Scary Landing on Bilbao Airport - Spain

See those planes landing (or trying to), poor people in the planes, medals for those pilots. All I can say.

BILBAO, SPAIN (ATLAS/CNN) – On Wednesday, high winds in Bilbao, Spain, made normally routine landings treacherous.

The plane fishtailed and swerved, but managed to land.
However, the next plane had to abort the attempt.
Four flights were diverted from the airport due to the weather.

www.wmctv.com...

Obviously CGI.

Only joking. Holy crap! That does look scary.

The first pilot did well to land that! I don't like landing at the best of times, but that would have really freaked me out.

Cross-wind landings are tough. You have to fly the plane sideways into the wind with your windward wing down toward the ground, hoping the wind will push you straight down the runway. Try figuring that out mathematically in your head while flying the plane. You then straighten out at the last minute and get your speed off and your flaps up fast so you don't get blown upside down, all this while "crashing neatly" onto the ground. I'm a private pilot and have done it many times. It's about the scariest most difficult manuever to pull off ever.

I recall flying in a small light aircraft from a little Island in the Orkneys where they had to move the cows before taking off.
The pilots would take off using the width of the runway rather than it's length

reply to post by artistpoet


Sorry, where the hell is Orkneys?

reply to post by Trueman


The Orkney Isles are just North of Scotland

reply to post by dJbdJb


Haha...yeah, first plane moves so wierd that almost look fake.

reply to post by schuyler


Oh wow, your description is even more scary than the video !

Originally posted by Trueman
reply to post by dJbdJb

 

Haha...yeah, first plane moves so wierd that almost look fake.

Yeah, it does, but that really happens. I came in to Athens on a windy day from Crete once on a fairly small regional plane and I was sitting in the very back. The tail was moving around so much that we could not keep the cockpit in view ahead of us because the angle was so extreme. Gotta hand it to the Greek pilots though. We got down in one piece.

reply to post by artistpoet


Ok, somehow that explains the cows at the airport.

Just kidding !

reply to post by schuyler


LOL brother, I wonder if they screamed "Spartaaa!!!" in the last seconds previous to touch the ground.

Crosswind landing

Yikers... I will take ocean going vessel or car for $500 Alex....

This is your Captain speaking......

If people would buckle their seatbelts I have just entered us into the redbull challenge....




NSFW - Language.

reply to post by schuyler

You have to fly the plane sideways into the wind with your windward wing down toward the ground, hoping the wind will push you straight down the runway.

I hate to knittpick but planes don't fly sideways. But you do have to worry about the wind getting under the windwards wing and forcing the opposite wing into the ground.

Originally posted by samkent
reply to post by schuyler

 

You have to fly the plane sideways into the wind with your windward wing down toward the ground, hoping the wind will push you straight down the runway.

I hate to knittpick but planes don't fly sideways. But you do have to worry about the wind getting under the windwards wing and forcing the opposite wing into the ground.

Knit pick away. If you are flying straight and the wind is coming at you from the right. you must fly slightly INTO the wind, i.e.: The airplane itself is pointed to the right yet the plane itself is traveling in a straight line down the runway (Least that's the plan.) It's not a full 90 degrees, mind you, but I've made landings where the nose of the plane was approaching 10 degrees easily. If you didn't do that, your airplane would be constantly pushed to the left and away from the runway. You must compensate for the wind to stay above the runway. Pardon me for not detailing this initially for the sake of brevity.

So indeed, the airplane IS flying sideways, a bit. You're still traveling forward as well, or you wouldn't have any lift, but if you were to fly "straight forward" you could not land the plane.

The problem only arises when an airport has runways in a single direction. If you had runways that were perpendicular to each other, you would never have to face a wind from 90 degrees. Even if the wind is coming at you from an other than forward direction, the whole landing process is much easier because you don't have to compensate nearly as much. Compare SeaTac to O'Hare, for example. SeaTac has three runways, all headed the same direction: 34L, 34C, 34R, and 16L, 16C, 16R. "34" stands for 340 degrees, 20 degrees from North 360. It's opposite is 160 degrees, or "16," 20 degrees South 180 If the wind is coming from the Southwest, from 250 degrees, off the water of Puget Sound, as it often does, you're screwed. O'Hare, on the other hand, has runways going every which way so that airport is much more versatile. (They don't let small planes land at SeaTac anymore. You have to go to Boeing Field or Renton or one of the smaller fields in the area.)

I am never going to fly again
If we were supposed to fly we would have wings - now I am going back to the safety of my cave

Originally posted by Trueman
reply to post by artistpoet

 

Ok, somehow that explains the cows at the airport.

Just kidding !

You should have seen the airport terminal - it was a four by four wooden hut
I think sometimes also they used the cows to pull the plane along until it gained enough momentum to lift off
Of course any passengers had to flap their arms out of the windows also