Asia Pacific Airlines Cargo Plane Makes Perfect Nose Down Landing

I know it's not that unusual for planes to have landing gear malfunctions but I do like to see footage of emergency situations that have happy resolutions due to the skill of those in charge.
The pilot of the Cargo Plane reported the problem to the tower at Guam’s international airport earlier today and after following the normal procedures made what I consider to be a perfect landing given he had no nose wheel , no fire or smoke was reported and no one on board was injured.

At around 2:55 p.m. Friday, the airport control tower received an alert that there was a situation on board that “may affect safe landing,” Faasuamalie said.

The plane released fuel to become lighter, and also performed a touch-and-go maneuver, which means the aircraft practiced a landing before making an actual attempt, she said. The aircraft then spent extra time in the air to expend more fuel.

The crew on board called the final approach at 4:15 p.m., and the plane landed at 4:16 p.m. she said.

Kudos Captain , you've earned that beer.

a reply to: gortex

Great save,much respect to the captain and cockpit crew,would definitely have bought them a few rounds if i could

Sadly, I've been on planes with supposedly dead nose gear one more time than I wanted to, including commercial planes that weren't being shot at, and had no excuses.

"Our indicators are telling us the nose gear is up. Observers on the ground say it's down. We're going to make a slow pass over the airport and they're going to look at it to see if it looks down and locked. If it does, we're going to land. We'll be chased by a lot of fire trucks. Don't worry."

Excellent pilot, training pays it seems...
I would think the pilot was damn pleased.

See how he kept the nose up for a bit after the mains touched down? He's applying max breaking and reverse thrust to slow the plane as much as possible before gently putting the nose down. The plane stops quickly overall, reducing the friction on the front of the nose.

Good pilot. Kept his wits, knew what to do.

originally posted by: intrptr

Good pilot. Kept his wits, knew what to do.

A few years ago I came across a site that had cockpit recordings of pilots who perished in crashes. I'm not sure if it or the recordings are still online but one thing you'll notice in the vast majority of them is that most of the pilots do keep their wits and work the problem as best they can right up to the very end.

Very rarely did I hear a pilot lose it.

The most often last words spoken at the very end were usually "Ah, SH!T!"

a reply to: SLAYER69

My best cool head pilot audio was the Hudson River ditch in New York.

They kept telling him they had a runway clear for him and the last thing he says is, "We're gonna be in the Hudson…"

a reply to: gortex

In 2005 , something similar happened with Jet Blue.

The landing gear had malfunctioned. It was down but the tire was stuck horizontally.

Crazy part was that the media had gotten word of it and started to broadcast it live as the plane was landing.

I remember watching it with my mom as it was happening.

I think we were almost as nervous as the passengers.

a reply to: gortex

Heroes.

a reply to: intrptr

It's aerodynamic braking, not reverse thrust. You don't use thrust reversers without a nose wheel. They can slow you too fast and slam the nose down onto the ground.

a reply to: Zaphod58

So is that engines I hear at the end or the sound of plane scraping the ground?

Yep, right after the nose down they got with it in beta.......turbo talk.........and then got the hail off it and emergency shut down, I guess......someone's gotta keep the power to the fire detection

Tower in formed him no fire.......

a reply to: intrptr

A little of both. He pulled the throttles back to idle once they are firmly down, but those old engines are loud as hell even at idle.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: intrptr

It's aerodynamic braking, not reverse thrust. You don't use thrust reversers without a nose wheel. They can slow you too fast and slam the nose down onto the ground.

That makes sense, and it seems like even max braking would have a tendency to drive the nose down, so I don't know how he managed to keep it up for so long.

Interesting video.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

so I don't know how he managed to keep it up for so long.

Pulling back on the 'yoke'?