Pilot’s incredible high-wind landing caught on camera
ON THE first attempt, the right wheel barely makes contact with the ground before the pilot aborts. The second attempt is barely smoother.
A PILOT has pulled off an incredible high-wind landing in the UK.
Strong gusts battered the Thomas Cook Airlines jet as it approached the runway in Birmingham.
On the first attempt, the right wheel barely makes contact with the ground before the pilot decides to abort, performing a manoeuvre called a “touch and go”.
The second attempt is barely smoother.
You can see the Airbus A321 rocking from side to side, violently swinging sideways at the last second before safely hitting the tarmac.
The whole thing was captured on video by aviation enthusiast Flugsnug, and posted on YouTube.
“When conditions are less than ideal, the particular distribution of buildings and earth mounds etc around BHX usually claims the odd victim, as the unpredictable wind currents and eddies suddenly catch the unfortunate plane,” Flugsnug wrote in the post.
“It’s not really dangerous. It just requires the utmost of your training to kick in,” commercial airline pilot Daniel Fahl told CNN.
“It does look dramatic, but that’s just because the aeroplanes are so susceptible to the wind. But that’s how they’re designed. They’re designed to be weather vanes that point into the wind.”
The technique is known as a crab landing.
Planes land most efficiently when the wind is directly at the nose of the aircraft.
According to a Quora thread, letting it swing to an angle helps the pilot maintain a straight trajectory to the runway while compensating for the gusts.
The pilot will use the controls to straighten the aircraft immediately before touchdown.