Saturday, May 25, 2024

HARD LANDING AT SPOKANE!

 

HARD LANDING AT SPOKANE!


HARD LANDING AT SPOKANE!


(Note: This video has now been viewed over 1,000 times on YouTube....)




                          Please copy and paste into your browser the following link:

           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcgSiwc7d8s


Last year when I returned from an extended trip overseas, I was treated 

to a shockingly HARD landing at Spokane. Airlines always 

encourage passengers to give feedback on their “flight experience.” I normally 

never do as a matter of policy. But this one concerned me, so I sent 

the following polite reply. Need I say that no one reached out to me??! 

I chalked it up to more “corporate stupidity!” 

Corporate crap? Yes. But not stupidity. I was partly wrong.


                QUOTE: Your on board staff and your gate agents do a masterful job.

                  I won't have anything but good things to say about their efforts.

Your pilots have a tough job. As a former General Aviation Pilot, I can tell 

you that the landing at Spokane was NOT professional, in fact was so 

hard as to cause passengers to gasp. It cannot be good for the landing gear. 

I took a landing video, by the way, and it shows the hard landing. It will be

 available on line when I have finished loading all my other travel 

videos. My polite suggestion is that your cockpit crews need more 

practice in how to make smoother landings..… END-QUOTE.


It turns out my “understanding” lacks one important point. Because 

passenger aircraft CRUISE at altitudes between 35,000 to 40,000 feet 

and the outside temperatures there are between MINUS 60 and 

MINUS 70 degrees for LONG periods of time, and the temperature 

INSIDE is PLUS 60 or better AND because cabins are pressurized at 

near 5,000 feet, there is a lot of stress applied to the air-frame and 

components. Wheels and parts don’t come off by themselves!!


I mentioned the landing to an A and P mechanic (Air-frame and Power-plant,

 to you non-pilots!) recently, and he gave me an interesting 

explanation. In general aviation, we practice SMOOTH landings, 

because they are easy on landing gears and the air-frame. 

Apparently, with aircraft getting larger and larger and having more 

and more large landing gears, the cold temperatures for long time 

periods literally FREEZES the gear and associated fluid driven 

hoses to an extent not normally encountered at lower altitudes. 

Because large aircraft do not have time to begin THAWING until 

closer to 10,000 feet altitude, an effort is made to PLUNK 

the craft on the ground. The mechanic told 

me that a SMOOTH landing can drag the wheels along the ground 

long enough to TURN THEM BALD, destroying $10,000 dollars 

worth of tires in almost an instant. He said he had seen this with his 

own eyes through his own experience.


This was all new to me, as I have noticed a tendency for airliners to 

make fairly abrupt landings. There is a trade-off here and I doubt it is 

good for the aircraft. In any case, the landing at Spokane was 

anything but average. In this eight minute video, you can see the 

greater Spokane area from the air, as the pilot turns and configures 

the aircraft for landing. Because of the sun’s angle, we chase our 

SHADOW all the way to the ground!


Here is the You Tube Link you can copy and paste:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcgSiwc7d8s


Enjoy our show!


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