The Tokyo Narita airport is known for extreme weather conditions (seen some crash landings too).So take some tranquilizers, turn up your speakers and see what was happening yesyerday at Narita.

And a bonus, for the toughest:

Very nice videos!

At first I thought that Etihad crew we're going to try and keep it down after that float! TOGA thrust, get the hell out of there and try again. Good job.

Spoilers MEL'd,or forgot to arm?

No spoilers because they went straight to TOGA as soon as they floated past the TDZ, I doubt the thrust levers ever went to idle.

They may possibly have elected not to arm the spoilers on the offchance that they thought they were very likely to go around, since it would be apparent from the radio that many aircraft were doing so, and you can always brief to deploy them manually on a decision to keep it stuck on the deck. Another possibility (albeit a slim one since it isn't standard procedure) is that with a lot of wing flex occurring, which as anyone could see was certainly going on, the spoilers can potentially be damaged and might not have been armed because of that. I should think this is unlikely to have been a decision they would take, but you never know. It is far more probable that they simply never auto-deployed because the crew did a 'carrier job', or 'bolter' if you prefer, i.e. you firewall the throttle on touchdown in case you miss the wire, or in this case, suspect you are going to weathercock badly and come off the runway or scrape an engine pod, and know you have the runway length to stop if that subsequently does not occur.Some interesting stuff on those vids, it makes you wonder if the runway should perhaps not have been oriented a few degrees around from the way it is when constructed, since there are a lot of videos of that kind of thing going on at Narita.Al

It looked like he had good strut compression,twiceAlso why wouldn't he select flight idle at the retard command?

If you feel like it's going to groundloop or weathercock badly, which airliners certainly can do with what is effectively a 60 foot tall sail right up at the back end and the side of the fuselage not doing a bad job of acting like a sail too, on what was probably a wet runway as well, then it's time to punch it and go around. Chances are the crew probably could have kept it down and straight with rudder and asymmetric throttle and some funky aileron touches, but commercial pilots aren't really paid to take chances when they have 350 people on board and a 90 million dollar aeroplane, plus if it hits anything, the crew are going to hit it first!Al

Seems to be a bit a confusion/ guessing here so just to clarify. Only reason the spoilers would not deploy is due to the T/L being above forward idle.No way would they not arm the spoilers before landing, especially for the reason stated above. Secondly, if they had a SEC 1,2,3 fault and continued the approach in those conditions they would have a lot of explaining to do. You can clearly see the roll spoilers doing there job on the approach so a SEC fault is out of the question.A technique on the A3xx is to keep a bit of thrust on when landing in gusty conditions, youCan clearly see as soon as the PF got it down they decided to go missed, those engines take about 6/8 seconds to get to TOGA, the spoiler logic would not have had a chance to activate.Regards

No way would they not arm the spoilers before landing, especially for the reason stated above.Regards

That's not entirely true, trust me, I do know a bit about airliner SOPs, I worked on the content of the real ones for several airliners when they were being written. I agree that it is indeed SOP to arm the spoilers, and it is unlikely that a pilot would not do that, and almost certainly not the case on the videos shown, but it is still the pilot's discretion to disregard any SOP if they think there danger in sticking rigidly to one, and that is all I was pointing out. That said, I agree that it most likely is the TOGA preventing the spoilers popping on those videos.Al

Hey Al, of course there will be situations that may require a departure from standard SOP, that is of course why humans are put up front :) however I am unable to think of any reason not to arm the spoilers in any situation on the A3xx apart from a loss of all SEC's. Even if the A3xx flight crew forgot to arm the spoilers, ignored the fact that the lower EICAS was displaying blue because the landing memo was incomplete or decided they didnt want to arm the spoilers for whatever reason you claim, the spoilers would still deploy automatically once idle reverse was selected.So, my only point was on the A3xx I cannot see a valid reason not to arm them.Kind regards

Yup, they would indeed have had the thing yelling and flashing lights at them if they actually forgot to arm the spoilers, and most crews actually do it from an EFB or paper checklist in their hands rather than from memory in my experience, so that makes it even more unlikely.On a side note, it will be interesting to see how people fair with the FSL Airbus when that shows up, now that it looks like we're going to get one that has all of the systems done properly. Now if we could just get something that could do the weather like it is on those videos, everyone would be able to try that stuff for themselves.Al

Nope, no flashing lights or warnings ;) Damn right about the FSLABS bus, have my credit card at the ready for there A330. Flying the Airsimmer Advanced A320 has got me craving a Advanced A330/340Kind regards

LOL I know there are not actually any flashing lights and ******** betty in such circumstances, but I presume you know what I mean in terms of procedures and checking stuff on the ECAM. On the subject of other Airbuses, it was nice to hear recently that FSL are apparently tackling the A340 after the A320. The 340 is my favourite 'Bus; very aesthetically pleasing bird is that one.Al

Absurd conditions..they really should have just closed the airport. As Al mentioned, with every plane carrying hundreds of lives and tens of millions of $$ worth of machinery, it makes no sense to be taking chances like that. Think of what must have been going through those passenger's minds in the Etihad (expletives abound)!!I've dealt with Narita during bad wx systems, but this takes the trophy!!