because I've had it happen to both what happens is when you have a very windy day the plane is required or the airline or the whoever is you're flying for usually requires you to carry some extra speed because they don't want you to come in at the normal speed and have that wind go away because then if you lose your wind that's coming off onto your wings you're going to just lose altitude really quickly and it's very dangerous so they want you to carry that extra speed as you get over the runway and then you can pull the power out now here is the problem if you flare too much meaning you pull that nose up too much what ends up happening is the plane now is going faster than it normally really wants 2 is for landing so if you pull it up a little bit too high it goes back up in the air again and the problem is once you get it back up in the air again you can't push the nose forward because if you push the nose forward you're at risk of pushing that nose to hit the ground first you never want that we've talked about that before so you're now at this tricky situation about adding enough power or holding it off the ground to get the mains attached without plopping it on the ground it's a very delicate thing to do once you balloon up like that it's very tricky in some cases at some airlines are probably going to want you to do to do a go around because what ends up happening is the plane now is carrying that energy The Descent towards the runway has stopped so now you're 20 or 30 feet off the Runway and then you're going to be there until the energy runs out and when the energy runs out boom you slam onto the runway and then it's a whole other mess that you're dealing with see here how they go back up in the air and then there's no smoke and then they come down hard and then you see the smoke coming out behind as the wheels have hit the ground the tricky part here is that flare is what makes your Landing a lot smoother as a passenger so as we're descending down that flare slows The Descent rate into the ground so if we don't flare you have a very firm landing on the ground and in some cases I have made the decision when I'm landing on a very windy day or a strong crosswind I don't really care about making it smooth I just want to get the plane safely on the ground in the middle of the runway so I don't drag an engine or or hit a wingtip or anything like that and so I make the decision okay there's not going to be a lot of flare it's going to be a firm Landing but we're going to do it exactly where we're supposed to be in the middle of the runway because if you flare too much this is what happens so you'll see a very firm Landing so sometimes that firm Landing where people say oh must have been a newsbeat pilot that firm Landing is done on purpose they're doing that because they don't want to balloon back up in the air and have a plopped Landing or something more dangerous where you don't land and then the crosswind pushes you off to the side of the runway so there are cases where that firm Landing is done on purpose in some cases it's going to be more firm than you would want it to be but you're trying to avoid this situation right here and then the next thing you see happen is this Wing go down so much well that is the direction that the wind is coming from and that's the next tricky thing that the Pilot's trying to deal with you see a lot is happening at once here the plane went back up in the air both Pilots realized uh oh this is not going to be a good situation now you're dealing with a crosswind the plane is in the ballooned up duck in the air you're probably getting pushed a bit to the side of the runway you need to keep your wings level this is a four engine aircraft you can't really land it in a bank without hitting one of the pods or hitting one of the engines so a lot is happening now when you land and you have a crosswind one of the things you have to do is put your wing that has the wind coming out down you have to put that Wing down because the wind has a bunch of extra lift that's coming on that wing and if you let the wind get under it it will push the right wing down so you have to put the ailerons meaning the control that we have you have to turn it a little little bit like this so that way that Wing doesn't get any extra lift slamming your right wing down the problem is how much do you turn that Wing you do it too much and you get what you saw there you don't do it enough and the right wing hits the ground so it's a real R it's a mix of an art and a science when you're doing these crosswind Landings you can see here that they were trying to get that Wing down but the pilot did too much and almost ended up slamming that left wing into the ground and when all this stuff is going on what happens is the pilots are kind of uh rattled if you will not rattled is like oh my gosh we don't know what's going on but so many things are happening all at once everyone's trying to pay attention to make sure the plane doesn't go off the Runway or something else doesn't go wrong and what happens is you break out of your Rhythm and what will happen when a landing is bad like this and I know because I've done plenty of them or been sitting in the third seat as something like this has happened and what ends up happening is the pilots start talking talking about it right there instead of doing what we're supposed to do which is get the plane parked and then we can talk about it they just start talking about it immediately right after the plane slows down and you get off the Runway and what that does is it breaks up the Rhythm and the flow of all the things that are supposed to happen and typically once you exit the Run Knight one of the first things that you're supposed to do is start what we call cleaning up the aircraft and one of those things to do is we put the flaps up you'll notice here that they're well off the Runway and they're taxing in the park and the flaps are still down instead of getting focused on the things that they really need to focus on which is finishing the flight and parking the aircraft I'm guessing that they're talking about what was going on and that's not really a huge deal but you can miss things and putting the flaps up is not a big deal but you can miss something that is a big deal so just as something that I try to remember for myself even though I'm guilty of talking about something right after it happened is wait get the plane Park once we get the plane parked we can talk about it and sometimes you'll hear a crew member say that like let's just park the plan and then we'll talk about it because you have plenty of time from that point while you're riding in the van or whatever else is going to happen next you have plenty of time to talk about everything that just happened two minutes ago so you wait the extra 30 seconds and you'll be fine if you enjoyed this video check out this one over here I look forward to hearing from you until then keep the blue side up

Channel: 74 Gear

Views: 1,273,065

Keywords: pilot, airline pilot, 747 pilot, 74 gear, pilot Kelsey

Id: AiWBFSABpmk

Length: 20min 0sec (1200 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 19 2023