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Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

wbtv.com

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Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#41

Post by pbhjpbhj »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #9

why don't they land on the tail instead of the nose? Seems a lot less risky to drag the back than scrape the front - which can flip the plane Is it simply the center of gravity? (engines look like they're behind)

What makes you say they didn't land on the rear landing gear first? Part of the normal landing is -- AIUI, IANAPilot -- to flare, that is to increase the angle of attack of the aircraft (pull up the nose, increase drag) in order to reduce forward speed; this also puts the rear gear closest to the runway, the rear gear being bilateral means this spreads the load.

In fact, I've just looked at a video on YouTube "AIRLIVE" [0] and you can see the shadow of the nose off the ground when the plane shakes (at 0:07s) indicating the rear gear has made contact. I think the nose contacts at 0:13, so gently it's amazing.

[0] https://youtube.com/watch/I1dthJSuZLk

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#42

Post by DonHopkins »

bin_bash wrote: post #21
gmtplus8 wrote: post #10

Non-USA resident here. Can someone explain all the four-letter news station names to me? Why not brand them with something more memorable / locally nuanced?

Well they are memorable for the people that live in the area—at least that was the case when broadcast TV/radio was important. There really wasn't a need for them to be decipherable to outsiders since historically they would be outside of the broadcast range.

They all come with cute little jingles of people singing the letters!

KOME:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rMhtoniG82o

(I wish I could find a recording of the one that went;: "Don't touch that dial!!! You've got KOME on your radio." or "The KOME spot on your FM dial.")

Vintage WWDC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPybevwjinM

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#43

Post by chrisldgk »

WJW wrote: post #8
devoutsalsa wrote: post #2

This isn't common, but it's pretty routine. Pilots are trained for this, and the aircraft are designed to handle the stress.

Interesting! Do you know if it can just survive it and then needs to be scrapped or is it possible to replace the damaged hull plate(s) and (after thorough inspection) put the plane back into service?

Airplanes rarely get scrapped for parts because of incidents like this. They have pretty extensive maintenance and repair checklists, but afaik the rate of making vessels like this airworthy is pretty high.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#44

Post by cto_of_antifa »

madeofpalk wrote: post #39
Kye wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planes have to be sturdy and flexible to handle the environment they spend most of their time cruising in. This is probably nothing next to the turbulence planes are expected to shrug off while maintaining a ground level environment eight miles up for decades of service life.

I was somewhat thinking of the mechanical stress of the passengers.

[dead]

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#45

Post by ominous_prime »

noahmbarr wrote: post #26

First, pilots should be commended. 101 (or 104) souls were saved. This is an almost 23 year old plane. Even with checks and maintenance, was age a factor?

This is kind of patronizing to the pilots. There’s nothing particularly difficult about what they did, which has been practiced many times. They ran their checklists, and then landed the plane, and they did it well, just like any other qualified pilot should have. People need to stop conflating basic competence with heroics.

Age is always a factor in mechanical failure, but I’m sure this failure will be inspected in detail to try and avoid it again in the future

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#46

Post by piva00 »

InCityDreams wrote: post #5
devoutsalsa wrote: post #2

This isn't common, but it's pretty routine. Pilots are trained for this, and the aircraft are designed to handle the stress.

>the aircraft are designed to handle the stress. I was somewhat thinking of the passengers.

Here you can see a YT Shorts that a passenger inside the flight shot, it's actually much less stressful than I imagined: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W12w7NkqGCM

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#47

Post by jwestbury »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #27
InCityDreams wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the aircraft are designed to handle the stress. I was somewhat thinking of the passengers.

> I was somewhat thinking of the passengers. Everything that happened was well within the stress tolerance parameters of the majority of involved humans as well.

The prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder would disagree.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#48

Post by AnimalMuppet »

californical wrote: post #25
contrarian1234 wrote: post #9

why don't they land on the tail instead of the nose? Seems a lot less risky to drag the back than scrape the front - which can flip the plane Is it simply the center of gravity? (engines look like they're behind)

I would guess you can’t land well with the wings pointed in the “going up” direction

You'd be in a deep stall, which, as I understand it, is very much not how you want to land.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#49

Post by tallanvor »

mannykannot wrote: post #28
jbverschoor wrote: post #20

They only circled around for a few minutes?

There's no point in waiting once you have run through the checklist and put the crash trucks in position.

Unless you want to burn fuel, but it sounds like that wasn't needed here.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#50

Post by sidlls »

jbverschoor wrote: post #20

They only circled around for a few minutes?

These planes all come with handbooks that the manufacturer provides for anomalous situations, like when some landing gear don't work. Once the flight crew run through the checklists in the handbooks for the problem, that's pretty much it. In certain cases and time permitting, the crew might also be in contact with their airline's maintenance/engineering staff in case there's something else that might be done. But once those options are exhausted there's no point in staying in the air, and these checklists can generally be done fairly quickly by a trained crew.
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