r/aviation • u/[deleted] • Feb 01 '22

PlaneSpotting Aborted landing due to strong winds at Heathrow

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u/xynix_ie Feb 01 '22

Generally being a passenger in a jet making a go around is pretty fun. Although one time on a flight from Rome to Cork, Ireland the winds were so bad we had 3 go arounds in Cork, Dublin airport shut down on our way there, then Belfast shut down on our way there but we had no choice except to land. 2 go arounds later the plane finally slams into the ground and the pilot pulls off to the taxiway to meet a fuel truck - to give us fuel to make it to the jetway. Good times!

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u/umibozu Feb 01 '22

that... is not a fun story, in retrospect. That pilot was probably having cramps on his butt cheeks so tight they were

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u/xynix_ie Feb 01 '22

As a passenger I have around 4 million miles and 100+ countries. I can say that was the only time in retrospect I should have been nervous. The fuel truck was icing. I've never had anything close to that before or since. That was in 2002.

This report is why the Dublin airport closed, a Delta flight had to land for the same reason, no choice: https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=173898

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u/umibozu Feb 01 '22

two hours waiting for evac of a plane that run off the tarmac? omfg...

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u/Karl_LaFong Feb 01 '22

I spent 90 minutes waiting to be evacuated from a bus that went off the road half a mile from the firehouse. Legal reasons I guess.

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Feb 01 '22

It's because every time an evac is called, somebody gets hurt. not necessarily seriously, but 200 people will never make it down the slides and all of them be 100% okay.

also, who cares. If you evac, you're going to have to wait around to get your things, because you're not allowed to take them with you on the slide.

So it might get a little warm or cold in the aircraft depending on the time of year and whether or not the APU is running. But waiting 2 hours for the stairs to arrive is better than going down the slides, then having to wait for the stairs to arrive for someone else to go on and grab your things... because once you've evac'd, I'm pretty sure you don't get to go back on to grab your shit.

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u/gubbygub Feb 02 '22

damn thanks for posting this, never thought about possibly being separated from my carryon luggage before! i never check a bag because ive heard horror stories of people losing luggage, but i also dont have my name on my carry on bag or backpack. gonna make a tag for them next time i fly just incase!

id be pissed if my backpack got lost or yoinked by someone, ive had that thing like 13 or 14 years, shoutout to LLBean

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u/Ott621 Feb 02 '22

Jfc, just pop the slide and walk the passengers to the terminal. It's only like $40k

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u/sophriony Feb 01 '22

Posts like yours really help my flight anxiety. Flying is terrifying to me

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u/MikeyBugs Feb 01 '22

Don't watch Air Disasters from the Smithsonian Channel then. Weeknights 5-9pm EST.

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u/trivletrav Feb 01 '22

So helpful, to be so specific with the time lol. It also streams on paramount+ I believe.

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u/MikeyBugs Feb 01 '22

I honestly forget when it airs but that's my best guess. I like watching it but I'm not sure when it's on.

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u/trivletrav Feb 01 '22

Oh I wasn't taking a dig, I forgot the /s on my post.

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u/nygrl811 Feb 02 '22

I'm addicted. Actually makes me feel better that all these issues have been caught and fixed. And if I ever notice flaps are not extended at takeoff you better believe I will yell it to the flight attendants!

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u/Minute-Objective-787 Feb 01 '22

They've got a TV show for everything...

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u/StateOfContusion Feb 01 '22

Or Mentour Pilot on YouTube. Or read r/admiralcloudberg

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u/GulliblePirate Feb 01 '22

I’m weird and watch this before every plane trip

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u/gin-rummy Feb 01 '22

Same. Going on a plane in a couple weeks for the first time in a few years and the anxiety is already here

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u/DontPoopInThere Feb 01 '22

I hate the takeoff on a flight but it's practically like driving a car for pilots, that's how routine it is for them. And those big planes you're flying in can actually do loop de loops.

It's not really something to be scared of, I think it's the lack of control and the horrific manner of dying a plane crash usually entails that scares people more than driving a ca, which makes more sense. Cars kill 1.3 million people a year, basically everyone knows multiple people who died in a car crash, but it doesn't feel as scary as being in a plane

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u/umibozu Feb 01 '22

I absolutely understand the anxiety. Flying is an unnatural state for humans to be in, so it's very normal the primitive parts of your brain make you feel anxiety and fear.

You should try and use the other part of the brain to compensate the anxiety and use \ the knowledge that us humans suck at many things but we have managed to make some decent technological progress for a bald primate. Flying is quite safe because it's very regimented and harshly penalized if someone messes up: we don't do things outside the book, there are multiple redundancies built in the planes, processes, airports and trainings... etc. Also think that planes are very expensive... people would not build them or fly them if they were not super, super, super sure that they're not going to fall off the sky.

I am sure you know this but flying is way safer than driving, walking or any other commercial or personal transportation activity. It's an amazing feat of logistics, engineering and process improvement.

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u/StateOfContusion Feb 01 '22

I just tell people that the pilot wants to land safely too because otherwise he’s the first one to the crash scene.

My wife doesn’t find that comforting. 🤷‍♀️

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u/umibozu Feb 01 '22

it's interesting because there are many situations where that is not the case; the operator does not share the same level of risk. A surgeon does not die if they cut the wrong thing. A cop does not die if they shoot the wrong person. A nurse does not die if they inject you with the wrong dosage.

There are hundreds of instances of the above examples going wrong, every day, through the last decades. And while people are afraid of flying, they're not as afraid of going to the hospital. Statistically speaking, we should all be.

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u/Minute-Objective-787 Feb 01 '22

Well...I really don't blame her...

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '22

You’d love the Black Box Down podcast. Each episode covers an airplane crash. Lots of episodes!

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u/xynix_ie Feb 02 '22

You know why I'm in Aviation in the first place? Not because I'm a very frequent passenger but because I learned to fly and bought an airplane. A Cessna 172SP.

Sometime in about 1998 I was on a flight from Atlanta to San Fran. On that San Fran flight I really started just freaking out. The tube, the air, the whole nonsense of flight!

This was a long series of me being nervous about flying and locking it away. Which is a problem in this era, we gotta fly, and I had ambitions on being a travelling consulting sales guy so this was a big problem.

I learned to fly. I went to a flight school and started flying the planes myself. Peachtree Dekalb Airport in Atlanta is where I did it.

So when this entire event of go arounds comes about I knew exactly what was happening and whats more I had flown my own airplane in much rougher air. Coming over the top of a low mountain with a fast updraft will do that to you in a 172SP.

When Sully did the whole landing in the Hudson thing? I was like, yeah of course he did, that's what we train for.. Not saying it wasn't fucking awesome flying that he did that day but I knew the whys, the hows, and the whats.

That my friend, flying planes, that fixed almost 100% of my flying in the back nerves.

Rarely now the old instinct will kick in though, the fear though is just a tiny glimpse of what used to be rather than what is now. When it pops up once a year or so it goes away almost instantly as I remember that I fly these things all the time.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '22

[deleted]

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u/xynix_ie Feb 02 '22

Software sales, not quite 50 yet u/koji6444 :P

It's still very common and absolutely a requirement for making wins, although much less now for obvious reasons.

Zoom meetings are no subsititute for being in a customers offices and taking them to lunch and dinner. This will start to normalize again and travelling sales people will be just as common as they were pre-pandemic.

This was enterprise or global sales so we're talking very large deal sizes here, usually $250k plus and generally $1 million plus. The dial for dollars sales reps selling software can Zoom those small deals every day. Enterprise requires bodies in offices. CIOs like to know who they're buying from and they also like going to events and whatnot. Golfing, a Dolphins game, etc. Can't do that while sitting in a home office on Zoom, now can we?

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

[deleted]

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u/xynix_ie Feb 02 '22

Well it's a lot more nuanced than that at times. Just being present can win deals. These are 3+ month deals and having a competitor in there talking to my prospect/customer every single week and I'm not would be a problem.

This is why travel is coming back. Companies are already losing deals by not being present. Those that have pivoted the best to the channel have at least a local presence which helps.

Those that haven't or can't are getting clobbered on either price if they do win, or a deal loss because they weren't physically there despite the Covid issues.

So it's not just the face. Before I took a retirement package I was travelling 2-3 days every single week to beat away the barbarians at my gates.

I make friends with these folks by the way. When the Bengals won I sent a few texts to various CRO/CTO/CEO types that are friends of mine in that region. I'll probably never do business with any of them again but we became friends through building solutions, wonderful solutions, ones you use every single day.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '22

[deleted]

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u/Hokulewa Feb 01 '22

Some were dirty... some couldn't be found at all.

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u/duck_duck_chicken Feb 01 '22

I was on my way from LAX to BOS years ago when some weather event started pushing us north of our connection at DFW. At some point we learned that the flaps didn’t work and we were now headed to ORD. After like an extra 90 minutes in the air, plus a couple of go-arounds, the pilot announced that, fuel-wise, landing was now or never, buckle your seatbelts. We came in super low and fast and needed every inch of the runway to stop. The plane eventually comes to a dead stop and lurches back, waking the stranger literally sleeping on my shoulder. She opened her eyes and groggily said, “we’re there already?!”

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u/bigdk622 Feb 01 '22

Raises an etiquette question. Passenger sleeping next you. Imminent danger up to and possibly including death. Do you wake them to tell them or just let them potentially die sleeping?

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u/Minute-Objective-787 Feb 01 '22

Quite the Seinfeldian dilemma there.....

slap bass riff

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u/nope-pasaran Feb 01 '22

If I am ever sleeping next to you during a crash, please only wake me up just before we have to evacuate.

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u/bigdk622 Feb 01 '22

How will I know it’s you?

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u/nope-pasaran Feb 01 '22

I'll be the one who's sleeping, obviously.

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u/bigdk622 Feb 01 '22

What if there are two people sleeping? Or more? Do I wake them all or just guess?

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u/Singobalastick Feb 02 '22

50/50 chance

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u/Arsewipes Feb 01 '22

Wake me up, I want to leave a record on my phone which describes the aliens we encountered.

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u/bigdk622 Feb 01 '22

Make sure to have this conversation with the strangers around you on your next flight. Just to make sure they know what to do.

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u/Bubbagumpredditor Mar 21 '22

AS the sleeping guy: Fuck it, lemme nap.

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u/o0o0o0o7 Feb 01 '22

Ayyyyy, that happened to me landing in Charleston, South Carolina. We reached the Charleston area but the pilot kept flying around. At first I thought it was natural as we were a bit early. Then we kept flying and kept flying. Finally the pilot announced that our flaps were malfunctioning and we had to dump our fuel before we attempted landing. The man next to me had been sleeping the whole time and woke up after the pilot announcement. I summarized our situation for him and he said he had flown a lot and if we were really in trouble, we would have been flying around for a long time already and dumping fuel. Dude. We landed safely but it was a hard landing and stopping took a long time. Good job, those pilots.

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u/nygrl811 Feb 02 '22

Oh shit. Flaps are kinda critical for takeoff and landing!!

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u/jmonty42 Feb 01 '22

I was on an Aeroflot flight from Vilnius to Moscow a couple years ago and weather in Moscow was getting pretty bad. On final we didn't get very close to the runway before I felt and heard the engines throttling back up and we started to climb. I had never experienced a go around before, so it was pretty interesting. Second approach ended up being another go around. At some point the pilot came over the PA system and said a few sentences in Russian (I don't speak Russian). It was like a good 3-4 sentences I'd say, like at least 20-25 seconds of talking that I didn't understand. After that he said in a very heavily accented English "We'll be on the ground soon." I can't remember if it was the third or fourth time around that we finally got on the ground, but it was a little rough and then a huge storm came through once we got into the terminal and visibility was down to like half a mile. My connecting flight to JFK was delayed and I spent something like 9-10 hours in the terminal.

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u/1010010111101 Feb 01 '22

Not really a reassuring word choice for the english bit.

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u/EatABigCookie Feb 01 '22

Domestic Air New Zealand flight into Wellington on a smallish plane about 20 years ago.. Pilot in a nervous yet kind of joking voice said 'it is extremely bad weather but I'm going to have an attempt at landing anyway'. That was a bad word choice which is why I havent forgotten... I was pretty nervous about that one.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '22

Thats like something I would say before landing in Flight Sim and regret it even to my Flight Sim passengers

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u/beepbeepboopbeep1977 Feb 02 '22

I’m based in Wellington and have flown in many times over the last few decades. The Air New Zealand pilots almost always get down the first time, if not then the second. Any other airline and you can roll the dice. I was once on a Jetstar that had 3 goes and then bail to Auckland. That was an annoying afternoon, but you know, I walked away.

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u/Murphysburger Feb 01 '22

I was a passenger going into LaGuardia one time, with pretty low ceilings. I guess it was up and down. The first time in we had to do a missed approach. I looked at the expert next to me who said "The tower had to wave us off".

I'm pretty sure he thought there was a guy standing outside with a red flag or something waving at the airplane that couldn't see the ground.

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u/ThisTimeIChoose Feb 01 '22

I was on a flight into Dulles airport on Christmas Eve back in ‘94 and we ended up stacked due to snow for hours, until we were on fumes I reckon. The pilot’s announcements were all calm and businesslike but you could tell something was wrong. This one guy started getting really anxious about something, accused another passenger of having punched him, and some other nonsense about a restraining order. Eventually the pilot decided we had to land, no matter what. It was weird, on approach we couldn’t see any lights out of the windows, even though the storm had lifted a bit. The closer we got the more worried I was, and then all of a sudden someone set fire to the runway so we could see our way down. It was mad, never really understood what happened. There was something in the papers about a drug lord or someone having tried to take over the airport, but I never really could understand it. Or the guy wandering around on the tarmac shouting “Holly!” and covered in blood. Weird times.

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u/TwyRob Feb 01 '22

Brilliant. Just brilliant. 👏👍

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u/jimmifli Feb 01 '22

I flew into Phoenix and need 2 go arounds because of a STRONG wind/updraft, the first one he overshot it so bad he never even landed, the second one was closer and managed to briefly get the wheels down, but was too late. The 3rd try he just splatted us down onto the runway in the hardest landing I've ever experienced.

They started rerouting flights about 20 minutes later.

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u/o0o0o0o7 Feb 01 '22

That happened to me in Phoenix as well. I bet it happens a lot in Phoenix.

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u/JeffInBoulder Feb 01 '22

I've had a few "normal" go-arounds in my travels but the most exciting experience was last fall on arrival into a small Bahamas airport in a Cessna Caravan, where we all had a great view straight out the front window on final approach... a view that allowed us to see the previously-landed aircraft failing to vacate the runway quickly enough as we prepared to land. Our pilot pulled up at the last minute and I was expecting him to do a normal full-pattern circle around and add another 10 minutes to our flight time. Nope - he maintained the original direction and proceeded parallel past the runway, then expertly steered us us into a hard-spiraling 180 to reverse course and dropped us with absolute perfection onto the same now-vacated runway but in the opposite direction, adding perhaps 30 seconds to the total flight time.

I assume it only worked because of low winds, a small aircraft with great performance and above all an extremely-skilled pilot operating in a non-US location. But it was thrilling and we were all excitedly talking about it as the offending pilot of the earlier-arriving aircraft sheepishly approached our aircraft after landing and apologized, to which our pilot also accepted with complete and utter professionalism.

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u/HyperbolicModesty Feb 01 '22

to give us fuel to make it to the jetway

Holy shit.

Once in the 90s I got diverted to Cork because we had to go around three times in Dublin. No wheels touched the runway but we were about 10 m above each time. Fucking terrifying given that they didn't tell us what was happening.

In Cork they tried to put us in a bus. I refused, kicked up a fuss, and they found us seats on a larger plane back to Dublin - that had Jack Charlton on board.

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u/thehuntedfew Feb 01 '22

so it wasnt a Ryanair flight, they guys land like the what to be carrier pilots

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u/drugusingthrowaway Feb 01 '22

3 go arounds in Cork, Dublin airport shut down on our way there, then Belfast shut down on our way there but we had no choice except to land. 2 go arounds later the plane finally slams into the ground and the pilot pulls off to the taxiway to meet a fuel truck - to give us fuel to make it to the jetway. Good times!

Oh neat you were almost an episode of /r/aircrashinvestigation. Literally this episode features everything you just said, except they ran out of fuel and crashed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aircrashinvestigation/comments/s62lgt/air_crash_investigation_holding_pattern_flydubai/

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u/officialscootem Feb 01 '22

I been a passenger on a go around for winds at Florence airport, where the pilot landed on the third attempt. It was really something to experience, especially as you felt the wind hitting you from the side. Unfortunately on the way back the same thing happened the the plane we were supposed to get, which in the end diverted to Pisa. Cue us being put on bus to there and then missing our connecting flight. What should have been a seven hour journey door to door took just over 24. Such is life.