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Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

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Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#121

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…

They seemed to have timed placing the nose down better than I anticipated. It speaks to their experience how gently they were able to handle the situation.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#122
post #29

That landing was so smooth it makes you wonder if front landing gear is even necessary at all!

Repainting them between flights is a real pain.

This wouldn't be a hull-loss or a major rebuild? I'd think the runway is keeping some of the aluminum from the nose for itself. Plus that's a lot of vibration near sensitive radome.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#123

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 don't know what model of plane this is, but I was watching a Real Engineering video on the Boeing 787. He said that some planes have a third engine for generating electricity (the APU) and the exhaust for that is at the tip of the tail. Maybe there are concerns about potentially damaging the APU?

Most commercial planes have APUs (That's the loud sound you hear/exhaust you smell from the jet bridge) but a tail strike would hit closer to underneath the back seats of the plane than the middle of the tail like that. The only concern in emergency situations like this is getting every passenger safely on land. Not their bags, not every component of the airplane. Both of those are more easily resolvable via insurance than lost passenger lives.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#124
post #74
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly can repair it, but in this case, given that Delta is already in the process of retiring the Boeing 717 (and replacing it with Airbus 220), they might just decide that it's not economical to do it anymore...

The specific plane (1), N955AT, is 22.6 years old. So not young, but not completely geriatric either. Delta seems to be the only major operator of the plane type, so don't think there'd be too many buyers. Delta also seems to have a fair few in storage(2) so a fair guess would be that they'd scrap it but keep the parts that they could still use on other planes as spares. 1) https://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b7…

Delta and Hawaiian are the two US operators. Hawaiian loves it, and is struggling to replace it. They use them for island-hopping. Modern airliners don't do well in this use case — modern engines have been engineered to tight tolerances to extract fuel economy, and their thermal designs rely on the cold air at cruise altitude to keep them healthy. Island hops are too short and too low for that to hold. The engines on the 717 handle it just fine, but anything else on the market will require the planes to sit on the tarmac for a significant length of time between landing and takeoff for them to cool enough, and would destroy Hawaiian's current network design, which has lots of quick flights and tight turns.

Delta announced retirement a long time ago, but has been not-so-secretly buying up as many as they can get, mostly as spares for parts to keep the fleet going because it's so useful for them. Also, the A220, its replacement, has a single engine, the Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbofan, which has had an incredibly rough entry into service — everyone was concerned that the gearbox would be an issue, but it has been mostly rock-solid, and it's the engine core that's had dozens of issues. An airline in India has over half of its fleet grounded and filed for bankruptcy last month because P&W can't repair their engines.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#125
post #95
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…

There is an algorithm for everything in aviation. If you suspect your landing gear is not functional, you typically fly by a tower and have them make visual confirmation. Then you have another algorithm (they call them procedures) for how to land without gear. The airport likewise has a checklist of everything to do in this case. All of these procedures are hard won, the NTSB uses every hull failure and fatal acciden…

Not saying this should be an alternative, but having read a lot of transcripts and video of things like this, I wonder why there aren't outside cameras that would potentially give pilots a visual indication of plane conditions outside? Is it just the cost of supporting resilient cameras?

A lot of incident reports have flight attendants or copilots leaving to try to make visual confirmation of things that it seems would be better suited if there were some actual visual feedback.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#126

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

If you have the Flightradar24 app, you can get an alert any time an aircraft transponder squawks 7700 - Emergency. (While writing, a cesna over Oklahoma City just did)

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#127
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an algorithm for everything in aviation. If you suspect your landing gear is not functional, you typically fly by a tower and have them make visual confirmation. Then you have another algorithm (they call them procedures) for how to land without gear. The airport likewise has a checklist of everything to do in this case. All of these procedures are hard won, the NTSB uses every hull failure and fatal acciden…

Not saying this should be an alternative , but having read a lot of transcripts and video of things like this, I wonder why there aren't outside cameras that would potentially give pilots a visual indication of plane conditions outside? Is it just the cost of supporting resilient cameras? A lot of incident reports have flight attendants or copilots leaving to try to make visual confirmation of things that it seems wo…

A lot of aircraft could do this but the rules are most likely the same for the majority of air planes large and small.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#128
post #95
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…

There is an algorithm for everything in aviation. If you suspect your landing gear is not functional, you typically fly by a tower and have them make visual confirmation. Then you have another algorithm (they call them procedures) for how to land without gear. The airport likewise has a checklist of everything to do in this case. All of these procedures are hard won, the NTSB uses every hull failure and fatal acciden…

And when there is not a tower nearby, you, uhh... find a way. My buddy was flying into one of the many uncontrolled airports in NorCal, and there was a guy in a single-engine retractable gear circling the airport. When Buddy made his downwind call, the Guy radioed "Hey I'm not getting any indication whether my gear is down or not, can you fly by me and tell me if it's down?" It was down, so Guy ended up attempting the landing with a bit more confidence than he started out with.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#129
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an algorithm for everything in aviation. If you suspect your landing gear is not functional, you typically fly by a tower and have them make visual confirmation. Then you have another algorithm (they call them procedures) for how to land without gear. The airport likewise has a checklist of everything to do in this case. All of these procedures are hard won, the NTSB uses every hull failure and fatal acciden…

Not saying this should be an alternative , but having read a lot of transcripts and video of things like this, I wonder why there aren't outside cameras that would potentially give pilots a visual indication of plane conditions outside? Is it just the cost of supporting resilient cameras? A lot of incident reports have flight attendants or copilots leaving to try to make visual confirmation of things that it seems wo…

You'd gain nothing, they can already see it with their eyeballs, and they don't require anything else like faster response or a different viewpoint. You'd lose in terms of putting another hole in the aircraft and maintaining another system, and you'd still need the manual procedure in case the camera didn't work.

Re: Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

#130
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the aircraft are designed to handle the stress. I wonder how the runway fares after this.

Not answering your question, but a bit of interesting trivia for you. Large passenger airplanes routinely take off with too much fuel to land safely. If one took off, circled the airport once, and landed, then it might actually break apart on landing because of the mass of the fuel being sloshed around as the airplane touches down. That's why planes preferably dump or burn off excess fuel before an unscheduled early…

Generally, the displaced threshold is not because of the load of touching down, but because of clearance of obstacles. When landing, where you are aiming to land, and a standard glideslope, puts you over obstacles at a certain height. In some cases if you landed on the very end of he the runway, that would cause you to collide with (or have too low a margin of safety) over obstacles before the runway. The displaced threshold moves the glideslope further forward, allowing for better clearance over obstacles.

Source: Advisory Circular 150/5300-13B Airport Design, 3.5.3 (https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...)

  When it is impractical to locate a threshold at the beginning of the runway, it may be
  necessary to apply a displaced threshold. A displaced threshold reduces runway length
  available for landings in one direction. The portion of the runway prior to the displaced
  threshold typically remains available for takeoffs. Depending on the circumstances
  surrounding the displacement, operations from the opposite runway end may or may not
  be affected. Refer to Appendix H for related information on declared distances.
  Generally, a runway threshold displacement provides:
  1. A means for obtaining additional RSA prior to the threshold.
  2. A means for obtaining additional ROFA prior to the threshold.
  3. A means for locating the RPZ to mitigate incompatible land uses.
  4. A means for obstacle clearance prior to the threshold.
  5. Increased arrival capacity with certain parallel runway approach procedures. See
  FAA Order 7110.308, Simultaneous Dependent Approaches to Closely Spaced
  Parallel Runways
Glossary:

  RSA: Runway Safety Area
  ROFA: Runway Object Free Area
  RPZ: Runway Protection Zone
Note that all of the given reasons are for clearance of obstacles or various other mandatory safety areas based on clearance from taxiways or other runway traffic, not for durability of the runway.
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