Q-400 Lands Safely after Declaring Emergency

[YukonPete 580]

This Air Canada Q400 crash resulted in a passenger getting hit in the head with the prop.

 

http://toronto.citynews.ca/2014/11/10/air-canada-crash-in-edmonton-more-serious-than-originally-thought/

[Chock 17,769]

To be fair, and as others have pointed out, those Dash 8 - especially the FlyBe ones which make many short hops around the UK - get the @ss flown out of them. With lots of cycles, it's inevitable they're going to get what appears to be more issues than other types which may fly the same amount of hours, but with less landings and take offs.

This sort of thing is also not helped by the generally over the top news reporting of such relatively minor incidents, where they make it sound as though there was a huge amount of danger; good old hackneyed journalese phrases abound in such poor reporting: 'crash landing' and 'hero pilot' are guaranteed to be in there somewhere.

Landing with a nose wheel jammed up isn't trivial of course, but it's unlikely to result in a massive crash so long as the nose is held off the runway for as long as possible. If you've burned off most of the fuel, a slower landing is achievable and the nose can be held off for longer at a lighter weight. In any case, scraping the front end a bit is not going to result in a fire of any great proportions when you've burned off nearly every drop other than what is necessary for a couple of goes at bringing it in. We all know the pilot won't have had too many problems landing that thing just fine; I'd put money on the PIC actually liking having the chance to have a go at it, because he or she will have been aware that it really didn't pose that much of a chance of anything disastrous occurring, and it's a cool one for the logbook and career reputation.

[n4gix 4,947]

19 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

I am not sure how much the landing gear is a design fault or a maintenance issue, the airlines using them are more northern and wet and windy climates. It is a workhorse for extreme weather conditions.

I cannot see how those long and undersized "stork leg" landing struts can handle the stress, particularly under some of the extreme cross-wind landings they occasionally endure.

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

1 hour ago, n4gix said:

I cannot see how those long and undersized "stork leg" landing struts can handle the stress, particularly under some of the extreme cross-wind landings they occasionally endure.

I agree, I used to live across from Wellington Airport and it is probably the windiest airport in the world. It was fun watching them land in those conditions. This is a typical Wellington day from my old neighbourhood, you can also see an ATR landing with its gear attached to the fuselage, that would be a benefit in these conditions:

 

 

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

Oh yeah and I forgot to say, the reason why the Dash 8 uses the long landing gear compared to the ATR's is because the Dash 8 was designed to land on gravel landing strips in the far north. ATR's were not designed for that use

[KevinMM 22]

On 11/10/2017 at 0:36 PM, Chock said:

If these keeps happening, they'll have to make it a feature on the Majestic version 

I keep blowing tires (tyres for those across the pond) om my Majestic!

[John_Cillis 2,406]

The Q300 and Embraer Tprops were my favorite puddle jumpers. Took a Q300 from Phoenix to Durango, CO and back, it was such a pleasant flight.  I also liked the old Shorts aircraft, flew those between Chicago O'hare and Springfield IL.  They had such large windows, I sat there and just soaked up the sun and the scenery.

John

[MarkJHarris 128]

Ok. Before it fades from my mind with age, I flew 3,500hrs on the Q400 in generally wet and windy weather to and from the Isle of Man. I've landed in a blizzard in Geneva, regularly had to break for the 1200m rw21  circling approach and plenty of CAT2 apps too. I know the aircraft well. 

The long spindly undercarriage is quite tough, it is a bit springy, and a landing with any side loading will "wind up" the gear causing a lot of shaking motion, until you kick it off. Talking of that, the large 2 piece rudder is magnificent You can hold a perfect side slip, or crab and swing with ease. With flap 15 it always feels like it's too slow, F35 gives vibes and is agricultural, but effective.

The roll control is excellent and frankly, you have very good roll, yaw and pitch control, very powerful engines and a wide spaced gear. What's not to love? The key to a TP, is that zero thrust is not the idle position on the throttles. The Q400 lands well with 11%, floats with 12% and falls out of the sky with 10%. The power levers are very sensitive at the bottom of the range, less so at the top, really the wrong way around! Hard landings are usually either he result of floating or taking too much power off. I've done both (rarely) and seen it a lot of times. Difficult to take control at that point.... Q400 operators have a lot of young inexperienced F/Os but they don't half learn their trade quickly! It takes a good pair of hands to consistently land a Q400 smoothly, but it can be done.

Now, the 737 is designed to be planted onto runways. I can also land one smoothly, but often need to be a bit firmer on a certain Wet West Yorkshire hillside, due to weather and landing performance issues.

In a rough nasty windy day at Leeds, I'd frankly sooner be back in that Q400! At all other times I'm now a Boeing Man!

 

A final point, the wide track of the Dash, helps a lot in side winds for stability. Take a look at any number of videos of BHX in a good crosswind. The real stars are the guys (and girls don't forget!) who smoothly line up and hold both rudder and ailerons into wind after landing- keep flying it down the runway as long as you can. Lovely shot of a 777 doing just that. Quite a few Q400s showing good skills too. Then a few ATRs really struggling. Less power = less need for rudder authority.

[TerryS 0]

Wish I hadn't started reading this, I normally fly Easyjet (as a passenger) from Bristol to Belfast but next week am flying Birmingham to Belfast on a Q400 Flybe because the parking was too expensive at Bristol! I hope my seat isn't beside the prop :)