Happened today in Moscow. These are pilots I'd love to fly with. Hit a flock of sea gulls just after lift off and lost both engines. Stopped the climb at 750 feet to make an emergency landing in a corn field with the gear up. Only 10 injuries.

Whole story with videos and pictures: http://avherald.com/h?article=4cb94927&opt=0

 

Edited August 15, 20196 yr by threegreen

An incredible story with amazing pilots and a very happy end! 🙂👍
I wish more aviation accidents had a similar course of events.

10 minutes ago, Rafal said:

An incredible story with amazing pilots and a very happy end! 🙂👍
I wish more aviation accidents had a similar course of events.

It does have something of Hudson river corn edition.

Kudos to the crew, their training, and the fact that there was a relatively flat, soft and large area to set the plane down on. No fire either which is always a good thing with a downed aircraft.

Unfortunately a completely flock-of-bird-proof jet engine is not really commercially viable or efficient enough I fear.

One wonders if there will be any questions raised regarding bird scaring procedures at the airport?

Pesky birds, anyone would think they're allowed to fly willy nilly where they want.. er.. hang on.... 

6 minutes ago, HighBypass said:

One wonders if there will be any questions raised regarding bird scaring procedures at the airport?

I don't think so. The birds only just approached the airport and were at an altitude where bird control probably doesn't have any effect.

A Miracle in a Corn Field.

That is a tough airliner

17 minutes ago, Matthew Kane said:

A Miracle in a Corn Field.

That is a tough airliner

Correction "Miracle in the Field of Dreams.  If you build it, they will come".....

2 minutes ago, aerostar said:

Airbus is making a name for itself...     survives crash landings in water and on land...  

Kinda changes the well versed adage to -     

"If it's Boeing,  I ain't going"

As bad as this one looks (and it looks really bad). Their was 136 people on board and only 3 fatalities. It was the Fly By Wire that gave Airbus a bad name initially, but watching that video it looks amazing that many people survived, I think it was always a tough aircraft:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kHa3WNerjU

 

 

On 8/15/2019 at 11:56 PM, Matthew Kane said:

...think it was always a tough aircraft:
 

 

 

To be fair, I think that this is mostly due to the crew flying it....I would imagine the approach angle & speed etc would be very difficult to judge, on water or field. In this instance I would praise the crew - I can't wait for the CVR translation....it will make interesting reading.

Well done, crew. When is the movie being released ?

Regards

Bill

On 8/15/2019 at 10:01 PM, HighBypass said:

Unfortunately a completely flock-of-bird-proof jet engine is not really commercially viable or efficient enough I fear.

One wonders if there will be any questions raised regarding bird scaring procedures at the airport?

Pesky birds, anyone would think they're allowed to fly willy nilly where they want.. er.. hang on.... 

It's a bit of a tricky one. Quite often there are rules in place with regard to exactly what the airport can do as far as dealing with how nature can disrupt things, i.e. some species are protected, migratory etc and so not quite as easy to pin down as one might suppose, and of course they can be quite some way from the airport itself too. And there is of course a limit to what can be done anyway.

Naturally it would be easy to say that aircraft safety, with regard to preventing bird strikes, is more important than protecting the lesser crested foo-foo bird or whatever, and so no expense should be spared in combating such things, but all of the creatures in question are an important part of the ecosystem, and we have to remember that as such, they contribute to our well-being and thus our safety too, in that they keep the environment in balance with regard to insect populations and such, which might otherwise spread diseases more easily, and possibly cause even more havoc: Recall if you will, the worst ever incident involving a Boeing 757 - Birgenair Flight 301 - which crashed killing all 189 people on board in 1996, as a result of an insect nesting in one of the pitot tubes, causing the crew to lose control of the airliner owing to an incorrect assessment of a false overspeed warning. If a bird had scoffed that insect, those people might not have been killed.

If I recall correctly, I think Manchester Airport engineers made a little tunnel passageway under one of the runways in order to allow hedgehogs to move about safely, and its worth bearing in mind that this was probably sensible in light of the above example, since hedgehogs of course, eat insects. So who knows how those little fellas might have prevented an accident? It may very well have been the case more than once or twice for all we know.

You'd be surprised how much wildlife we see there, it's quite common to see foxes and badgers pottering about on the ramp at Manchester and some of them are so used to humans that they will walk right past you with very little in the way of fear, and although we do call airfield ops when we see see such things (as they are supposed to come and deal with such things), of course the creatures are often long gone from where we saw and reported them by the time the ops people have responded to the report.

Bird strikes happen, and if they affect a flight it of course makes the news, but like all news reports, the very fact that things which are in fact fairly rare occurrences are reported, tends to skew our perception of how much of a problem such things are. Yes it can be an issue at airports where there are lots of birds all the time, such as near an estuary, but if you think about it, there really haven't been that many incidents over the years which have had a really serious impact (no pun intended) on aircraft safety in the grand scheme of things, so it would appear that for the most part, what measures airports currently take seem to be doing an okay job of things.

Anyway, I thought a bird strike was when the female cabin/flight crews take industrial action.🤣

Edited August 17, 20196 yr by Chock

On 8/15/2019 at 11:56 PM, Matthew Kane said:

As bad as this one looks (and it looks really bad). Their was 136 people on board and only 3 fatalities. It was the Fly By Wire that gave Airbus a bad name initially, but watching that video it looks amazing that many people survived, I think it was always a tough aircraft:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kHa3WNerjU

Quite. And it is worth noting that the FBW in this (and Sully's incident) did exactly what it was designed to do: maintained the aircraft at alpha max, with there greatest possible amount of lift for the speed, and prevented a stall which would have resulted in a disastrous, much heavier, impact.

As Scotty would say: "Ye cannae change the laws of physics, Captain!". Asseline, in his efforts to save his own skin, did his best to destroy the A320's reputation despite all the evidence pointing to the basic facts that the aeroplane did everything that was asked of it to the greatest extent possible given the low-energy state it was in.

Chock! Thank you for another educational insight. And - yes we cannot totally remove nature's influence, nor should we. Bird strikes are a risk to aircraft (and occasionally cars!) which will always be there.

LOL - alternative version of bird strike 

1 hour ago, HighBypass said:

Bird strikes are a risk to aircraft (and occasionally cars!) which will always be there.

Don't even get me started. A few months ago, I was driving along I-70 in West Virginia when I saw a bird flying overhead. I thought I would be clear of the bird....that is until I saw my CB antenna out my left window suddenly start vibrating. I looked at my mirror and saw the bird land on the pavement....in TWO pieces. I had somehow managed to slice a bird open with a CB antenna. When I eventually stopped and got out of the truck, I saw feathers stuck about halfway up the antenna. No way I was going to be able to get them off short of me physically disassembling the antenna, which I really didn't feel like doing. I eventually tried to get the truck washed, but that didn't solve anything, either.

I should note that having a bird strike with the truck has happened a few times. These things are 13'6" high and a little over 8 feet wide, so it's bound to happen. Having a bird strike with the CB antenna....is not really something I would expect to happen, given the size.

15 hours ago, skelsey said:

Quite. And it is worth noting that the FBW in this (and Sully's incident) did exactly what it was designed to do: maintained the aircraft at alpha max, with there greatest possible amount of lift for the speed, and prevented a stall which would have resulted in a disastrous, much heavier, impact.

That would not be the case since if you suddenly lost both engines, you would have also suddenly lost electrical power. So you will be in electrical emergency configuration which means you’ve dropped out of normal law. In abnormal law, alpha prot is not available. The flight controls will not maintain alpha max if you hold the stick back. You will stall the plane if you do that.

5 hours ago, KevinAu said:

That would not be the case since if you suddenly lost both engines, you would have also suddenly lost electrical power. So you will be in electrical emergency configuration which means you’ve dropped out of normal law. In abnormal law, alpha prot is not available. The flight controls will not maintain alpha max if you hold the stick back. You will stall the plane if you do that.

That's incorrect since the RAT automatically drops down and provides hydraulic pressure and electrical power.

There's no abnormal law. With the gear up you are in alternate law (with the gear down in direct law).

Depending on the failure, high angle of attack protection might be lost, but not necessarily.

Edited August 18, 20196 yr by FDEdev