Rough landings?

My Father used to say "Every Landing is a crash. One is controlled, the other is not"

 

Hadn't noticed any real change in the landings, although my perception is that the 767's seem to land harder than the other aircraft in the QF fleet.

 

Don't forget, they still have to "break" the "vacumn" to get out of the air and onto the ground (I am sure a technocrat will correct my explanation), so should expect a bump. A lot also depends on conditions, cross winds, etc at the time.

Some runways, like MNL are bumpy already, which doeasn't help!

 

I have been in the cockpit a lot pre 9/11 and mostly takeoffs and landings were on auto. Generally it saves fuel and is smoother, etc, and I understand is mostly "company policy", although it's less fun for the pilots.

In fact the new planes they are designing now will only have a pilot and a dog in the cockpit. The dog is to bite the pilot if they touch anything!

 

i have been on a Crash 8 that touched down a little too hard and bounced a couple of times down the run way...

The FA did not bat an eyelid, did her safety announcement and thanked us for choosing to fly QFLink.

 

Rough landings

My 'roughest' landing ever was in an MD80 of 'Compass II' at TSV some 15 years ago. I was surprised that the cargo-doors didn't pop open that afternoon. Generally speaking, I would prefer that the pilots put the aircraft on the tarmac with a determined thud, rather than greasing along the runway in an attempt to make it 'smoother' for the pax. This is particularly so in wet/snowy/windy weather. A recent episode at a windy, icy ORD comes to mind, when I became a little disturbed about how far along we travelled before we actually made contact with terra-firma. One thing more upsetting than a hard landing is floating along a slippery runway and sliding off the end!

 

Its ironic that the first full autoland system developed and adopted by ICAO was an Australian design - Interscan (you can stil see it on 27 at tulla). Its ironic because no airport in Australia has full 0 vis autoland and also because MLS is often been acccredited as an American invention, owing to the fact there were no Australian companies interested in the commercial production of the system.

I am sure a QF crew that landed in BKK a few years ago would agree with that, golf anyone :shock:

 

I was told by one of the Syd Airport strategists they didn't instal the system to save money and on the basis that they would only use it maybe 5 times a year, when it was foggy, and for that they were happy to divert planes until it burned off.

 

Indeed a smooth landing and a good landing are not always the same thing.

 

For cat III ILS on 16 the container park on the approach interferred with the signal, for 34 you would need to put a navaid in the ocean off Cronulla which is expensive, and 07/25 is to short as the standard calls for a 1500 ft touchdown tolerance.

As for being too expensive, I remember speedbird doing a Mel-Syd flight, left Mel at 4AM with Sydney closed due fog, at 11AM it reached the point of no return and turned back to Mel, 15 minutes later Syd opened but it was too late, almost 8 hours of flying, most of it in circles. At an average of 8 tons of JetA1 an hour, that was 64 tons of fuel used for no real outcome.