First aborted landing

It's sometimes a little shocking when things don't happen like you expect them to.

I used to fly a lot - and I've only experience one aborted landing attempt - and it was by far the most frightening airplane experience I've ever had.

Flying CLT-DFW-MEX on AA MD88, landing at DFW on 35C. I had a window seat on the right side of the plane. As we were heading west somewhere over Irving, I could see one of the blackest thunderstorms I've seen more or less over Grapevine Lake to the north. There was a distinct "wall" of black clouds. The ride was getting choppy as we turned right towards DFW.

The plane was all over the place - very bumpy. Passengers were rumbling a bit. Seemed like the storm clouds moved over the airport - and, I'm guessing, at about 500ft the plane suddenly dropped like a rock. Enough that a few people actually screamed. It seemed like it dropped for 30 seconds - but it was probably 2 or 3. Then all of a sudden everything went totally quiet - and then engines totally screaming full blast and we shot steeply up and into the thunderstorm, rocking and rolling all over the place. Popped above the storm and it was suddenly a nice sunny peaceful day again.

We got diverted to Austin, and the tarmac was full of planes that had been diverted and we couldn't park at the terminal. Everyone was standing in the aisle talking and the pilots came back and chit-chatted. Someone said something to the captain about being scared to death, and the captain said something like "well, I'm going to need to clean my pants out too..".

That was the first and only time I've ever heard a pilot say something like that - so I assume we were in a bit of trouble for a few seconds.

 

My only diversion ever was trying to land in St. Louis during heavy thunderstorms.
We had to try THREE TIMES - pretty gut wrenching roller coaster ride.

Jedi

 

Thunder storms are baad bullies. I have had three experiences with them while flying and they are in possession of powerful forces and they like to use them. My first was actually on my private pilot check ride and got caught in a micro burst while attempting my final accuracy landing. The second was while landing at Redding , Ca. in the teeth of a violent black cold front just ahead of the hail. The third was as a passenger in a Vickers Viscount in Chicago. They ain't much fun.

 

As a passenger, I have been through three aborted landings.....on the same flight.

When I was 17, my father and I got our PPL's at about the same time. Some months after we were both certified and been putting in a lot of hours, one of his friends asked if we wanted to go up with him and his Mooney. Not really going anywhere, just going up to do some practice. My dad ends up not being able to make it because of work, but being a plane nut, I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to get some right stick time in a new plane. Once we got up in the air, it became VERY apparent this person was "out of practice" to say the least. It took him three aborted landings before he finally got it down...not smoothly. Scared the heck out of me; I really thought I was going to have to take over and try to land something I had never flown since this person was getting more and more agitated with each failed landing. Once on the ground, the tower requested a word with him.


Mark

 

My first question is.....what were you doing taking a private pilot checkride with thunderstorms in the vicinity????

 

NOt aborted landing, but roughest flight I've ever had...

Miami to Denver, at night. Continental, when DEN was a hub for them. DC-9 or MD-80, don't remember which... I think.

We, the captain explained, had to fly way South over the Gulf as there were Tornados all over Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma.

So rough, for over an hour, that I was totally unable to read anything; head bouncing around, book bouncing around.

My GF said that she kept seeing this light go vertically past the window off and on, up and down.
It was the light on the end of the wing. Seemed like the wing was flexing 20 feet.

One woman was hysterical (right across the aisle). Stewardess braved walking while this was going on to try to calm her. People were screaming, crying and vomiting. This went on for over an hour.

Captain came on the horn and apologized; said the plane was designed to withstand much, much more. His voice was wavering with each bounce up, down and sideways. Said there was no altitude or route that was smoother.

I was calm; my GF said the only reason she was OK was because I was calm and not worried.

We had to land in El Paso to refuel due to the long, slow route. We had to stay on the plane, but I noticed that there was a whole group of people walking around inspecting the plane while we sat there; for an hour and a half. El Paso to DEN was fairly smooth.

 

This was in the summer of '45 and local cells develop quickly and as we were finishing the flight and returning to the airport we could see one nearing the end of the runway. We got caught in a strong wind shift and I had to walk the airplane down as it stalled too high. We hit like a ton of the proverbial bricks and I will be forever mystified how the examiner sat there with his arms folded while I was fighting like hell to keep us upright. I got criticized for letting the airplane slide off the runway into the grass shoulder but I still got my ticket.It wasn't a generalized storm but one of the many smaller cells that roam around in the summer and join up and form the really big bad systems that can kill jetliners. As I remember, there were quite a few in the area that we had to dodge during the ride. I suppose that one gets used to the local weather and adjusts his thinking and the means to cope with it.
That was the toughest day of flying that I ever experienced. The examiner, ED Denham, was also one of my instructors.

 

JLP you got my memory thing going and I recall that we were pelted with "rain drops on our heads" that were the size of grapes when we pulled up on the ramp and chained the airplane down. Soaking wet to the skin before we got to the office. Same thing at Redding, Ca. in 1970 when we were returning from the Merced Antique Fly-in. Still wouldn't trade those days for anything in the world.

 

I've never had an aborted landing but I did have an aborted takeoff at IAD once. In a United Express BAe 146, we were accelerating down the runway when the pilot suddenly throttled back and we slowed down and turned off; fortunately with Dulles' long runways there was no drama.

We pulled onto a taxiway and stopped, and the pilots throttled the engines up and down a few times and also cycled the flaps, so I don't know where the problem was. The captain came on the PA and said that a warning light had come on and they were checking to see if they had a real problem or if it was just a bad warning light. He reached the conclusion that it was the latter and we went back to the head of the runway and took off normally; the rest of the flight to Daytona Beach was normal.

Interesting point was that the four-time Olympic discus champ, the late Al Oerter (who I had previously met in a gym) was sitting right across the aisle.

 

Microbursts can happen with no apparent Tstorm in the vicinity.

 

I don't want to thrash this thing into a mash but when this happened we had no idea why. The rain was coming down at the north end of the runway, we were landing from the south with the tetrahedron, into the wind. When we were at approximately 50 feet altitude at the threshold, the bottom dropped out of everything and I had no lift. Power on, stick forward, and dancing on the rudders until we hit the runway like an empty trash can. I must admit that I have never been able to figure out the physics of the incident because on the downwind the tetrahedron showed the wind coming from the north out of the storm cell. Then it switched 180 degrees when I was on very short final and too high and I was in deep doo doo. At the time, we didn't give much thought to storms in the area because it was the way it was and you worked around it. The check ride was scheduled on that day and at that time so we did it. My solo x-country was in early summer and I had to dodge several t-storms going north out of Ft. Meyers. Again, that is the way it was then. Looking back, I can remember at least two fatal incidents due to inadvisably flying into large and well developed thunderstorms but even as a dumb kid then, I knew better..

 

No... they cant...dont confuse microbursts with general windshear. Microsbursts are associated with mature cumulonimbus clouds with thunderstorm activity and typically rain.

 

Well it was different times back then but you wouldnt have been as accountable as your check airman. But hey you passed right!!!!

 

Missed approaches in the airline world are pretty rare, since an airline crew can't begin an approach unless the weather is at or above landing minimums. Lots of missed approaches in the simulator, though!

 

It's been a norm for me to experience aborted landings coming into SFO. Probably experienced this 3 times in the past year or so. The worst was probably coming in on VX from LAX and about 300ft, pilot blasted the engines and we circled around and landed the second time. What was interesting was to see emergency vehicles near the runway and a quiet airfield. We might have been the the last plane to come in. We actually landed on 19L, really rare for SFO I believe.

Roughest flight I've been on was just recent from JFKLAX. It was the last week of April when there was the terrible weather coming across the nation. Turbulence for about 3 hours or so. Pilot said he requested FL370 to try to fly over but there was a fuel issue, so we had to brace the storm for awhile. But, flew B6 so I enjoyed the free DirectTV and snacks (shameless plug)

 

Yea, I average one per year and I think only one in the last 5 years happend because we could'nt see the runway at mins, the rest were windshear or traffic on the runway. With CatIII you can just about get in everytime.

 

We had a go-around in a 767, Hawaiian Airlines at SEA when another airplane crossed the runway at the wrong time at night and in the rain. What else in Seattle!

 

The airplane I fly does...it has 2 modes, Predictive and Reactive, one shows (and tells) you where it is on the radar and and the other tells you if its headwind shear or tailwind shear and gives you guidance for maximum performance if your already in it. I would imagine many airliners built from the late 90's on have it.

 

Atlanta can get a little tight sometimes as well, because they try and keep us as close as possible on approach. You learn pretty quickly to look at your TCAS display which shows the other traffic on your screen. If you have an airplane if front of you on short final and the TCAS shows him at -600 feet from your altitude or 2.5 miles you know its gonna be really close and you start preparing for a go around.

 

The problem at ATL is that most arriving aircraft have to cross the adjacent active takeoff runway in order to get to the terminal; arriving aircraft waiting on the midfield taxiway sometimes have to wait quite awhile for clearance to cross the active runway to reach the terminal complex. And aircraft landing on the newest runway, 10-28, have to cross both 09-27 runways to reach the terminal.

On the other hand, on the north side, a "loop" taxiway was added to allow aircraft arriving on 08R to taxi past the west end of 08L without having to stop. They need something like that on the south side.

 

I heard a couple of years ago that it was in the plans, well see.

 

Sorry, I got my headings reversed! Look on a current diagram of ATL and you'll see taxiway Victor which loops traffic arriving on 26R around the end of 26L. I've arrived on quite a few planes that have used it.