Hadn't seen this posted but two incredible vids of a 744 landing at NRT in some strong wind gusts.  I've never seen the speed tape on a PFD move like that.  

Incredible stuff but just another day at the office for the crew. 

 

 

Looks like 10-20 knot gusts.  Yikes!

51 minutes ago, stans said:

Looks like 10-20 knot gusts.  Yikes!

The speed tape movement looked pretty dramatic from my office chair...  I puckered... 

Nice job there.

That’s something you don’t see as much of nowadays, someone actually flying rather than just following guidance cues and using fly by wire.

Contrary to what you might read in some magazine articles , which always make me laugh , the 747 isn’t “easy to fly” , especially in gusty conditions like that.

In gusts because of the huge amount of inertia the 747 has the ground speed actually stays relatively stable as it punches through the gusts.
 

This leads to the airspeed bouncing around all over the place as you see in that clip. The changes in airspeed cause changes in pitch ,and also  require large corrections of thrust which again causes a pitch change due to the pitch/power coupling, all of which are smoothed out by the FBW on more modern aircraft. The 747 requires constant corrections on approach as once it starts diverging from the desired course it becomes increasingly hard to get it back due to the size and inertia of the thing.

It’s also good to see the FO as pilot monitoring  did a good job by sensibly  not injecting lots of “speed” calls. The pilot flying stated he was correcting the speed when it deviated too far from the bug and that was all that was required. There is a tendency now in the industry to be very sensitive to speed deviations and first officers encouraged to call out any and all deviations and even to call an unstable approach which requires a go around. Its original intention was to avoid “the fox has got it wired” followed by “ I told you John” type situations ( some of you will know what I mean by that😉)  in benign conditions which is obviously a good thing.

However it seems to have swung too far the other way now (like most of these things), with pilots not familiar with the way large aircraft handle in gusty conditions shouting out deviations constantly which only serve as a distraction. It’s all very well calling an unstable approach and go around in gusty or thermal conditions like that but you’ll only come back for another go (unless it’s really bad and you have a much better situation at an alternate) and when you come back the thermals and gust will still be there and won’t know you’ve just gone around so you’ll just keep doing it until there’s no fuel left.
 

At the end of the day there is still a requirement to be able to fly an aircraft onto a runway in rough conditions, but this skill seems to be being sanitised away as new pilots are taught more to be monitors and whizz kids on the iPad EFB.

One last example of this before I finish ranting for the day, I once had an FO call  “three whites”  at me while I was about 70ft in a 747 which was the last thing I wanted to be listening too at that stage. I won’t bore you with how a visual slope indicator just isn’t relevant to a double deck 747 at 70ft, or that if you try and make a vertical correction at that high in a 747 it’ll end badly.

However I checked the GS indication as he made the call, then later crunched the trigonometry numbers, and he was right I was high…by 2ft ! 

 

 

Beside the wind and PFD view, this video also interestingly shows the pilot flying's eyes.

To my interests, seems he have his view almost inside, only a glance to the runway occasionally down to the DA.

For me, in desktop or full sim, after visual on runway like 1000~1500' AFE and AP/AT off, I'm mostly on the runway, only occasionally glimpse on instruments.

Wonder how you guys doing, and what's the norm for most airliner pilots

2 hours ago, C2615 said:

Beside the wind and PFD view, this video also interestingly shows the pilot flying's eyes.

To my interests, seems he have his view almost inside, only a glance to the runway occasionally down to the DA

True until aicraft gets down to minimums. As soon as the "minimums" call is heard, PF shifts priorities and now looks the whole time to the runway. Only once looked at his instruments.

4 hours ago, C2615 said:

Wonder how you guys doing, and what's the norm for most airliner pilots

I remember when I first started training on the 74 the trainer said to me, if you watch an experienced 747 pilot his eyes are constantly looking out at the runway and then back in at the instruments , switching between the two constantly.

This new 787 thing I’m on now of course has the HUD so you’re looking out at the runway all the time but I find I’m just focusing on the guidance cue and runway alone too much and am loosing the three dimensional situational awareness I had landing the jumbo. That’s probably just me getting used to it though.