What's a little landing gear trouble? (From the other thread) This was from the late 80's early 90's as told to me by the AOG crew that put the bird back in the air. This is in Tahiti The plane was landing long and the pilot decided to force it instead of Go-around. Upon touch down, as explained to me, the throttles were pulled back and only three of the four thrust reversers were engaged. The forth not engaged was the #1 engine. The engines were spooled back up hard because of the short run-out and the result was an uncontrolled turn to the right, into the ocean over a rock embankment.. Rumour has it the PIC was an ex-L1011 Pilot. (Probably an ex-747 pilot after this) If you look closely you can see that the reverser on #1 is closed and you can definitely see them open on 2 and 4. Tahiti, not known for heavy equipment had to round up every truck, bus and tractor they could find. They daisy-chained them all together and managed to drag the 747 back up onto the tarmac. Dragging it back over the rocks torn the hell out of the structure. I talked personally with the mechanics that put this bird back in the air in 30 days. Because of the salt water they cut the bottom of the airplane OFF from the nose to the wing-stub area, including all electronics. All of the replacement structure was taken directly from the production line in Everett. There was a little overtime involved to get the line caught up again. This airplane provided a few more decades of service before retirement. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
When I was working in Seattle, I heard more than a few stories about what amazing work that Boeing's AOG teams did in getting seemingly wrecked aircraft back into service. This is one more example of that!
Those old-school guys are long gone. I just don't don't think we have the team like we once did., all subbed out now.
Cool story about a great plane (and a great airframe & etc. repair crew!!) BUT; would that still happen today? With the growth of composite construction, plus the potential liabilities to the airline (& manufacturer) in the future, would the aircraft more likely just be written off and trashed-in-place? Seems to me that the scare of future litigation in any subsequent mishap/accident scenario would be too great. We have so many people/agencies 'looking out for our safety' these days....
I would assume procedure in this circumstance would be to use symmetrical reversers. Any 747 pilots care to comment? Side question- is landing distance on the 747 predicated on functioning TR's, or does it assume no TR's?
I would submit that the bad landing was so badly botched that one thrust reverser could never have saved it anyway.
I would agree the root cause was the long landing. I wonder how much distance was remaining when the plane went off the side of the runway. I am also curious about what you would do if that happened under normal circumstances.
Landed in KSLC today with one TR locked out, just use the working one in idle (757). I'd have to look it up but pretty sure TRs just add a safety margin and aren't part of the landing calculations.
TR's are not factored into landing distances in the C-5 either, but I wasn't sure how it was in other jets as the C-5 is my first experience with a big jet, or any aircraft with thrust reversing. I'm told they fail to deploy sometimes.
Yes on the symmetrical reversers. I find it hard to believe though that the asymmetry would be enough to pull the airplane off the runway. On my previous airplane we could use full reverser ('consistent with directional control') on only one side, but that was an RJ with rear fuselage mounted engines. Obviously 1 or 4 on a 747 has a much longer arm. Maybe I can ask to try it during my next recurrent in March. Thrust reversers are never factored into dispatch landing distance requirements. I think that's a 121 thing, no? Default when doing the inflight landing calculations are also no reversers but they can be selected if required for performance. We had a crew at my last carrier that forgot that last bit and diverted when they could've made it with reversers selected. Chief Pilot was not happy.
Surprised I had never heard of this incident so I Googled it and found; Lessons Learned Didn't realize #1 was at go around power with 2,3, and 4 in reverse. Plus no spoilers, no autobrakes, etc. It does remind me a lot of the Asiana accident at SFO. The main problem was the crew not understanding the interaction between multiple auto flight modes and auto throttle modes. The Asiana crew expected auto throttle intervention and didn't get it, the Air France crew expected auto throttle dormancy and got intervention. Both were particular to having the auto flight selected off with the auto throttle left engaged and weren't covered in pilot training. The longer I fly with auto throttles, the more I don't like them.
A blast of throttle for braking thinking all the thrust reversers are engaged, but one of the two worst possibilities (outboard) pushing in the wrong direction is definitely going to induce some yaw. Add that to everything else they screwed up and easy to see how it happened.
Even though I am French, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the flying skills of Air france crews. Just too many accidents where crew did not understand situations or did not follow procedures. I think training standards aren't high enough. Feel very much safer when flying BA. As I do quite a bit of flying across Europe, I had a few 'unplanned' events and BA pilots have always handeld them very professionally. Also they don't slam their planes down when landing unlike Ryanair...
Thank you for the link and clarification, it's been 20 years since I heard the second-hand account from the AOG guys. Very enlightening.
Then there was the aborted takeoff in India that tore all the main gear and the engines off in a swamp. The wait for a new airplane was years out so Air India gave the go ahead to rebuild the one they had there, which they did. The heat and the wind was brutal. If you drilled a hole at 3:00 pm you had to fill it immediately or wait 24 hours for the holes to match back up due to the extreme heat differences from day to night.
