Honestly, while the landing was rough, I'm going to guess there was something else going on to make that happen. There's no way that unless there was some pre-existing condition that the landing gear would go through the wing like that as the gear should be rated for quite a bit harsher than a "smooth" landing
Here you go.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska\_Airlines\_Flight\_261](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261)
Save you a click: Improper maintenance on a MD83 elevator jackscrew caused it to strip, causing loss of flight controls, causing all on board to be lost.
To say the ATC recording on YouTube of nearby airline pilots spotting Flight 261, confirming the loss of control, the inversion, and it hitting the Pacific is horrifying, would be a massive understatement.
Yep, my 6th grade teacher and her husband (an 8th grade teacher at my school) were supposed to be on that flight but got sick or something and came home a couple days early from their trip. When the news hit about 261 going down they were completely shell shocked for awhile. Can't imagine watching it happen.
If it's what I think it was, a plane was brought down years ago because a powerscrew was improperly lubed. I think there were some that thought the design was less than optimized, too. The transcript of that flight is... chilling.
That conversation between the pilots and management on ground that asked them to keep flying in order to maintain the schedule has always been really jarring to me. Those pilots were set up to fail.
The banality of it all is sickening. The fucking penny pinching. The negligence.
Well, there happened to be hurricane Hilary in town right then, so that would explain his excessive approach speed. Much better to land fast than be caught in a microburst downdraft when you're low and slow and have no options.
Still, that was definitely *not* a greaser!
I could be wrong but that sure looked and sounded like a very hard single gear hit from banking out of offset wind-shear outflow, combined with a downdraft, and likely fighting a tailwind transition, all on short final. Frankly, I don’t think the plane had something physically wrong with it, and I don’t think the pilot made the wrong call to continue the landing, as everything went from a standard’ish poor-weather approach to full-pucker-mode in 15 seconds (on an approach with a fairly short runway in lousy conditions). While we’ll have to see if there were active warnings or a PWS alert, sometimes things just go wrong.
And, as my first instructor always said, any landing everyone walks away from is a good landing; a landing where the plane will fly again is a great landing. So while this wasn’t a great landing, it could have been much worse.
Landing video from inside the passenger cabin recorded by a passenger.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VpBHiQVYt4
Also for anyone curious, there is almost no way this aircraft is not totalled from this accident. Total loss.
You pop the top on his Shasta Cola can in the fridge though and he will wake up from a nap he was taking down the street and come running to scold you.
Freshman year my roommate had 4 or 5 alarm clocks and would never wake up. I’m sure it had nothing to do with him partying every night until 4 or 5 AM and then trying to get up at 6 for class. He flunked out
I swear people set their alarms or something else planned (maybe they get a call?) right when the plane is supposed to be landing. It’s happened to me more than once.
Could be that he flared too low and instead of slowing his descent it just drove the landing gear into the ground. 74Gear on Youtube has shown a few cases of hard landings caused by that. There's a gap between the flare changing the angle of attack and actually lowering the vertical speed. Do it too late and there's not much effect in vertical speed but the gear rotates down and is driven into the runway. Worst of both worlds.
High flare, wind shear both possible. Also consider if it was heavy rain the windshield wipers are absolute dog shit in the 737 which essentially blinds you with rain. Sna also has a 0.5% upslope on runway 20R. Approach and landing looked normal to me though, my instinct is something mechanical failed here.
From the pilot's perspective, what's the first indication that this happened? Electrical faults/loss of hydraulic pressure? FA saying they see sparks?
Edit: besides the obvious crunching noises
>From the pilot's perspective, what's the first indication that this happened?
A few possibles:
* A text message to your phone from the chief pilot: "CALL ME NOW."
* Tower asking you for fuel and souls on board while you're rolling out.
I would guess a the noise, deck angle to the side, asymmetric dragging, and the engine vibration gauge probably going nuts would all paint the picture. Flight attendants should have been chiming the front like crazy as well when they saw the sparks and smoke.
However the pilots probably just suspected a blown tire until they saw or were told otherwise.
The engine pushing up like that definitely cracked some ribs, and probably the lower panel. We've fixed worse damage I'm the factory, but its easier when they're new. Looks like the fuse pins sheared, or the main beam snapped at the doghouse. (Source: 15 years building the wings for this plane. I probably worked on this one.)
Edit: found a higher resolution picture. The beam is fine. Looks like some of the armature for the mechanism that swings the gear down broke. I'm more familiar with the main structural components of the wing box and trailing edge. I installed the beam, stabilizer links, and upper panels on the MLG, the gear itself was done far later.
Disclaimer that this is pure speculation but that really just looked like it must have been some intense wind shear really close to ground. Either that or some massive control input, but that wouldn’t make sense obviously. It’s already in the ground effect too I think, which would make this even less likely to be caused by anything besides uncontrollable external factors, since the ground effect provides additional lift.
*Repairable* vs *worth repairing* strikes yet again. This thing is scrap, there’s hundreds of available NGs that are more economically attractive than fixing this one.
The repair is gonna be a insanely expensive. Anything is fixable, it's just if Alaska is willing to pay for it like you said. I think the main spar is probably damaged at a guess. Hard to gather everything from just photos.
Y’all are surprisingly harsh to the backseat piloting here. People get anxious when flying, and when things deviate even a little bit from normal landings it’s going to spike that anxiety. I don’t think the speaker in that video is critiquing the piloting, I think he’s nervous and wanting to understand what’s happening, which is pretty reasonable to me.
It’s not like the pilots can hear him anyway lol
for real lol that dude was having a really standard reaction for the situation. is it that crazy to wonder why the plane is banking a certain direction when you’re basically 100 feet above the runway?
this could’ve ended much worse
Yikes. Not sure I’ve ever seen something like that. These planes are designed to take a pretty massive hammering so I can only imagine what that felt like in the cabin…
Same.
Had a hard slam down in heavy rain in an md88.
I didn’t realize at the time they do that to prevent hydroplaning.
But, on my way off the plane, I asked the captain at the door “Navy?”. He said “yes”… I replied “I could tell”.
Watching that video has ignited two great fears in my life. In order they are….
1. Being trapped in a confined space with someone who REFUSES TO SHUT HIS FUCKING ALARM OFF!
2. Dying in a plane crash
Current 737s need to land faster than other planes because the cabins have been extend so much over the years. You hit the ground running so you don’t whack the tail into the runway.
From the video, this didn’t seem that much harder than other landings I’ve experienced. Will love to read the NTSB report.
737 ref speeds are high largely due to rudder hardover/crossover minimum speeds (along with increased weight as the max landing weight went from 99,000 to 146,000 lbs). Crossover speeds take into account the minimum speed at which aileron can override full rudder deflection. This is a result of the late-classic-model rudder hardover accidents back in the 90's (ie. UA at KCOS, US at KPIT). I flew the -700, -800 and BBJ1 for eight years and I never got over the feeling that I was forced to try and land the thing about 15 knots faster than it wanted to (typical refs of about 135 knots). The -200's I flew never had these restrictions, landed at about 110 knots and were by far the best landing models of the 737.
I agree that the video did not look any worse than any other landing at KSNA. I smell a mechanical defect of some kind.
I've flown both..... it's a little weird at first, but you get used to the technique and site picture pretty quick. That being said the 800s or bigger there is more of a chance of tail strike, but then you gotta mess up pretty fucking good.
I just flew Alaska from PDX to John Wayne last Tuesday, and return trip Saturday. And Holy hell did we come in HOT to John Wayne. Very fast landing, and what felt like someone slamming on the brakes to get it to stop. No idea if it's the same plane, but I did read later that John Wayne is a really tough airport to fly in (it was the hardest/fastest landing I've ever experienced).
Lol yeah its always a bit of a shock. I was there earlier this year and folded in half as we were braking. Take off can be spooky too- super fast ascent and quieting of the engines.
The 757 is as good at shortfield landings as the 737. Wing design, brake design, engine design, etc all play a factor as well as the weight of the aircraft.
Fun fact, SNA is one of the toughest runways to land at in the United States. You have the 405 freeway on one end and the 73 freeway on the other. Short runway too and there is zero room for error. 20R is 5,700 feet (1,737 meters).
EDIT: let me clarify, there is room for error under perfect conditions. This was during Hurricane Hilary and 20R on final has a ton of standing water as you can see from the video. That makes the window for error much smaller.
Born and raised! Had my fair share of hard landings at John Wayne. One time a few TV’s came crashing out of the ceiling injuring passengers after we hit the runway hard. Landing at John Wayne can be gnarly.
I've had overhead compartment doors pop open once or twice and once hit my forehead on the seat in front of me when the spoilers, reverse thrust, and brakes were slammed on. Still, better than LAX.
For sure. I was on one landing where someone decided not to wear their seatbelt and they whacked the ac vent / roof had a pretty gnarly bloody nose.
Very little room for error on that run way. They should of told the cave people ( complains about virtually everything) to go shove it and built El Torro into an airport.
For those wondering, it's because we built freeways and highways before the numbering system. We couldn't call them all "the freeway" so we called them the Santa Ana freeway, or the Pacific Coast highway. Later the numbers replaced the name, but the "the" stayed.
Alaska pilots routinely fly 73s into Dead Horse and Utqiagvik, in winter. They're pretty skilled in my experience. I've had white knuckles for sure flying into and out of those places as pax. Fairbanks feels like you've returned from the moon.
(Edited to add: although I think Deadhorse has plenty of runway cuz they bring some really big stuff there for the oilfields )
A couple weeks ago we went to Utqiagvik on a 737, that was interesting, going to the end of the runway and turning around to take off. Pilot immediately banked after the takeoff spooking lots of folks, myself included. Then last week took AA into SNA again. Those landings stop fast and to the point.
Probably you took off to the north over water? It's an amazing view this time of year. In winter you can't tell where ocean ends and land begins because of the sea ice, or what's left of it. If you can see at all through the fog and cloud cover, the ice is its own foggy ecosystem. From a pax seat the airport comes out of the whiteness real fast.
This time of year if you fly out over the tundra you can see big herds of caribou until you get a mile up or so.
I don't think they do it anymore but those flights used to often be a ratty old 737 Combi, freight at the front, about 50 passenger seats at the back. I did that a whole bunch of times. Most of the time everyone on the plane knew each others, mostly Native folks and oilfield workers, and they also knew the pilots and crews by first name.
Another world that place is. I miss it a lot.
I’d assume it was west. Pilot gave us a wonderful [tour of Denali](https://youtu.be/on-K3qRFm2s) on the way back. Excuse the poor form, this is primarily just to show my friends and family.
The far north is a beautiful place. I hope to spend more time up there. Living in Fairbanks makes it reasonably easy for me too.
Came here to say this (well something like it). I'm not a pilot by any means but I fly into SNA a few times out of the year for work via one of the big 3 (shoutout to my shrinking travel budget) and landings are always/consistently hard. And that's in almost perfect conditions.
Always enjoyed the looks on the drivers faces on the 405 when slipping in steep for a short final on 20L. And for the record when I flew there it was still one-niner left.
SNA also requires a steeper than normal approach and take off. There are alarms set in the flight path that measure the sound of the aircraft. If the plane sets off an alarm the city fines the airline who set off the alarm.
Source: I was a fueler/lineman at SNA in the 90’s
It really doesn’t seem that hard or that fast of a decent rate for all the 737 landings I’ve been in. Wondering if this is going to be a repeat of AA261 with maintenance negligence.
I like how the guy saying “why are they going so fast? Why are they turning?” and all that nonsense now thinks he “definitely knew something was wrong.”
SNA is a very difficult approach and a short runway. Also the 737 requires a flaps 40 landing that most pilots don't do very often, and if you aren't accustomed it will plant your ass on the asphalt. This is a reminder that we aren't just bus drivers there's still some skill involved to get that big check.
If I am not mistaken…wing spars should be able to handle upto 5 g’s…also landing gears tend to be the most reliable structures as well…indeed curious about root cause(s)
Correct! Landing gear is designed to fail (held in place with fuse pins) so they don’t rip open the wing and spill fuel onto the hot engine and burn everything up. Gear trunnion likely had a crack and finally let go, but design worked as it was supposed to - fail survivable, no fuel , no big fire, everyone walks away except the one fatality in the terminal when they found the idiot with his cell phone alarm.
Y'all keep forgetting one important fact: a good landing isn't necessarily a soft landing. When the wind demons are trying to make my airplane do things I don't want, in going to *plant* the airplane and make it stick to the ground.
It was filmed on 8/20 and not 8/21 and at night so it was the height of the storm. I have a friend who lives nearby and stated at about that time the winds were pretty bad. Also the eye of the storm for some reason also detoured to Dodger Stadium about the same time which means the eye of the storm was only 35 miles away.
Those arrows are on the inboard ground spoiler. They're probably marked for the recommended overwing escape route. Lots of aircraft have overwing escape markings like that.
Pilot probably did that to shut that alarm up
It has probably been going off for the past hour
“I know what’ll wake that fucker up” …
He got mad when it called him retard.
Boeing planes do not do that. That is on the Airbus fleet of aircraft.
Boeing displays retard on the screen, so more like cyberbullying
Small facts like this, is why I'm here. Thank you fren.
What do Boeing call them then? 'Moron - Moron'?
Honestly, while the landing was rough, I'm going to guess there was something else going on to make that happen. There's no way that unless there was some pre-existing condition that the landing gear would go through the wing like that as the gear should be rated for quite a bit harsher than a "smooth" landing
It will be something dumb like a split pin or something breaking.
or maybe a stripped jackscrew…
I understood that reference.
I strive to one day understand this reference.
Here you go. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska\_Airlines\_Flight\_261](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261) Save you a click: Improper maintenance on a MD83 elevator jackscrew caused it to strip, causing loss of flight controls, causing all on board to be lost.
To say the ATC recording on YouTube of nearby airline pilots spotting Flight 261, confirming the loss of control, the inversion, and it hitting the Pacific is horrifying, would be a massive understatement.
As a pilot witnessing that, I'm not sure how I would respond, tbh. Seeing that firsthand would change you forever.
Yep, my 6th grade teacher and her husband (an 8th grade teacher at my school) were supposed to be on that flight but got sick or something and came home a couple days early from their trip. When the news hit about 261 going down they were completely shell shocked for awhile. Can't imagine watching it happen.
my family member was supposed to be working that trip as a FA but traded it it.
If it's what I think it was, a plane was brought down years ago because a powerscrew was improperly lubed. I think there were some that thought the design was less than optimized, too. The transcript of that flight is... chilling.
That conversation between the pilots and management on ground that asked them to keep flying in order to maintain the schedule has always been really jarring to me. Those pilots were set up to fail. The banality of it all is sickening. The fucking penny pinching. The negligence.
Just looked into it and ooooof.. Alaska Airlines flight 261, chilling indeed. Thanks for the reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261
I wish I didn’t. It must have been horrifying.
I was at a wedding once with a guy who dived recovery on that. The thousand yard stare when he said that still spooks me - 20+ years later
Ouch. I understand the reference and it sent chills down my spine.
Things are coming full circle for Alaska Air
…I mean it’s totally possible that he just boofed it.
Captain PJ Tobin and First Officer Squee
New favorite word
[удалено]
username checks out
be careful using it lol
Well, there happened to be hurricane Hilary in town right then, so that would explain his excessive approach speed. Much better to land fast than be caught in a microburst downdraft when you're low and slow and have no options. Still, that was definitely *not* a greaser!
It wasn’t a hurricane, it was barely a tropical storm at that time. Current weather conditions were light rain and a mild crosswind.
See? It's true that nobody in LA can drive in the rain...
I flew into LAX last night and it was barely a thunderstorm, just some heavy rain
I could be wrong but that sure looked and sounded like a very hard single gear hit from banking out of offset wind-shear outflow, combined with a downdraft, and likely fighting a tailwind transition, all on short final. Frankly, I don’t think the plane had something physically wrong with it, and I don’t think the pilot made the wrong call to continue the landing, as everything went from a standard’ish poor-weather approach to full-pucker-mode in 15 seconds (on an approach with a fairly short runway in lousy conditions). While we’ll have to see if there were active warnings or a PWS alert, sometimes things just go wrong. And, as my first instructor always said, any landing everyone walks away from is a good landing; a landing where the plane will fly again is a great landing. So while this wasn’t a great landing, it could have been much worse.
Looks like tropical storm Hilary but I'm not sure about the timing.
Was it just me or did the landing not look that hard?
I 100% agree. I’ve definitely seen way worse.
It was the constant phone alarm that made it devastating.
Unmitigated tragedy there, definitely.
Also, SNA has a pretty short runway so landings are always pretty firm, especially when it’s wet.
Yea, difficult to tell through a video, but it looked pretty unremarkable to me until the sparks started flying...
Landing video from inside the passenger cabin recorded by a passenger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VpBHiQVYt4 Also for anyone curious, there is almost no way this aircraft is not totalled from this accident. Total loss.
Alright whoever’s alarm that is needs to get their damn life together
The only injury on board was the alarm guy who got punched in the face.
That was probably my roommate. Dude will have his alarm blasting full volume, 0.2mm from his ear drum and won’t wake up
You pop the top on his Shasta Cola can in the fridge though and he will wake up from a nap he was taking down the street and come running to scold you.
GOD DAMNIT YOU ONLY OPEN IT FOR THE SATISFACTION AND NEVER DRINK IT
LPT: calling their phone will stop the alarm.
Freshman year my roommate had 4 or 5 alarm clocks and would never wake up. I’m sure it had nothing to do with him partying every night until 4 or 5 AM and then trying to get up at 6 for class. He flunked out
They don’t deserve to deplane normally, just open L1 and yeet them out by the collar
My eyes are watering from laughing after reading this, because I would be the guy who punched them.
I'd also like to have a word with the person who's just sitting there screaming hysterically.
They were missing their smoke detector’s beep while they’re traveling
Most annoying thing about that landing!!
AGREED! Well said! The landing probably woke them up though.
I couldn’t think of anything other than that…. Whose alarm is going off in a plane and why tf are they not tending to it.
I swear people set their alarms or something else planned (maybe they get a call?) right when the plane is supposed to be landing. It’s happened to me more than once.
It's infuriating. You will be woken up when we are deplaning. You will not be left on the plane. This isn't Amtrak.
[Air Canada](https://people.com/travel/air-canada-passenger-falls-asleep-wakes-up-empty-dark-plane/) has entered the chat.
Seriously. Unbelievable
Might be in a backpack they can't access while landing.
Yes, but putting a phone in your overhead with an alarm on is also a capital offense.
Get out of here with your logic
It would've been way more funny if their alarm had been the GPWS pull up alarm.
He picked up a huge descent rate at about 20 feet. No idea why. It looked like he tried to flare. Maybe flared too high?
Could be that he flared too low and instead of slowing his descent it just drove the landing gear into the ground. 74Gear on Youtube has shown a few cases of hard landings caused by that. There's a gap between the flare changing the angle of attack and actually lowering the vertical speed. Do it too late and there's not much effect in vertical speed but the gear rotates down and is driven into the runway. Worst of both worlds.
But how often does that send the gear up through the wing?
By itself probably never. A maintenance issue also seems likely but maybe the video looks smoother than it really was.
Wind shear?
High flare, wind shear both possible. Also consider if it was heavy rain the windshield wipers are absolute dog shit in the 737 which essentially blinds you with rain. Sna also has a 0.5% upslope on runway 20R. Approach and landing looked normal to me though, my instinct is something mechanical failed here.
I wish someone would have started clapping.
From the pilot's perspective, what's the first indication that this happened? Electrical faults/loss of hydraulic pressure? FA saying they see sparks? Edit: besides the obvious crunching noises
A sore back and a horrible noise
If that's true I must have a landing gear punching through my wing every time I'm in the office.
>From the pilot's perspective, what's the first indication that this happened? A few possibles: * A text message to your phone from the chief pilot: "CALL ME NOW." * Tower asking you for fuel and souls on board while you're rolling out.
Being met at the end of the taxiway by a few fire trucks might be a good indicator as well
I would guess a the noise, deck angle to the side, asymmetric dragging, and the engine vibration gauge probably going nuts would all paint the picture. Flight attendants should have been chiming the front like crazy as well when they saw the sparks and smoke. However the pilots probably just suspected a blown tire until they saw or were told otherwise.
Full power required to taxi.
Excessive power required to taxi off of the runway.
Major damage to the main spar. Very likely unrepairable. Landing gear components are made of 300+ksi steel, so they’ll punch through nearly anything.
The engine pushing up like that definitely cracked some ribs, and probably the lower panel. We've fixed worse damage I'm the factory, but its easier when they're new. Looks like the fuse pins sheared, or the main beam snapped at the doghouse. (Source: 15 years building the wings for this plane. I probably worked on this one.) Edit: found a higher resolution picture. The beam is fine. Looks like some of the armature for the mechanism that swings the gear down broke. I'm more familiar with the main structural components of the wing box and trailing edge. I installed the beam, stabilizer links, and upper panels on the MLG, the gear itself was done far later.
Wow, backseat piloting not withstanding, the dude did a good job filming that.
The cause is clear; Pilot was trying to hit the “cancel” on that dumbasses iPhone alarm.
Man, back seat pilots. I’d like to see him land, especially in those conditions without “turning”
Disclaimer that this is pure speculation but that really just looked like it must have been some intense wind shear really close to ground. Either that or some massive control input, but that wouldn’t make sense obviously. It’s already in the ground effect too I think, which would make this even less likely to be caused by anything besides uncontrollable external factors, since the ground effect provides additional lift.
Given the weather, the approach looked well stabilized, I vote sudden windshear or a gust that nulled ground effect right before touchdown.
On the one hand, yeah, vocally questioning the pilots from 18B is pretty dumb. But on the other hand, well, look at what happened...
Not a total loss. Boeing AOG can repair it unless it has high cycles and hours then Alaska might take a whole loss if the repair is too expensive.
*Repairable* vs *worth repairing* strikes yet again. This thing is scrap, there’s hundreds of available NGs that are more economically attractive than fixing this one.
Yeah. It's 15 years old. I'd probably also take the insurance money.
The main joints are the size of my thighs.. the doublers or tripplers would be insane.
The repair is gonna be a insanely expensive. Anything is fixable, it's just if Alaska is willing to pay for it like you said. I think the main spar is probably damaged at a guess. Hard to gather everything from just photos.
N516AS (a -890) is nearly 15 yrs old so it’ll probably never fly again.
Beat me to the comment. I was just reading into it.
Y’all are surprisingly harsh to the backseat piloting here. People get anxious when flying, and when things deviate even a little bit from normal landings it’s going to spike that anxiety. I don’t think the speaker in that video is critiquing the piloting, I think he’s nervous and wanting to understand what’s happening, which is pretty reasonable to me. It’s not like the pilots can hear him anyway lol
for real lol that dude was having a really standard reaction for the situation. is it that crazy to wonder why the plane is banking a certain direction when you’re basically 100 feet above the runway? this could’ve ended much worse
I concour. I would he incredibly surprised if this plane ever flew again.
wHy Is He GoInG sO fAsT!? wHy ArE wE TuUuUuRnInG!!!? Ugh the commenter is so damn ignorant/annoying.
When asked why it happened, the pilot said "hey, Alaska the questions!" (I'll see myself out...)
The pilot was Italian
Sbinalla
S🅱️inotto would like a word
We are checking!
R/unexpectedf1
Carlos and Sharl catching strays over here
LOL - that was funny. 30 years in the airline biz and I never heard this joke.
Yikes. Not sure I’ve ever seen something like that. These planes are designed to take a pretty massive hammering so I can only imagine what that felt like in the cabin…
Oh MD-11s have had a few of these, they just ended in fireballs. We give the 737 a *lot* of shit but..
At least it caught the arresting cables!
I’ll just leave this here. https://youtu.be/CIjRN5FoTus
Pilot thought he was landing on an aircraft carrier deck.
Should have boltered....
Landing gear: busted. Wings: busted. The pants of all those on board: soiled.
Pants also busted
What about the nuts?
Busted
I heard every time Tommy Fenstermacher's plane lands, he BUSTS
Getting to your destination on time: priceless.
Hotel: Trivago
Plane did its job.
Yeah. Pretty sure I read recently that it's designed to do do that (punch through, rather than break off) if overloaded?
Plane totaled, lives intact. Good job plane… and engineers and pilots
Some engineer, probably long since retired, did the calcs for this loadcase 35 years ago. They saved lives today.
Damn Navy pilots… also kinda funny how the engine shape design makes it look like it’s being squashed!
Came here to make a “Looks like them Navy boys ‘re at it again…” joke.
Same. Had a hard slam down in heavy rain in an md88. I didn’t realize at the time they do that to prevent hydroplaning. But, on my way off the plane, I asked the captain at the door “Navy?”. He said “yes”… I replied “I could tell”.
Carrier landing for the win!
Watching that video has ignited two great fears in my life. In order they are…. 1. Being trapped in a confined space with someone who REFUSES TO SHUT HIS FUCKING ALARM OFF! 2. Dying in a plane crash
Pretty equal!
Current 737s need to land faster than other planes because the cabins have been extend so much over the years. You hit the ground running so you don’t whack the tail into the runway. From the video, this didn’t seem that much harder than other landings I’ve experienced. Will love to read the NTSB report.
737 ref speeds are high largely due to rudder hardover/crossover minimum speeds (along with increased weight as the max landing weight went from 99,000 to 146,000 lbs). Crossover speeds take into account the minimum speed at which aileron can override full rudder deflection. This is a result of the late-classic-model rudder hardover accidents back in the 90's (ie. UA at KCOS, US at KPIT). I flew the -700, -800 and BBJ1 for eight years and I never got over the feeling that I was forced to try and land the thing about 15 knots faster than it wanted to (typical refs of about 135 knots). The -200's I flew never had these restrictions, landed at about 110 knots and were by far the best landing models of the 737. I agree that the video did not look any worse than any other landing at KSNA. I smell a mechanical defect of some kind.
737s are a lot closer to the ground than things like A320s, I can see how that can cause issues
I've flown both..... it's a little weird at first, but you get used to the technique and site picture pretty quick. That being said the 800s or bigger there is more of a chance of tail strike, but then you gotta mess up pretty fucking good.
Especially this one.
Seems like a pretty normal rate for a wet landing.
It seems the structure integrity has been compromised.
I just flew Alaska from PDX to John Wayne last Tuesday, and return trip Saturday. And Holy hell did we come in HOT to John Wayne. Very fast landing, and what felt like someone slamming on the brakes to get it to stop. No idea if it's the same plane, but I did read later that John Wayne is a really tough airport to fly in (it was the hardest/fastest landing I've ever experienced).
Lol yeah its always a bit of a shock. I was there earlier this year and folded in half as we were braking. Take off can be spooky too- super fast ascent and quieting of the engines.
John Wayne has one of the shortest runways in the US for it's traffic. No clue how 757 pilots do it.
The 757 is as good at shortfield landings as the 737. Wing design, brake design, engine design, etc all play a factor as well as the weight of the aircraft.
Fun fact, SNA is one of the toughest runways to land at in the United States. You have the 405 freeway on one end and the 73 freeway on the other. Short runway too and there is zero room for error. 20R is 5,700 feet (1,737 meters). EDIT: let me clarify, there is room for error under perfect conditions. This was during Hurricane Hilary and 20R on final has a ton of standing water as you can see from the video. That makes the window for error much smaller.
> the 405 > the 73 Found the Southern Californian. One of my people.
Born and raised! Had my fair share of hard landings at John Wayne. One time a few TV’s came crashing out of the ceiling injuring passengers after we hit the runway hard. Landing at John Wayne can be gnarly.
I've had overhead compartment doors pop open once or twice and once hit my forehead on the seat in front of me when the spoilers, reverse thrust, and brakes were slammed on. Still, better than LAX.
For sure. I was on one landing where someone decided not to wear their seatbelt and they whacked the ac vent / roof had a pretty gnarly bloody nose. Very little room for error on that run way. They should of told the cave people ( complains about virtually everything) to go shove it and built El Torro into an airport.
For those wondering, it's because we built freeways and highways before the numbering system. We couldn't call them all "the freeway" so we called them the Santa Ana freeway, or the Pacific Coast highway. Later the numbers replaced the name, but the "the" stayed.
Your words are true but your username is false.
Reminds me of one of my favorite SNL skits… https://youtu.be/hSfsJHMtlAg
Alaska pilots routinely fly 73s into Dead Horse and Utqiagvik, in winter. They're pretty skilled in my experience. I've had white knuckles for sure flying into and out of those places as pax. Fairbanks feels like you've returned from the moon. (Edited to add: although I think Deadhorse has plenty of runway cuz they bring some really big stuff there for the oilfields )
A couple weeks ago we went to Utqiagvik on a 737, that was interesting, going to the end of the runway and turning around to take off. Pilot immediately banked after the takeoff spooking lots of folks, myself included. Then last week took AA into SNA again. Those landings stop fast and to the point.
Probably you took off to the north over water? It's an amazing view this time of year. In winter you can't tell where ocean ends and land begins because of the sea ice, or what's left of it. If you can see at all through the fog and cloud cover, the ice is its own foggy ecosystem. From a pax seat the airport comes out of the whiteness real fast. This time of year if you fly out over the tundra you can see big herds of caribou until you get a mile up or so. I don't think they do it anymore but those flights used to often be a ratty old 737 Combi, freight at the front, about 50 passenger seats at the back. I did that a whole bunch of times. Most of the time everyone on the plane knew each others, mostly Native folks and oilfield workers, and they also knew the pilots and crews by first name. Another world that place is. I miss it a lot.
I’d assume it was west. Pilot gave us a wonderful [tour of Denali](https://youtu.be/on-K3qRFm2s) on the way back. Excuse the poor form, this is primarily just to show my friends and family. The far north is a beautiful place. I hope to spend more time up there. Living in Fairbanks makes it reasonably easy for me too.
The video someone posted honestly didn't look much rougher than most landings at John Wayne.
Came here to say this (well something like it). I'm not a pilot by any means but I fly into SNA a few times out of the year for work via one of the big 3 (shoutout to my shrinking travel budget) and landings are always/consistently hard. And that's in almost perfect conditions.
Always enjoyed the looks on the drivers faces on the 405 when slipping in steep for a short final on 20L. And for the record when I flew there it was still one-niner left.
SNA also requires a steeper than normal approach and take off. There are alarms set in the flight path that measure the sound of the aircraft. If the plane sets off an alarm the city fines the airline who set off the alarm. Source: I was a fueler/lineman at SNA in the 90’s
[удалено]
Why are we going so fast! Why is it turning! Idk maybe you're in an airplane dummy!
737’s land fast to prevent tail strikes due to the short gear and long fuselage.
I think he was talking about the guy in the video
treating it like a flight school rental I see
That landing doesn’t seem hard enough to explain a wheel through up through the wing… really wonder if there is something else at play
It really doesn’t seem that hard or that fast of a decent rate for all the 737 landings I’ve been in. Wondering if this is going to be a repeat of AA261 with maintenance negligence.
> Wondering if this is going to be a repeat of AA261 with maintenance negligence. They didn't kill people this time, so it's an improvement.
Or it didn’t seem that hard because the gear going through the wing absorbed energy.
I like how the guy saying “why are they going so fast? Why are they turning?” and all that nonsense now thinks he “definitely knew something was wrong.”
That guy has predicted 83 of the last 1 incidents
Well… he was right, something went wrong. Lol
I would just like to point out that this is not common. Some planes are built so the landing gear won't punch through the wing at all!
SNA is a very difficult approach and a short runway. Also the 737 requires a flaps 40 landing that most pilots don't do very often, and if you aren't accustomed it will plant your ass on the asphalt. This is a reminder that we aren't just bus drivers there's still some skill involved to get that big check.
Taxing to gate with stance! "is that 737 on bags, bro?" #lowlife
If I am not mistaken…wing spars should be able to handle upto 5 g’s…also landing gears tend to be the most reliable structures as well…indeed curious about root cause(s)
I thought landing gear was supposed to fail before wing spars so you don’t have a catastrophic failure and fire.
Correct! Landing gear is designed to fail (held in place with fuse pins) so they don’t rip open the wing and spill fuel onto the hot engine and burn everything up. Gear trunnion likely had a crack and finally let go, but design worked as it was supposed to - fail survivable, no fuel , no big fire, everyone walks away except the one fatality in the terminal when they found the idiot with his cell phone alarm.
Y'all keep forgetting one important fact: a good landing isn't necessarily a soft landing. When the wind demons are trying to make my airplane do things I don't want, in going to *plant* the airplane and make it stick to the ground.
This is what two-part epoxy and speed tape is for.
That did not look like a hard landing at all.
Bro is trying to compete against Ryanair or what
I saw a ton of warnings about low level wind sheer so this could be a factor.
ok 3 wire
This is frightening! But I think we can all agree that the real tragedy is filming in portrait instead of landscape mode.
Can you tell us about this gap in your resume'?
Well it’s bigger than the gap between the ground and last plane I landed, that’s for sure.
Did he get the 3 wire at least?
So, looks like his interview for Ryan air went well
Usual 737 landing experience, nothing to see here
It was filmed on 8/20 and not 8/21 and at night so it was the height of the storm. I have a friend who lives nearby and stated at about that time the winds were pretty bad. Also the eye of the storm for some reason also detoured to Dodger Stadium about the same time which means the eye of the storm was only 35 miles away.
Navy pilot, calling it now. You gotta slam the butt-fucking brains out of that thing to do that, my goodness.
That’ll probably buff out
Just go easy on speed tape, that stuff is expensive!
Why are there those big arrows painted on the back edge of the wing?
They want you to slide down the flaps instead of jump off the front where the blender is.
😂 that's terrible. True! But still terrible. 🤣🤣
Those arrows are on the inboard ground spoiler. They're probably marked for the recommended overwing escape route. Lots of aircraft have overwing escape markings like that.
To tell passengers which way to go if they evacuate using the overwing exit
Someone really hates NDT