Plane Makes Heartstopping Landing In 150 MPH Wind Gusts

Amazing new video today of a Lufthansa jet, flying from Munich to Hamburg with 137 passengers, veering back and forth in 150 mile per hour gusting winds. The plane came within "a split second of crashing" and after just touching down, a wing tip hit the runway and the plane bounced sideways on the runway. The now-hailed pilots shot back up, tried again and landed safely.

Watch:

A german plane had a near miss when it tried to land in gusting winds. http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1438502008http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=1178199204

Comments

[bar1ed]

i was wondering ---- when you re-take-off, does that add to your frequent flyer mileage ?

[JetStar]

As an ALPA-trained airline accident investigator and a retired airline captain with 17,000+ flying hours, military and civilian. I am appalled by this Airbus crew's decisions below about 200 feet. When I am looking at a runway from out of a side window (instead of the usual view from the front window), I GO-AROUND. I then either return for a landing on a runway better aligned with the winds, hold until the winds abate (not usually a good option), or procede to my best legal alternate.
The aircraft I flew for a major US airline (MD-80 & Boeing 737-series) had maximum crosswind limitations of 30 knots. "JAUSTIN" below corrected the wind reported in the press to 56 mph. I'll further refine that to 48 knots (1 knot is 86% of 1 mph). I do not know how much of that 48 knots was a direct crosswind component, but since there was damage done to the aircraft you can bet your sweet empenage that the truth will out, and they were probably exceeding stated aircraft limitations by a considerable margin.
That stunt would have gotten me fired. I hope it did that crew. To say luck was with them that day is an understatement. This was almost the video that would have been instrumental in solving the investigation of a landing crash that (might have) killed scores.

[jaustin]

Please change the headline!

Spiegel Online has stated that the windspeed was 90 km/hr. Someone at Huffington Post has multiplied the metric units by 1.6 (instead of dividing), thereby coming up with ~150 mph (although 90 X 1.6 is actually 144). The correct velocity in English units should be 56 mph.

[Rrhain]

Watch the video clip again and listen. Viera directly states that the winds were 150 MPH. Now, I find that difficult to believe as that is hurricane force winds, but the fault is not with HuffPo making a math error...it's with them simply parroting what another member of the media says without doing any investigation of their own.

And that's worse.

[JBS]

And the TV people seem to have gotten their erroneous numbers from Lufthansa's initial press interview.

[DEERSLAYER]

Now come on folks ,give the good ole boys a chance to atleast go change their shorts before they are convicted for wrong doing, hell maybe one of them had a hot date that evrning and needed to get home and shower and wash his underpanties then pick up his ladie.

All kidin aside that plane should have been re routed to another runway so based only on the facts that we have the fault falls on more sholders than just the two pilots.

Ya'll have a great evening.

[LightningJoe]

But wouldn't you have paid a bundle to BE on that plane, if you KNEW it was going to make it down safely?

People pay good money for rides like that.

----

Kill your tv, and free your mind.

[jellero]

i haven't read all 209 comments but the first thing i thought after seeing the video was how stupid it was to even try to land in a cross wind like that. there had to have been an alternative airport they could have re-routed to. even if they were about to run out of fuel and couldn't reroute, landing on a different runway that was more aligned with the wind would have been better than what they did. i've been a pilot for 32 years by the way and wouldn't have been flying that day, period. j

[LightningJoe]

Second that comment. Can't be good for the tires, either, hitting at such an angle. Now for the phone vids from the cabin...

[Bhall35]

well, the first thing I thought was: why am I watching a Blackberry commercial before watching the potential deaths of hundreds of people? That guy in the Blackberry ad looks like the kind of a**hole that would be on the plane, so I'm not sure what outcome I should be rooting for...

[caracas]

The very first thing I was taught when learning to fly was if you encounter problems on approaching to land to add full power and go around.

As the old adage says, "there are old pilots and bold pilots but there are no old, bold pilots."

[danton59]

I bet they had to change many seat cusions in that plane

[wadenelson1]

Anyone looking for proof that the Internet is chock full of incorrect information need look no further than this story AND the posts following it.

[doug108]

Isn't the plane's computer in charge of landing? The pilots just set the thing to land and the machine does everything else, doesn't it?

[fumes]

yes, and it also gives them a much needed moment to collect their luggage and visit the loo before landing.

[MajorKong]

Most modern airliners have an autoland capability, but they're limited as far as how much wind they can handle. We use it more for landing in heavy fog. Even then, both pilots are watching the system very closely to make sure it's doing what it's supposed do.

[FSM]

The cowboy should be grounded, permanently.

[imusintheevening]

What? The pilot hung in there. If ATC said land he was just doing his job - and in the end he did it well.

[Manni]

The Pilot in Command can override ATC. The PIC is the ultimate decision maker.. not ATC.

He was wrong to try to land there like that.. The pilot suffers from "Gettheritis"

[Seafarer61]

This headline should have been corrected 10 minutes into the posting and yet it still remains a day later. They were not landing in 150mph wind gusts.

Come on HuffPo....do some editing here for pete's sake.

[nuttincowboy]

That's what great pilot's are paid for. Somehow I don't think an automated system could have pulled that one off. That was classic bad news, good news. Bad news; you're landing in cross winds that approach your wing stall speed. The good news; you're landing in cross winds that approach your wing stall speed. Those pilots deserve a bonus to go with that change of shorts.

[totalliberal]

As a skilled pilot with over 2,000,000 hrs. flying, I would have just shut off the engines and waited till the winds died down.

(The radio as well. Wouldn't want those damn management types bugging me about schedules.)

;-)

[nuttincowboy]

You have got to be some kind of idiot who's never logged a second of "stick time". You might want to scrape together a few bucks and take an introductory lesson at your local airport. Then tell me about how shutting things down is going to help.

[totalliberal]

Saves fuel. Feet up on the panel and catch some snooze time. More relaxed for the next landing try.
Stick time? What has hockey got to do with it?

[MajorKong]

2,000,000 hours? You must have trained at the Wright Brothers Flying Academy in 1908.

[totalliberal]

Go see 100,000 BC. That's me flying a kite in the background. :-)

[Jo]

The plane was LANDING -- shutting off the engines would have been a wee bit problematic (not to mention suicidal), don't' you think?

[totalliberal]

No. How else would you get it on the ground without shutting off the engines. Other wise they could be up there for months?

Years even.

[fumes]

good one tot! seems like everyone else here took you literally.

[MadCow]

Windgusts at Hamburg airport were around 90 km/hr when this happened according to German news reports. That's about 56/mph, a far cry from150/mph reported above. Maybe the reporter tried to convert Kilometers into Euros? :)

[wmbear]

AMERICANS ARE INTO HYPERBOLE...

We exaggerate everything, including the Democrats' chances this fall....

[northcoast]

That's not hyperbole, that's flat out fancy-ass flying!!! Kudos to the pilot. I used to be a hangglider pilot...launching and landing---the most critical part of every flight.

[totalliberal]

Doesn't the B-52 have steerable wheels to compensate for crabbing.

(And wing-tip wheels)

Pretty good for an ancient plane like that. Ahead of its time?

[MajorKong]

It does. The system was actually classified at the time the plane was originally built.

It was designed that way more out of necessity than anything else. Because of the landing gear configuration, the only way to land the plane in a crosswind was to crab it. If you used the traditional "wing low" method you'd hit the tip-gear on the runway first (bad).

[mawrm]

HuffPost REALLY should change that headline to read _50 MPH_ gusts. Planes don't do too well in 150 MPH wind _gusts_. Flying in 150 mph _sustained_ winds is no problem. The aircraft would do just fine though it would take you a HELL of a looong time to get anywhere if you're flying into the wind even with an A320. However with good runway selection, you'd be practically hovering like a helicopter on final down to a greaser of a landing. Might be a little tricky once you get past the tree line and get into ground effect though but in a heavy, you barely notice that transition as much.