I used to think (as do many people) that military test pilots had all the balls and that civilian test pilots have life easy. That is, until I saw this link that a buddy sent me several weeks ago of some of Boeing's crosswind approach tests. Huge piece of tin with no way out... I can't even imagine sitting through these and not stomping on a bunch of rudder. Anyway, here's the link for everyone's grazing pleasure...

http://www.linhadafrente.net/bin/Pousos.wmv

Kev

Yup yup, rudder/wing in. All good, seen it doen that. great vid anyways even though in portuguese.

I have never in my life imagined such a landing! Probably had to replace some landing gear afterwards. I know we had the ability to 'crab' on the B52s, what about these AC? Even so... just lining-up on center... wow!

Some of these landings weren't very succesful and engiens were scrapped. Try doing an approach like that to Kai Tek back in the day. Real Pilots pulled it off but some misfortunite things still happened.

Sparky wrote:I have never in my life imagined such a landing! Probably had to replace some landing gear afterwards. I know we had the ability to 'crab' on the B52s, what about these AC? Even so... just lining-up on center... wow!

It's my understanding that most of the large Boeing acft w/ MLG bogies (not bogeys, that would be... different) have some crosswind cranking abilities. The new Airbus A380 doesn't have this to save both $ and weight. Can't even tow it without tearing up the tarmac. I have some pics if anyone wants to see of the gear twisting and the asphalt looking like freshly-plowed earth.

Sparky, if I was on one of the birds in the vid, I would've had to replace my shorts at a minimum...

Does the landing gear cant to either side? The gear on that last approach looks canted pretty hard..or is this a camera illusion..

I have seen on the Buffs , the landing gear will actually rotate and be lined up with the actual path of flight...

Those were all Test flights... this I believe was during a real passenger flight, but i could be wrong.
But they were actually landing like that.. this pilot finally straigtened out before touchdown.. with a nice ocean front view...http://www.big-boys.com/articles/planelands.html

That last film was shot by a mate of mine, currently a 767 captain with Qantas, who used to go out the the "checkerboards" on the hill at Kai Tak, waiting specifically for airlines like Korean Air, (featured in the film), to do their stuff.

Koreans have a big problem with doing a go-around when they screw up an approach. This is a classic case of this phenomena. I landed at Kai Tak many times and in Qantas if we had pushed an approach like that, well it would have been a demotion at least.

Everyone screws up approaches from time to time. Kai Tak had a low level 47 degreee turn to line up, any sort of crosswind made it a real challenge. Go around if you need to and try again.

Large commercial airliners don't usually have any mechanism to line the wheels up with the runway in a crosswind, although I beieve the C5 did, Bon can certainly answer that question.

As far as the first film goes, they are test pilots clearing the operational envelope as part of a certification program. I believe they go looking for crosswinds up to 60 knots! Which are about twice the recommended for line operations on most airliners. With crosswinds that extreme, the recommended techniques is to not try to kick of the drift till after touchdown. The bogies are extremely strong and can take the punishment.

I don't know about engines being scrapped. I can't see any reason for that.

Thanks Cobra! Very interesting explanations for both those videos. I couldn't understand why the pilot had to make such a severe correction on that landing in the second video. Seems like there would be very little room for error in that situation with such a large aircraft.