Tuesday, August 1, 2017

"Pilot lands plane ‘blind’ after giant hailstones shatter cockpit windscreen"

Via Drudge:  A BRAVE pilot landed a passenger jet “blind” after giant hailstones smashed the cockpit’s windscreen and almost tore off its nose cone.

These incredible pictures show the plane after the pilot’s heroic emergency landing at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport with 127 passengers on board, The Sun reports.

They show the severe external damage to the Airbus A320 from sudden unexpected hail during a thunder storm, and passengers crying and praying as the stricken plane comes in to a shaky landing.

A voice on the ground is heard saying: “He won’t do it, he won’t do it.”

Link to video

5 comments:

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

One lucky bunch of passengers.

rhhardin said...

Oveerwrought. He did seem to land with no flaps, which meant higher speed, for reasons not explained.

I think the A320 has autoland or near enough so that he doesn't have to see anything.

A light plane could land looking out the side window just by side-slipping to a landing but you can't do that with engines slung under the wing. One would hit the runway.

Leland said...

Seems like a standard ILS approach would be sufficient to bring it home.

Funny thing is I first saw the story as a sidebar at Instapundit, and I thought it was an old story like this one or this one.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I typically do that pushed-in-nose thing on hard-boiled eggs.

First strike. The blunter end of the egg that has the air pocket.

It's kind of fun.

Nobody gets terrified over it or anything like that.

Some Seppo said...

The flapless, higher speed landing is so he can go around more easily if necessary.