hero or idiot?

[Daniel choen 23]

you decide(: enjoy the vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJoXMcehrYo

[Taipan 30]

Wow.

 

How much runway did he actually have left after touchdown?

[Daniel choen 23]

Wow.

 

How much runway did he actually have left after touchdown?

i didn't film that so i don't really know, but it doesn't really matter, the dude should've go around. thanks.

[BAW277 1]

Definitely no hero, from this angle it is hard to judge if there was a go around necessary but i would have peed my pants as the PNF!

 

Best

 

Holger

[sparks86 0]

i didn't film that so i don't really know, but it doesn't really matter, the dude should've go around. thanks.

 

You can't really tell the whole story with that video....

like...

Was that his first attempt at landing? If not he might not have had enough fuel to do another go-around..

and from that angle it's a bit hard to tell on how much runway he actually had left..

[yankeeromeo 2]

well, not a hero and not an idiot; carbon disk brake, auto brake set on max, plane maybe lightely loaded, good Pilot skills and judgment, some chance and "Know your Airplane".

Cheers.

[WR269 367]

He should have gone around. This was a ferry flight of an empty B737 and he landed on the halfway mark.

 

Good judgment should have told him his safety margins were very small and opt for the safest option.

 

MHTG is not an airport you want to mess around with.

 

[pete_auau 1,159]

i wonder if the brake temp had risen on the display:)

[bpcw001 22]

Hard to tell. From the viewer's perspective, it appears that more than half of the runway is used before the aircraft finally touches down.

If that observation was correct, the situation would have called for a go-around.

This appears to be a typical case of "Oh no - must get aircraft down somehow - don't wanna do this approach again", which should not happen to any pilot, especially not to commercial ATPs.

 

But that's just judging from the armchair. Who knows what the reasons were to act like this.

[Chock 17,769]

At the point where the first wheel touched down, he had roughly 2,700 feet of tarmac in front of him before being on the grass, which is a bit marginal since at light weights you ideally want a minimum of somewhere around 3,000 feet of tarmac to get most 737 variants to a standstill without getting the brakes too hot or making passengers too uncomfortable under braking.

 

You can see that he carries a lot of speed into the turn at the end of the runway, and that does make it look like he would have run off the tarmac without having turned. Given that the 737 was in the old US Air colours, I'm guessing it was a transfer flight to a new operator, so quite likely an empty aircraft, but, with density altitude taken into account, the chances are he still had to come in pretty hot, it certainly looks like a pretty fast approach and that at least partially accounts for the long float in ground effect.

 

If you ask me, providing there was enough gas in the tanks and nothing else was warranting an emergency landing, I'd have said he should have gone around for another stab at it. Clearly it was possible to get it down and stopped, since he managed it, but there could have been a tire burst, and then the thing really would have been on the grass, so it looked a bit chancy to me when you bear that in mind.

 

Al

[RiceySpicey 586]

I thought if you didnt have enough fuel for a landing and a go around you were supposed to divert to nearest alternate for an approach like MHTG?

[zmak 331]

The landing wasn't particurly hard (impact) nor did he force the a/c down in Panic but casually bled off speed instead. I reckon he was holding off the missed approach or in this case a touch n go till the very last second and good piloting skills he probably has a ton of hours on type and flew it accordingly however I doubt the pilot would have tried it with pax

[killkenny1 22]

Saw this once. Been replaying the video for like 10 times. Can't really comment on the pilot's action, not a pilot, this situation isn't known to me (apart from the sim :D). But maybe he should have done a go around.

Once I flew as a passenger on Airbaltic (coincidentally 733 :D) and we had the same situation. The plane flared quite a bit and had a bit a late touchdown, but good thing that we landed at 3km runway at Tegel (EDDT).

[G7USL 117]

The whole runway has been lengthened since this video was shot.

 

Idiot, definately not but a highly skilled pilot. I wouldn't mind guessing that the crew had to change their pants afterwards though.

[larrywell 0]

That's a famous video, look on the left side at the taxiway signs. He has landed close the third taxiway after the threshold. Checking the airport chart, the remaining runway is less than a half(between 2500 and 3000ft); the LDA of that runway is 6109ft. Probably he had to stand on the pedals to stop the airplane, i think that wasn't safe! :o