Someone had a bad day yesterday...

See, it was pretty wild and wooly as far as the weather went. Moderate turbulence, moderate mixed icing, and when we landed, the wind was 30 degrees off the runway, at 29 gusting to 42 knots.

See how angry the clouds were?





I happened to be taking a little video of an inbound WestJet 737 doing a landing. On landing you can see a little puff of smoke from the tires, which is a relatively normal sight for a large aircraft. It was a little unusual to see a puff of smoke on a wet runway, but I thought nothing of it.




A few minutes later, we see fire trucks go screaming down the field after the same 737. They had blown most of their tires on landing and were disabled on a taxiway.

Here's a link to LiveATC.net's recording of Toronto Tower during that time. You can hear the WJ plane drama at around 8:30 into the recording.



The runway was closed for at least an hour while support vehicles gathered up pieces of the airplane.

I felt sorry for the aircraft that had to go-around and hold in all the bumps and jumps while ATC figured out the new plan of attack re: runways. They ended up changing to the 33's, which would only enhance the crosswind component of the prevailing winds.


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Now about my previous post. Some spirited discussion about the first part, for sure. I have the second part mostly ready to go, but I'm waiting a few more days until I get it all organized - Lisa wants to add a few words, and I'll have that up as soon as it gets done.

Next up: I spent Friday night sleeping under the wing of a Vampire. Yes, Vampires exist in real life...