World's Most Dangerous Plane Landings | Free Documentary

as a plane comes in to learn these are the words we never want to hear but with 80,000 aircraft flying every day our landings do go wrong the pilot really does say Mayday I would come back in immediately some passengers can barely believe they're still alive I can remember thinking I hope we don't pitch into a school or a hospital pilots need astonishing skill at some landing sites we'll take you aboard the planes that were shaken so badly it was time to pray my family very nice that were lashed by weather it's hard to imagine that began to fall apart as passengers watched fasten your seatbelts for a bumpy ride there's turbulence ahead [Music] as a plane weighing 70 tons approaches the runway of 150 miles an hour pilots have to make split-second decisions often if they're wrong there's no second chance the frightening incident that temporarily closed one of the nation's busiest airports the nose gear of a crowded passenger jet collapses on landing at New York's LaGuardia Airport July 22nd 2013 a Boeing 737 with 145 passengers and five crew plows into the runway here triggering a full-scale emergency a passenger records the terrifying moments including flames rising from the searing heat of friction as the aircraft slides for half a mile no one seems to know what's happening they crashed is the plane on fire the man with the camera even makes a joke first time coming to New York a second passenger is filming a smoke starts to enter the cabin this plane is not gonna move suddenly there's the sound of the escape slide inflating it's an evacuation it's not clear whether the smoke means there's a real danger of fire emergency crews are racing across the tarmac everyone's desperate to get out a woman clasping a young child is next to escape [Applause] it's an emergency with all the confusion and tension that brings the nosewheel collapsed police deparment aircraft rescue and firefighting crews responded immediately tell at the 150 people on board need hospital treatment bruised and bewildered they've survived a horrific experience we just went straight down and then just bounced and went all around in the door blew in they finally did open the doors but it took a while the plane was pretty fun did anything so what happened when crash detectives investigate a frightening story emerges pilots have to treat New York's LaGuardia Airport with particular care its runways are only half as long as one at neighboring JFK Airport and there's water on three sides but water your Airport is about 7,000 feet long which makes it a bit short this is a runway that you want to have it touchdown at the proper place investigators homed in on the cockpit voice recorder in the last seconds before the crash and an extraordinary scene unfolds we asked an airline pilot to study the report and then help simulate the flight the recording shows that the plane crash landed after one pilot took control from the other less than 30 feet from touchdown but why at the 5:40 p.m. the plane is nearing the end of a two hour flight from Nashville as they approach the guardia at the more junior of the two pilots is in control the first officer was the one actually hand flying the aircraft the captain remain in command but the person actually maneuvering the airplane in this case was the first officer the recording shows that the captain thinks they're flying too fast and at the wrong angle for landing the worst case scenario is that they overshoot and they're dumped in the water the captain commands her colleague to get the plane down on the runway with the plane less than 100 feet from the ground she orders then she takes control the first officer replies when the captain takes control the plane is just 27 feet from the tarmac and traveling at 200 feet per second it goes catastrophic me wrong as the 70 ton weight smashes down on the single nose wheel the nose landing gear is not designed for the forces applied to the airplane at touchdown it's the main landing gear underneath the wings that are designed to withstand the loads as the airplane actually touches investigators found that when the captain seized control so close to the runway rather than saved the plane she probably caused the crash she lost her job the first officer was sent for retraining to wait as late as 27 feet to say I want the airplane and take it is unusual you're so close to the landing that it probably would warrant aborting the landing the same decision faced the crew of this commuter jet flying in from London its buffeted by storm force winds at Cork in Ireland the wheels have actually touched down when the pilot decides it's too dangerous to continue and at the last minute takes off again but at laguardia it seems the captain made the wrong call as these pictures were taken the pilots were just about to switch control we trust pilots to know what they're doing it's when they're not sure that things get truly scary when analysts looked at every crash worldwide in a 10-year period they found that it's in these final seconds that we're especially at risk and while flying is getting safer more than half of the fatal crashes that do occur happen as the plane is coming in next 400 passengers brace for impact when part of the landing gear on a London bound jumbo jet gets done we have improved starting chanting head down feedback [Music] he was frankly terrifying the latest commercial aircraft can cost hundreds of millions of pounds and use the most advanced gadget rate but when a vital component on this plane didn't work there was no gadget to fix the problem putting hundreds of passengers in danger they were headed here more than 400 tourists had boarded at London to spend New Year in Las Vegas cat sterling also had a birthday to celebrate with her husband Trevor and friends with a lot of money under nice hotel and and just make the most of it there was three of us who attended 40 so let's me go their dream trip turned into a horror story much of it caught on camera more than 400 lives were on the line when the decision had been taken went out and actually after a land assuming brace position brain break it was frankly terrifying we asked an aviation expert to study data from accident investigators and help simulate the flight using the latest computer technology Peter Collins has also studied the evidence gathered by investigators he's a former fighter pilot a member of the elite RAF red arrows and now a test pilot so after analyzing all the data here's a simulation of what happened the planes carrying 200,000 litres of fuel that's 150 tons for the 13 hour flight from London Gatwick to Las Vegas [Music] just after takeoff the first warning sounds there seems to be a fault with the landing gear they're worrying they got wisdom abnormal it was an amble warning it's not an immediate action that they must take as you would say a phial passengers thought there was no cause for alarm there's no sense it was anything significantly wrong but we need to return to Gatwick we just expected well there's gonna be some delay will be back on another plane pretty soon but it's impossible to land the plane right away having just taken off with all the fuel for America they're overweight they're above their maximum landing weight so what they do is they climb to 10,000 feet go over the rest of channel and Justin field so they can come back in to land a gap way when fuel starts gushing from the wings some passengers begin to worry that was fairly alarming with the amount of fuel that was being dipped and lots and lots of it that was quite a spectacle because we were wide by the window finally after 20 minutes dumping more than 100 tons of fuel there at the right weight for landing but their real troubles are just about to begin as the flight crew line up for the approach to Gatwick they release the landing gear but instead of four sets of wheels in the middle of the plane there are only three the Jumbo has two outboard and carriage legs and two inboard and keratosis is the right-hand one that's hung up the worst case scenario is the fact on landing there's a possibility that the wing would drop rim on a jumbo it's a low wing aeroplane and the underslung engines so those engines are very close to the ground to start with especially the outboard one now with the chance that an engine could smash into the ground cabin crew prepare the passengers for a possible crash you assume the position see things go through your mind such as you know do I take my clothes off do I leave them on if this goes terribly wrong what will you be like will there be things flying up and down macabbee war people scream all those things go through your mind it's easy to imagine the passengers fear and confusion and now the pilots struggling to handle the crisis need to call for help a top-of-the-range jumbo jet costs more than 200 million pounds it's 6 million components include electronic warning systems but the electronics can't tell you everything what if this is a false alarm and the wheels are in place after all the crew can't see the undercarriage and there's no camera or other device to help them because you have no underbelly view you don't really know quite where it is that's why you go for a visual inspection they resort to old-school technology and radio ground staff at Gatwick to get out their binoculars and peer into the sky the news isn't good the vital fourth leg is stuck the unfolding drama becomes news all over the world some terrifying moments today aboard a 747 in the sky above the UK a Virgin Atlantic flight from London to Las Vegas discovered a problem with one of its main landing gear plane turn back the pundits even seek advice from Boeing in America they say in effect try shaking the plane maybe the wheels will pop out we had to brace ourselves for what we're going to be fairly incredible movements frankly the try and literally bounced the airplane drop the plane from a distance banking it sharply to the left into the right and dropping their game a chunk of metal about the weight of a 20-inch TV brakes off the plane and plummets 3,000 feet to the ground luckily it doesn't kill anyone landing in an empty field after 15 minutes of the aerial rollercoaster desperately trying to dislodge the stuck wheel they have to admit defeat passengers are told they're going to land with one set of wheels missing you try and stay calm for me try and make sure you know Kat was okay was important then there comes that point in you actually think actually I'll be okay Gatwick the world busiest single runway airport is shut down firefighters and medics are standing by as the plane comes into view the problems there for all to see instead of four sets of wheels there are only three for the 465 people on board the danger is that the remaining wheels could collapse smashing the engines and wing melted fuel tanks onto the tarmac these are enormous loads that are placed on the undercarriage on the legs that undercarriage has to start working from what you might say as a standstill in the air to 150 miles an hour on the ground straightaway we didn't know if it was gonna you know you think the wheels on your side are missing the cabin crew started chanting head down feedback I wouldn't use and extremely now it was it was petrifying it just filled the plane so all you could think of is this challenge the top it was frightened as the plane came down he was getting Marlo and his chat chanting was getting louder and louder texting because you're kind of waiting for potential impact the fate of all 465 people on board depends on what happens in the next 10 seconds [Applause] one tire appears to burst in a cloud of smoke but the landing gear holds up under the enormous strain as it came to a halt there was just this silence this over warming belief from all the pages being true thanks to the skill of the pilots the wing remains just clear at the ground but even now the plane could still tip over getting it balanced and getting all the passengers off takes another two hours investigators discovered that the whole dramatic incident was caused by a mistake during routine maintenance one of the six million components a key part of the landing gear had been fitted incorrectly for Kat and Trevor through the terror they'd been one glimmer of hope there was one really curious feature in all of this we knew that the pilots daughter was a passenger on the airplane if there's one thing that's going to give you a confidence that a pilot is gonna land safely it is when you know that his daughter is on the airplane landings that look terrifying happen every day at our next location a Paradise Island but with an airport like no other in the world st. Barths is a tiny island in the Caribbean less than ten square miles it's spectacularly beautiful and difficult to get to a perfect hideaway a favorite with Hollywood stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and billionaires like Roman Abramovich the Russian who owns Chelsea Football Club but the rich and famous usually arrive by helicopter or by yacht for everyone else this is the only way in and you pray that your pilot knows what he's doing they're speeded up planes IBEW shows what it's like to arrive the landing is so difficult the pilots need special training and must get a certificate proving they've mastered all the hazards including traffic swooping in low over the traffic island if you overshoot then you're in the sea most landing strips are perfectly flat this one makes first-time passengers and probably pilots to gasp in disbelief aircraft have to nosedive towards the runway missing traffic by maybe 20 feet it's one of the most difficult landing sites in the world and easy to get it horribly wrong that guys get a start [Music] this pilot walked away from the crash every day local airline pilots have to put their skills to the test Simba's is probably our most difficult field the approach in the sandbars has a very narrow passage and the winds that come into the valley squeezed between the hills and can either create updrafts our jobs and that can dangerously put aircraft closer to the terrain that you really want it to be the training program to get that license to fly to sandbars leaves nothing to chance think of five landings with emergencies simulated engine failures aboard at aircrafts things like that you try to keep everyone on top of the game next how scary it can get when extreme weather wreaks havoc on an aircraft five miles high then forced to land it's terrifying the noise level is immense you don't know how much damage is being done to the airplane on December the 16th 2014 turbulence hit this flight heading for Dallas Texas with passengers recording the mayhem throughout injuries were so bad that the plane turned back twelve people went straight to hospital one passenger with a broken neck a Boeing 777 similar to this one sets out from Seoul South Korea with 240 passengers and 15 crew as they cross Japan at twenty-seven thousand feet they hit violent opposing currents of air known as clear air turbulence where our turbulence can come up and if it does it comes up without warning it's invisible not only to the pilots eyes but also to the electronics on board the plane this is the turbulence that you might have encountered when you're flying above the clouds thinking that the skies are clear you can just hit a wall of turbulence out of the blue aboard the Dallas bound plane John Michell a language teacher is flying home to see family I captured the most severe part of it I had never been as frightened in my life as I was at that moment amid the turmoil John Mitchell says a prayer I love my family very much [Music] in business class it's just as bad [Music] I never seen like some I fly all the time this is connect passengers have to hold on tight broken crockery is scattered around sell me the ball that here had broke because the turbulence is so sudden heavy food carts are still in the aisles one flight attendant was holding on to a with her hands her feet hit the ceiling of the aircraft she went down and the food cart landed on top of her another flight attendant to my left hit her head on the ceiling of the airplane and broke the exit sign in turbulence that's strong there will be periods of time when the passengers are in freefall literally weightless gravity can't pin them down strongly enough so they they were lift up out of their seats the guy that was behind me bounced out of his seat hit his head on the roof of the airplane knocked himself out the injuries are so severe the plane has to land Tokyo is nearby and already on touchdown medical teams are standing by an American Airlines flight from South Korea to Dallas hits severe turbulence this was one of the worst turbulence incidents in recent times some scientists believe that there's even worse to come we do have good reason to believe that the frequency and strength of clear air turbulence is strengthening on some flight routes there's more friction between the layers of the atmosphere in the jet stream and that's causing an increase in the average strength but also an increase in simply the amount of turbulence in the skies if he's right then flying may become more uncomfortable more scary even as we're always advised better keep that seatbelt fastened next how pilots contend with the world's shortest runway you have to have a plan of action just in case something goes wrong and a plane circles London both engines damaged one of them on fire there was some sort of explosion that was pretty scary there was only one engine left every day two hundred thousand travelers passed through London's Heathrow Airport it's the busiest in Europe with aircraft heading for 170 different destinations on May the 24th 2013 all this was brought to a shuddering halt this is the occasion when the pilot really does say Mayday I want to come back in immediately clear everything out of the way I want an immediate landing the plane with 80 people on board landed with just one engine the other on fire one passenger John Chaplin summed up the experience in just a couple of words experts spent two years investigating we asked an airline pilot to studied that data then simulate the accident it should be a two-hour flight to the Norwegian capital Oslo but immediately on takeoff the large metal engine covers the cowlings are torn from both sides of the plane at first the flight crew don't realize confirmation comes from air traffic control in these chilling words John Chaplin films the left hand engine the insides exposed but still working normally on the right of the aircraft it's even more serious a fuel pipe has severed it's gushing fuel over London at a hundred and twenty liters a minute then suddenly catches fire there was some sort of explosion you could hear some sound and then the cabin was filled with an orange glow that was pretty scary and that of course meant that there was only one engine left what they have is an uncontained fire that's being fed by a pressurized fuel this is starting to become a life-or-death emergency 23 minutes into the flight the pilot announces a mayday he needs an immediate emergency landing that has immense implications in an airspace over London with all the airplanes backed up but if that's what he needs that's what he'll get with the right engine shut down and still on fire it's only this left engine that's keeping them airborne if this one fails there's a real possibility that they'll crash I can remember thinking I very much hope we don't pitch into a school or a hospital even if the passengers were killed that would be a double tragedy in a way John Chaplin remains mesmerised by the damaged engine just outside his window one engine on fire one with no casing the outlooks not that great as they rapidly descend and Heathrow comes into sight can it hold out for just a few seconds more you thinking Palin will be got [Music] [Applause] [Music] seriously twenty-eight minutes after takeoff they're back on the ground but not out of danger the fire crew were assessing the situation to see if it was safest to get out then it all happened very quickly noise right everybody out down the slide and off you go people were sort of as they came off the slides looking back at the aircraft and wondering what what had happened there breaking news story one of the world's busiest airports an emergency landing this morning forced London's Heathrow Airport to shut down both of its runways disaster had been averted but only just it turned out that engineers had been working on the plane the previous night hadn't fastened the engine covers photographs taken coincidentally just before departure show one cover partway open and also the latches in the open position but it wasn't spotted by ground crew or one of the pilots in their preflight checks investigators ruled that the engine cover latches need to be redesigned so that this kind of near tragedy can't happen again flights turn scary when equipment fails art at our next location they're scary simply because of where it is you need special pilots and the special aircraft around here and it has a unique claim to fame Sabre island is in the Caribbean only a short flight from San Bart's but that short flight can sometimes be scary at less than 1,300 feet it's the shortest commercial airstrip in the world it's very short we have a specially designed aircraft so we can stop on a dime once we land Sabre is mountainous so there's nowhere else for the airstrip there are sheer cliffs round most of the island hardly anywhere safe enough to land a boat so for the 2,000 people who live here the air service is their only lifeline pilots make the perilous landing twice a day to be qualified to land and Sabre you have to fly 100-hour as a captain then you are put through the test and go to all emergencies in the process of takeoff and landings coming into Sabre you have to be well prepared you have to have a plan of action just in case something goes wrong so you always prepare for plan it's the only piece of flat terrain on the island and there's not much of it with sheer cliffs at either end the margin for error is practically nil the pilot has to fly in as low as possible and use the wing flaps to force the aircraft onto the ground [Music] this was a good day to land in saber the 20 mile-an-hour wind blowing straight down the runway acts like a break they could stop more quickly and take off more quickly to their feet crashes but remarkably no one's ever been killed here but one thing Sabres never experienced is the invisible terror which pilots fear most of all some terrifying moments on Friday for passengers on board a delta flight from Boston to Salt Lake City they look like they've flown through a war zone and for everyone on board that's what it felt like but it wasn't bullets that did the damage it was hailstones and there's one part of the world that's earned a fearsome reputation let's move over to North America and the United States here there's a part of the United States Nebraska Colorado Wyoming and that meteorologists called Hale alley flight dl1 eight eight nine takes off from boston an airbus a320 its carrying five crew and 125 passengers three hours into the flight they hit turbulence I remember hearing some kind of crashing against metal it was just incredibly loud and I looked up to the side of the wing and started to see flashes the turbulence is just incredible at that way they're at 34,000 feet a little after 8:00 p.m. when the danger erupts from nowhere it's essentially somebody throwing rocks at the airplane windshield may shatter you're going to have engine anomalies the noise and the cockpit will be very loud passengers aren't aware that they're now literally flying blind but some doubt whether they're going to survive at all people were crying people praying I was texting my wife at the time saying hey you know if this is the real thing then you know I definitely love you I love the kids we just send it for a solid minute-and-a-half it felt like we were going down there heading for the nearest airport Denver they burst out of the hailstorm but the pilot still faced an incredible challenge the tricky part was putting it on the ground you need to see the runway to be able to land on it I would have to basically get over the runway chop the power and then just let the aircraft settle down onto the runway [Music] it's only when passengers see the plane that they realize how badly they were hit we were just dumbfounded we saw that the entire windshield was shattered the nose cone caved in there were burn marks and holes on the engine from what I assumed to be lightning the plane was really bad it was incredible what makes Hale so hazardous for pilots is that it can come out of nowhere weather radar cannot see hail very well because it's ice weather radar reflects much better off of liquid water that you see within the thunderstorm pale in an airplane is something no pilot wants and if you do experience it it's very serious it's just a matter of how badly we've been damaged and are we going to divert can we continue hailstones big enough to damage a plane only happen when a storm is so violent that the hail is being sucked upwards instead of falling to the ground they can go up and down a number of times actually each time they're going up more moisture is freezing onto the hailstones so they're growing the danger isn't only in America's hail alley On June the 17th 2015 a Boeing 747 jumbo jet is heading for Seoul South Korea from Detroit three hours before landing over China we've hit something I mean that literally felt like we had another plane or we hit a mountain or we hit we hit something Brian Walker is on a business trip on a route he's flown many times before that was a wall of hail that we were slamming into I was holding the seat at heaven for dear life with my hands turned into claws everything started flying my glasses flew off eventually I got my glasses back thank goodness but they were about seven rows away as the plane lurches towards its destination the nose cone starts to break up as soon as they land Brian Walker documents the damage it looked as though a shotgun had blasted the front part of the nose to the point where there was a whole limit where the wing meets the fuselage on the leading edges of the wings there's a lot of scoring and if you notice the hub that's inside the engine nacelle is beat up the damage was so extensive that the 26 year old plane was retired from service I've flown enough and been through enough turbulence where this is the most unbelievable thing I've been through coin flipper could have gone the other way my remains could be somewhere in the desert in China coming up the propeller blade that came through the aircraft window what to do when a plane is headed straight at your car if you see the plane in your rear-view mirror get out of the way and we make some real scary landing fanatics kind of a surprise how big they are [Music] some landings look so scary it's hard to imagine that anyone could walk away in this case remarkably all the passengers escaped with only minor injuries but the accident provided a chilling foretaste of what would happen seven years later in Canada the same type of plane a de Havilland - eight is coming in to land at Edmonton Airport just after touchdown [Music] and here's where fate intervened one of the plane's propellers has broken off and sliced into the cabin the prop came in and then the interior of the plane came down smacked me out the guy was sitting with said I just dropped he thought I had died when I came to I could smell smoke and whatnot and people were screaming and the flight staff was yelling at me to get off the plane investigators discovered that a tire had burst the rim of the wheel dug into the tarmac and collapsed the landing gear Cristina Carrillo suffered concussion from the debris and everyone else escaped unhurt the propeller it's estimated missed her by two inches I am really lucky that I wasn't in a different position to have gotten hit from a different part or something but yeah it was the whole crop but sticking through my window [Music] scary landings can be fun just provided you're not on the plane some people make a hobby of seeking out the lowest loudest landing then stand in the way Europe's top spot is the Greek island of skiathos oh yes [Music] but the most famous most notorious venue is the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten it's kind of a surprise how big they are it's huge and it's loud and you don't realize how much wind is blowing underneath it the runway is only two thirds the length of Heathrow that takes the same sized planes that means they have to land as close to the start of the runway as possible and come in love plane spotters travel from all over the world to get this close to their favorite aircraft and it's the perfect spot to experience the power of a jet plane engine we're waiting now for one to take off we want to be a behind it the jumbo jet that calls here twice a week is the one the fans love best that's the awesome power that's needed to lift more than 300 tons of aircraft into the sky said Martin and skiathos are certainly two of the world's more unusual airports but they come in all shapes and sizes in fact there are 42,000 of them dotted around the globe the United States alone has 14,000 airports art as our last scary landing demonstrates sometimes there isn't one near when you really need it this was the scene on the traffic monitor one quiet Sunday on the u.s. northeast coast nothing out of the ordinary until [Music] it was a July 12th at 1012 a.m. on a state highway route 72 which is a major artery to Long Beach Island today Simonis is a skydiving instructor and passionate about the sport a couple of years ago even taught his mother to skydive but in 2015 he was on a tuition flight when things went very wrong there were four other people on this skydiving trip the pilot another instructor and two peoples it happened in the morning because later in a day all the beach traffic goes home it would have been much worse all that's been recorded of the epic flight is this clip from the CCTV so Ted ass helped our computer experts to depict what really happened there at 4,000 feet over the ocean when suddenly we all know right away wasn't good when you start to think what your options are but isn't it obvious they've all got their skydiving parachutes I suggested that option we got ready to jump actually really quick but we're still over the water so we decided to stay in the blank now the pilot has to decide where to put the plane down he can only glide for a short time we have water and a lot of pine trees so the options were limited and that's how they came to choose highway 72 to the surprise of the motorists already on it the road was the best option in a situation if you see the plane in your rearview mirror get out of the way in an emergency situation you do what you have to do so anyone that's trying to protect and preserve light there's going to trump any other laws that we may have [Music] so they escaped with their lives and they didn't get a ticket either it wasn't me it was the pilot who did a great job and of course luck is a big part the universe had a different plan for us that day 10 million people fly every day and in the overwhelming majority of cases 10 million people safely land even when there is a scary landing it is possible to walk away because remember in all that you've just seen scary yes but nobody died [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Free Documentary

Views: 924,951

Rating: 4.8137212 out of 5

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, worlds worst flights, scary flights, dangerous flights, scary landings, worst flights, plane fail, plane failure, worlds scariest flights, terrifying flights, most terrifying landings, plane malfunction, airplane failure, aeroplane failure, plane crash, worst plane crashes, turbulence, flights with bad turbulence, airplane crash, terrifying landing, terrifying plane landings, plane landings, scary plane landings

Id: _YB49homndE

Length: 45min 21sec (2721 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020