[gtonsing]

Originally Posted by TKMCE

This is a very interesting side track which "gtonsing" has raised
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Midwest_Flight_5481

Interesting article that. While I am not expert, I keenly watch Air Crash Investigation (I may say, to my inconvenience, since everytime I sit in an aircraft, I play out those scenes during take-off, landing and flying over cities etc and have to force myself to think of something else) and I have come across very few episodes where weight was the primary or contributing cause of crashes.
As for the CAR requirement, the Letter to the editor seems to be just a (pardon the example) bored retired old pilot writing in for the sake of writing and making himself/herself "famous" in the neighbourhood.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by gtonsing

Interesting article that. While I am not expert, I keenly watch Air Crash Investigation (I may say, to my inconvenience, since everytime I sit in an aircraft, I play out those scenes during take-off, landing and flying over cities etc and have to force myself to think of something else) and I have come across very few episodes where weight was the primary or contributing cause of crashes.

As for the CAR requirement, the Letter to the editor seems to be just a (pardon the example) bored retired old pilot writing in for the sake of writing and making himself/herself "famous" in the neighbourhood.

I agree. Not to many incidents or accidents due to weight issues. But when it happens it usually comes with very serious consequences. On a slightly different note, there have been accidents with cargo breaking loose, changing the CG dramatically with a subsequent crash. Recent one was a 747 during take off, see this very dramatic YouTube

Although I don't have the statistics at hand, I think we see more weight related issues in small General Aviation, ie the sort of planes I fly. Reason is that weight really impacts the performance of these planes. Especially when you fly them at higher altitudes you really need to get the weight correct to be able to calculate your take off distance and what sort of rate of climb you will be getting.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uIjO0sKBDDw

Also agree on your comments and earlier comments to the gentleman and what he wrote. In my opinion he made it worse for the Involved airlines and pilots by not offering an detailed explanation what is happening, but taking the high road of morale superiority.

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

On a different matter, but still flying related, I just finished this little video of me flying earlier this year. I obtained my Private Pilot License and various other ratings and endorsements during our stay in Kansas City, USA. I flew as much as I possibly could in those days. During the week after work and every weekend. Absolutely loved it.

I found it very difficult to even begin to understand how General Aviation is organized in India and my wife was nervous enough of me flying in US airspace, let alone Indian airspace.

During our summer holiday back in the UK/The Netherlands I rented one of my favorite planes, a Cirrus SR20 for four hours. As you will see the Cirrus has a full Glass Cockpit, autopilot and side stick rather then a conventional yoke or stick between your legs. It also has a (ballistic) parachute. So if something goes really wrong, e.g. engine failure, you can pull a handle and a parachute is shot out of the fuselage. The whole plane, with its occupants, will come down on the parachute. Works from 900 ft upwards! As my license and medical certificate have expired I also had to have a CFI (Certified Flight Instructor), David come along. Technically speaking he is the PIC (Pilot in Command) on this flight and I'm student (again).

Even so, as you can see I'm actually flying the plane from the moment we taxi away from the ramp at Rotterdam and take off. It was pretty misty as you will see. This plane is fully IFR certified, so some mist is not a problem. We took of under VFR (Visual Flight Rules) and headed south. We did a series of touch and goes at different airports in the Netherlands and Belgium. The first one is a grass strip. In all my flying I had only done a few grass strip landings and take offs. In the USA most airports have proper runways. The grass strips are very bumpy.

As we went further south the weather gets better. We stopped here and there for coffee and a sandwich. We did a couple of touch and goes on all the fields. Which means you actually land the plane, but as soon as you have the nose gear on the ground you apply full power and take off again! And I learned another European phenomen; landing fees! I don't think I ever paid landing fees in the USA. Most airports did not have them and even if they did, it was usually only applicable if you stayed more then a couple of hours on the ground. But if you filled up your tanks, they usually waived the landing fees as well. (And they give you a complimentary car to use, completely free of charge).

On the way back to Rotterdam the weather really closed up on us and we had to fly under IFR for the last 45 minutes and also the landing was done under IFR. Which was great, as I got to practice my IFR flying under actual IMC conditions!

My eldest son Luc came along and took some simple video shots. I just finished editing them and here is the end result, it starts with me and the CFI David going though some pre flight cockpit checks.

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

[Jeroen]

Just came across this one:

http://avherald.com/h?article=464edab8&opt=0

It is an interesting incident in relation to the earlier discussion on what happens when radar coverage is lost. This particular part of airspace doesnt have radar coverage, but it does have HF communication with ATC.

You will see the term flight progress strip. Basicly a small piece of paper containing relevant flight information. see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_progress_strip

This is a true and tested system to keep track of planes, but as this incident shows, human error can and does occur. TCAS safed the day!

Jeroen

[pgsagar]

I would like to share my recent experience here. I boarded Delhi-Vizag Air India flight on 11th Oct, just a day before Cyclone Hudhud was to hit Vizag coastline. The plane (Airbus 320) took off around 4.30 pm and reached Vizag around 6.30 pm evening. All flights that day were cancelled since morning and ours was the only one which came to Vizag. Anyone who knows this town knows that planes go over to sea and approach for landing over Novotel, Rly Station, Essar and Port flyover. Now everything looked pretty calm from up there. Captain announced landing run and everyone belted. Still out at sea, it lowered landing gear, lowered flaps and slowed down on its descent. As it crossed Rly Station, everything changed. Violent gusts tossed the plane sideways, up and down. Captain pressed on. The turbulence was nothing like I ever saw. Some passenger started screaming and I thought we had it. The windshear and gusts just tossed the plane violently as it lost height. I saw the airport perimeter corssed and felt the yaw/pitch/roll rise severely. It was moving very badly in all 3 dimensions. And then, with runway some 40 feet below, pilots opened full throttle and took it up on a steep climb unlike I have ever seen.

Can someone throw some light on it? Did we come very close to crashing onto the runway that day? Many, like me felt we had a close call. Aborting landing while still their is some height left is ok. But calling off landing at last minute just 30-40 feet from runway and climbing steeply is what I think a miracle. After all it is not a fighter plane. This one is like a loaded Volvo bus. The plane could have stalled or slide back on to runway without climbing. Lucky for us it responded to pilots' inputs. What if it had not. Anyway, we landed at Hyd 55 minutes later and ended our ordeal. Are commercial airliners capable of pulling off such feats?

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by pgsagar

I would like to share my recent experience here. I boarded Delhi-Vizag Air India flight on 11th Oct, just a day before Cyclone Hudhud was to hit Vizag coastline. The plane (Airbus 320) took off around 4.30 pm and reached Vizag around 6.30 pm evening. All flights that day were cancelled since morning and ours was the only one which came to Vizag. Anyone who knows this town knows that planes go over to sea and approach for landing over Novotel, Rly Station, Essar and Port flyover. Now everything looked pretty calm from up there. Captain announced landing run and everyone belted. Still out at sea, it lowered landing gear, lowered flaps and slowed down on its descent. As it crossed Rly Station, everything changed. Violent gusts tossed the plane sideways, up and down. Captain pressed on. The turbulence was nothing like I ever saw. Some passenger started screaming and I thought we had it. The windshear and gusts just tossed the plane violently as it lost height. I saw the airport perimeter corssed and felt the yaw/pitch/roll rise severely. It was moving very badly in all 3 dimensions. And then, with runway some 40 feet below, pilots opened full throttle and took it up on a steep climb unlike I have ever seen.

Can someone throw some light on it? Did we come very close to crashing onto the runway that day? Many, like me felt we had a close call. Aborting landing while still their is some height left is ok. But calling off landing at last minute just 30-40 feet from runway and climbing steeply is what I think a miracle. After all it is not a fighter plane. This one is like a loaded Volvo bus. The plane could have stalled or slide back on to runway without climbing. Lucky for us it responded to pilots' inputs. What if it had not. Anyway, we landed at Hyd 55 minutes later and ended our ordeal. Are commercial airliners capable of pulling off such feats?

You experienced a go around. Any plane is perfectly capable of doing a go around at any point during the landing phase. No matter the altitude. So even a few feet above the ground. Pilots will go around at any time during the landing when thye feel the plane isn't stable and positioned well enough to perform a safe landing. Their are certain criteria which they will observe, but irrespective of that, if for whatever reason it just doesn't feel right you go around.

Although it probably fell all pretty scary it is a very safe manoevre. In fact a go around is considered a safety manoevre, it gets you out of what quickly can become a dangerous situation.

All pilots on all planes are trained on go around. As far as Im aware no accidents have ever been reported due to a go around. Unfortunately, many accidents have happened that could have been easily avoided by executing a Go Around. remember the 777 that landed just short of the runway in SanFrancisco. Classsic case of a plane being low and slow on the glide slope. A simple go around would have safed the day. For several reason pilots are sometimes reluctant to execute a go around. Unfortunately, none of those reasons have anything to do with safety. They are overconfident on their ability to get the plane repositioned, they feel pressured by their airline to meet the schedule, they feel its loosing face etc. Going around is perfectly safe and not going around when you should is just bad piloting.

My flight instructor kept repeating. You never attempt to land a plane. either you land it or you don't. The difference is a go around. If you go on YouTube and search for go around you will find hundreds of videos, some look pretty spectacular, but when properly executed, like all flying, perfectly safe and the only sensible thing to do.

If you look at the little flying video I posted earlier, you will see me doing a touch and go. I land and as soon as the wheels touch the runway I go full power and take off again without any problem. Remember this. You plane took off with no problem. When it is coming in to land it is tens of tonnes lighter as it has burned of fuel. If anything it gets easier to get it back in the air!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by pgsagar

Are commercial airliners capable of pulling off such feats?

To add to my earlier post, here's a good video showing what is perfectly safe and well within all normal operating procedures. From what I read in your post, your experience must have been a similar occurrence. Scary, but perfectly safe.

Jeroen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjamSDt4SZU

In modern planes Go Around can be executed completely automated by the autopilot and auto throttle. The pilot will hit a button called TOGA (on Boeing, might be slightly different on a Airbus). TOGA stands for Take Off and Go around. Upon activation it will direct the auto throttle to apply the appropriate thrust and it will guide the plane into a predefined path away from the runway. In your case the pilot most likely went for a so called missed approach. That is a predefined path, vertically and laterally that he can fly safely and that will take him to predefined holding pattern where he will await instructions from the tower what to do next.

Here's a good video showing what goes on into the cockpit including the missed approach briefing:

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

Enjoy

Jeroen

[TKMCE]

pgsagar

You experienced something like this???

http://http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/nov/05/easyjet-flight-aborts-landing-last-minute-video

As Jeroen said, these are all normal.

[phamilyman]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

You experienced a go around. Any plane is perfectly capable of doing a go around at any point during the landing phase. No matter the altitude. So even a few feet above the ground. Pilots will go around at any time during the landing when thye feel the plane isn't stable and positioned well enough to perform a safe landing. Their are certain criteria which they will observe, but irrespective of that, if for whatever reason it just doesn't feel right you go around.

Although it probably fell all pretty scary it is a very safe manoevre. In fact a go around is considered a safety manoevre, it gets you out of what quickly can become a dangerous situation.

All pilots on all planes are trained on go around. As far as Im aware no accidents have ever been reported due to a go around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Two...nes_Flight_269

I've been in many go-arounds (close to double digits now). Thankfully most happened well before touchdown.

PGSagar's case is definitely scary - a weekly flier's worst nightmare

Glad to know that the pilots stuck to their job like clockwork!

[pgsagar]

Thanks Jeroen and Phamilyman. I have been in a go-around before myself when weather was good and for some reason ( may be runway obstruction or something ) it went around, came back and landed. But what was scary this time was the gusts. A320 felt like a small boat in choppy seas -- riding the waves , rising and disappearing. All this while he was losing altitude. And this time he didn't go arouind. He just aborted landing and headed for Hyd. Yes, you are right that plane must have lightened with all that burnt fuel. My additional worry was does it carry enough spare fuel to reach Hyd ( an unscheduled stop 650 KMs away )?

[pgsagar]

Jeroen, mine didn't come down as much that Emirates one in your video but it was much more shaky than this. May be that is why he aborted while we still had 30-40 feet of altitude. May be he didn't want to take chances.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by phamilyman

I've been in many go-arounds (close to double digits )
!

thats remarkable. I have had titanium status with AA, KLM, BA and SAS, star alliance for the last decade. i used to spend a huge amount of my time flying around the globe. I fly here in India an average of 4 flights a week within India and 1-2 international flights per month. in all those years of flying as a passenger Ive experienced only one Go Around. KLM coming into Delhi and had to go around for a thunderstorm that was getting to near.

As a pilot Ive done go arounds countless times as training and practice, but only had to resort to it a few times for real.
So how come your clocking all the GoArounds?

Jeroen

[Stiggy]

Originally Posted by pgsagar

Can someone throw some light on it? Did we come very close to crashing onto the runway that day? Many, like me felt we had a close call. Aborting landing while still their is some height left is ok. But calling off landing at last minute just 30-40 feet from runway and climbing steeply is what I think a miracle. After all it is not a fighter plane. This one is like a loaded Volvo bus. The plane could have stalled or slide back on to runway without climbing. Lucky for us it responded to pilots' inputs. What if it had not. Anyway, we landed at Hyd 55 minutes later and ended our ordeal. Are commercial airliners capable of pulling off such feats?

I know a couple of people have already thrown some light on standard Go-Around procedures, but I'd like to go ahead and try and shed some light on your second query: Stalling the aircraft, or in this specific case, the A320.

I'll try and use laymen's terms wherever possible, and wherever not, I'll do my best to explain what I mean.

An A320 is a full FBW (fly-by-wire) aircraft. This means that the side-stick (what Airbus calls it's Joystick) has no physical connection to the flight control surfaces (the ailerons, elevators, etc). Any and all movements made on the side-stick is interpreted by a computer, which then sends the command to hydraulically actuate the (relevant) flight control surfaces.

Now, the interesting bit is this: Because your commands are being passed through a computer, there is scope to fiddle with the way the aircraft responds to various commands. If you'd like, I can offer a far more complex explanation a little later, but for now, I'll just tell you about "Stall Protection", known better to the fellas at the pointy-end (pilots) as "Alpha-Floor Protection", or simply "Alpha Protection".

Simply put, in normal operations, you cannot stall an A320. Airbus has pre-programmed the maximum angle-of-attack (angle of the wings relative to the air passing over it) in order to maintain lift and not stall the aircraft at any phase of flight, with any configuration (Flaps extended, retracted, etc). In addition to this, the aircraft knows its absolute minimum possible airspeed at any given time. Therefore, if you were to do something silly like actively try and stall the aircraft by holding the side-stick back, the aircraft will NOT continue to nose-up to the point of stalling. It will stop at the very maximum Angle-of-Attack possible in the current configuration, and should your speed drop to near the stall-speed, the Auto-Throttle will kick in and give the aircraft maximum go-go power in order to keep 'er flying.

This is, again, under the presumption that the aircraft is flying under the "Normal Law". It is possible to turn all the magic computers off, just like you would traction control in a car, and do silly, silly things.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by pgsagar

Jeroen, mine didn't come down as much that Emirates one in your video but it was much more shaky than this. May be that is why he aborted while we still had 30-40 feet of altitude. May be he didn't want to take chances.

Most likely he did not meet the criteria of a stable approach and that's when you go around. Don't worry to much about the shaky thing. Planes can take quite a bit of pounding. It will feel uncomfortable, even scary from a passengers point of view, long before it becomes dangerous in terms of structural integrity.

Jeroen

[BoeingDriver]

Originally Posted by pgsagar

I would like to share my recent experience here. I boarded Delhi-Vizag Air India flight on 11th Oct, just a day before Cyclone Hudhud was to hit Vizag coastline. The plane (Airbus 320) took off around 4.30 pm and reached Vizag around 6.30 pm evening. All flights that day were cancelled since morning and ours was the only one which came to Vizag. Anyone who knows this town knows that planes go over to sea and approach for landing over Novotel, Rly Station, Essar and Port flyover. Now everything looked pretty calm from up there. Captain announced landing run and everyone belted. Still out at sea, it lowered landing gear, lowered flaps and slowed down on its descent. As it crossed Rly Station, everything changed. Violent gusts tossed the plane sideways, up and down. Captain pressed on. The turbulence was nothing like I ever saw. Some passenger started screaming and I thought we had it. The windshear and gusts just tossed the plane violently as it lost height. I saw the airport perimeter corssed and felt the yaw/pitch/roll rise severely. It was moving very badly in all 3 dimensions. And then, with runway some 40 feet below, pilots opened full throttle and took it up on a steep climb unlike I have ever seen.

Can someone throw some light on it? Did we come very close to crashing onto the runway that day? Many, like me felt we had a close call. Aborting landing while still their is some height left is ok. But calling off landing at last minute just 30-40 feet from runway and climbing steeply is what I think a miracle. After all it is not a fighter plane. This one is like a loaded Volvo bus. The plane could have stalled or slide back on to runway without climbing. Lucky for us it responded to pilots' inputs. What if it had not. Anyway, we landed at Hyd 55 minutes later and ended our ordeal. Are commercial airliners capable of pulling off such feats?

I fly into vizag extensively as a part of our airline ops. As you have currently pointed out, the approach to land in vizag is limited to only one direction due
to terrain on the western side of the airport. So in-order to land on Runway 28 the aircraft proceed outbound over the sea before turning inbound to
intercept the final approach. Now the tricky part about vizag are the tail winds. Most aircraft are limited to about 10 knots (18.5 kmph) of tail wind factor and any higher winds make the landing prohibited. Now in your case with the cyclone approaching, the winds were in tune of 40-50 knots and hence making it absolutely impossible to land into vizag. Hence your aircraft performed a go-around!