Wednesday, November 26, 2008

It's video day today!

First we have a go-around in a large jet. I have posted other go-arounds before, but this one is a new one so I'm gonna add it to the collection. The one-line description says "SATA aborted crosswind landing in Ponta Delgada airport, Sao Miguel Island, Azores"




Now this one is a recent landing by a Cessna 310 with bad nose gear. The video quality is great, so that's cool too. I don't know if I would have feathered both engines before touching down - you never know if you'll need to go-around - but once the pilot has feathered the engines, watch as he/she hits the starter motor a few times to move the propellors to a horizontal position, where they are less likely to be damaged by the gear-up landing. I thought that being able to do that while in the flare was pretty slick.





The details on that one:

"AN NUYS AIRPORT, Calif. -- A small plane with a dangling nose gear glided to a safe landing today at Van Nuys Airport and both people aboard appear uninjured.
The twin-engine Cessna 310 was heading from the San Fernando Valley airport to Camarillo when the pilot realized the nose gear had only partially deployed and decided to turn back."

Whaddaya think? I'd personally rather sacrifice the engines to leave myself more options, but then again I don't pay the maintenance bills on our plane...

7 comments:

Frank Ch. Eigler said...

I certainly don't think I'll be cocky enough to try to pull that "stop engines, nudge props" stunt, should it ever come to that in my plane. That's what hull insurance is for.

Colin said...

The runway they landed on is 8005ft long. That's after the displaced threshold and you can see them landing on the old threshold so I think they have more than two miles of runway. If you can't get a little GA plane down in two miles I think you might as well jump out while in the traffic pattern.

You can just see the "R" in 16R as they grind to a halt. There's a documentary called "One Six Right" about the Van Nuys airport. Worth seeing.

There were two people in the plane. I think that one was flying and one was fiddling with the engines. They had the "equipment in place," because the fully-suited airport fireman strolls over with an extinguisher as they climb out.

It's also very possible it was a training flight and one of those fellows is a CFI. Van Nuys is a heavily used training airport and VNY - CMA would be a typical training flight.

jinksto said...

I agree with the comment on 16R, excellent movie.

That SATA video seems a lot more scary to me. It looks like he came really close to getting the right gear onto the ground at a very high crab angle... seems like that could have been nasty.
Thanks for the cool video's.

Anonymous said...

You can land an Airbus with the crab angle, as long as you start straightening it out at touchdown.

Anonymous said...

The engines of the Cessna would need to be inspected anyway but at least the pilot minimized the damage to the engines by turning them off.

If only there was an eject for the props.

Dr. Andy said...

I don't know anything about flying other than what I read in the "The Right Stuff", but that little move with the props seemed Yeager cool to me :)

Anonymous said...

Hi
Rick Durden had written an Artikel in AVWEBS "the Pilot Lounge" about landing gear up and shutting down the engine in final. here is the link http://www.avweb.com/news/pilotlounge/188627-1.html
I agree with rick durden. If you land gear up you should first think about your health and not about the Prop and egine.
greetings from germany
Uli