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Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

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101–110 of 302 posts

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#101
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It really is amazing how resilient planes are, I'm pretty hooked on this YouTube series in which a guy gets given a plane that's been sitting in the open for 15 years or so on the condition he can make the thing run again. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5IMg7-HLL1Y4K06HdsDB...

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#102

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…

I would imagine simulator practice is a good amount different from executing the real thing when your adrenaline is kicking in and they have a full plane. They are professionals that executed a complex task gracefully to minimize the terror that their passengers experienced (they balanced on the back wheels for a long time to bleed off speed and the landing seemed more graceful than many with all landing gear that I've had). Why not give them some props instead of taking them for granted? Maybe the pilots weren't too worried, but I'm sure the passengers must have been pretty terrified.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#103

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…

There’s a difference between practicing for a situation and being able to perform under the pressure and stress of when it actually occurs and the consequences of failure are dire

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#104
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe.. I’d wanna try a few more times

Everything is done via checklists. You don't just "try a few more times" unless there's some indication that you should. They only had 30 minutes of fuel left, and if they had an unrelated go-around and ran out of fuel while setting up for another landing, everyone dies. Once you've run all the relevant checklists and ARFF is in position, you land the plane.

Well obviously if there's no fuel :)

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#105

What's with them putting "a hold" on all of the passengers possessions? Like, that's leaving people without their wallets (aka id, money) and so on. Sounds like they may not get it back for an unknown period of time (weeks, months?) either.

They probably want to make sure the plane is undisturbed before it can be examined by crash investigators and so on?

There's probably a bit of a safety and practicality aspect of accessing a plane with a collapsed gear.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#107
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FCC licenses are given with those station identifying letters and there’s a requirement to broadcast the station ID periodically. Many stations have an additional brand (often “Fox Boston”), but they still have to use the FCC ID as well. One of my favorite station IDs was an independent local analog UHF channel 56 with call letters WLVI. I heard those letters for years before I realized it was 56 in Roman numeral…

>One of my favorite station IDs was an independent local analog UHF channel 56 with call letters WLVI. Bangor, ME has an ABC affiliate WVII broadcasting on VHF channel 7.

Rochester NY has WXXI for a PBS station on channel 21. It is also curiously reused as the call sign on local AM and FM NPR radio stations. For whatever reason that is allowed.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#108
post #7

Did they know in advance that they were having problems? Edit: Answer: Yes ... the crew initiated a go around due to a unsafe nose gear indication, climbed to 4000 feet and entered a hold to work the checklists. After working the checklists the crew declared emergency and requested emergency services on stand by. The aircraft performed a low approach to runway 36L, positioned for another approach to runway 36L and la…

If you want to hear the conversion between the pilots and ATC during this time, the VASAviation channel has you covered:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7bWWVj91YA

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#109
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They can most certainly repair the plane. If you've never heard of the "Gimli Glider", check this out... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

That's an insane story. As much as I hate flying, modern aviation infrastructure is one of mankind's most impressive feats.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#110
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

you can right click a shorts video, copy the URL, and paste that to get the normal non-crippled YouTube player

https://youtu.be/W12w7NkqGCM

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