Tuesday, March 13, 2007
MegaWhacker Emergency Landing
Interesting MegaWhacker news from Japan: an All Nippon Airways megawhacker made the news this morning with a nosewheelless emergency landing in Kochi, Japan. Video can be seen here. The forward bottom fuselage held up pretty well and the pilots didn't seem to have any problem with directional control. The Megawhacker has been plagued with landing gear problems since pretty much day one, although as far as I know none of ours have landed without all three down and locked. The Flightinfo rumor is that ANA has grounded their MegaWhacker fleet for now, although I can't find anything to support that.
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15 comments:
What aircraft type is the MegaWhacker?
Any landing you can walk away from is a GOOD landing.
Those pilots did a great job!
Hi Sam... have you done this landing in a simulator? Would you have handled it any different? The pilots seemed to do a really good job of keeping the nose of the ground as long as possible.
it's Dash 8-400
Anonymouses 1 & 4, I call it the Megawhacker for the same reason I don't name the airline I fly for - and because naming the airplane is effectively naming who I work for since we're the only current US operator.
Anonymous 3, I'm not at work so haven't had a chance to look up the landing gear emergency checklists, but in any airplane with an unextended nose gear the procedure is going to be to keep the nose off the ground as long as possible. They appeared to do a pretty good job of that and retaining directional control after nose contact. I haven't done this particular scenario in the sim.
I hate it when the news describes the safe debarkation of passengers following an emergency (or, in many cases, precautionary) landing as "miraculous". A miracle is when my toast lands butter side up. There's no 'miracle' about a safe gear-up landing - thanks to good training and precise flying, everyone on board was unhurt.
I find it curious that there didn't appear to be an immediate loss of prop speed upon touchdown - would a rapid shutdown of the engines not be promptly on the checklist (at least for the FO to handle) after the touchdown and confirmed ability to stop?
It's not like once the nose is on the ground they're going to be able to go around anyways, so I would think that engine shutdown would be pretty near the top of the list at that point in order to avoid any further complications in the even of a runway excursion, etc.
From what I saw there was no appreciable loss in prop RPM throughout the rollout. (Using the term "rollout" loosely in this sitaution)
....or is there just that amount of momentum on the props even after turbine shutdown that it wouldn't be noticable on such a short video?
Eric - Agreed. It'd be more suprising if someone got hurt in this situation. Now one of the two main gear failing to deploy...that'd be trickier.
Oshawapilot - although I don't have the emergency checklist in front of me, I rather doubt that it has the pilots shut down the engines on rollout. Given the megawhacker's geometry you're not likely going to hit a prop in this situation, and you'd hate to see the pilots lose directional control because they were too busy getting the engines shut down. That's something that can wait for until the airplane is stopped.
Hah Sam ... do you think that there is actually anyone that doesn't know for what airline you work for? A friend of mine sent me an e-mail a year or so a go about your blong and he found out about it from captain at your airline actually.
Subject e-mail: Pilot from BLANK airline blog :D
It's good practice though ...
Anonymous--
It's very easy to guess who I work for. I haven't made serious attempts to mask my identity since it'd make the blog boring and the people that really count - airline mgmt - would have it figured out anyways. As a good practice, though, I don't name the company (or, by extension, the airplane) myself. There's less to go after me for that way.
Sam, you won't be the only US operator of megawhackers for long. Colgan is getting 15 of them for use in the northeast.
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