HARD LANDING AT SPOKANE!
HARD LANDING AT SPOKANE!
(Note: This video has now been viewed over 1,000 times on YouTube....)
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!
POSTED BY THE BLOGGER
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