Monday, June 18, 2007

Safe Belly Landing

Beech 1900D belly landing at Woodbourne AD. Picture from www.dompost.co.nz
Picture from www.dompost.co.nz

An Eagle Air ["Air New Zealand Link"] B1900D conducted a wheels-up landing at Woodbourne earlier today. By all accounts, it was a textbook landing, a credit to all involved, and, most importantly, no injuries.

Surprisingly, the NZ Herald website did not seem to exagerate or overstate the incident [as is their usual custom]: Read the story

The Dompost [Stuff.co.nz] managed it's usual low standards with the original storys referring to wreckage and emergency crash landings and so forth, but what would you expect [the Dompost revision to the story calmed down a bit]. They did however have an awesome photo: Dompost story, stuff's story [picture as above]

As always, it would pay not to believe most of what is published in the early stories [let's face it, plane landed on belly, no injuries does not sell as many papers/airtime as emergency crash landing!]

10 comments:

Flyinkiwi said...

I know a couple of Eagle pilots but I don't think any of them were flying that plane. I saw the footage of the approach and they really nailed it. Those guys deserve a beer or two from the passengers.

Rodney said...

I think most pilots [particularly PPL's] would like to do landings that good WITH wheels :-)

Guru said...

A few questions from a 'land-lubber'!

#1: When they came in with the wheels up, would the props still be going or do they cut those just before impact? How does this affect flight/control etc?

#2: Any idea whether the sides of the aircraft beside the props is toughened to prevent a blade flying through the cabin?

#3: Would they evacuate the seats beside the props, and if they had a full passenger cabin, where would they put the evacuees?

Cheers :) Curious Guru...

Rodney said...

Curious Guru,

Gidday mate! Without putting myself forward as an expert on your questions, allow me to take a guess :-)

#1: The props would still be moving. They might not have been developing power at the point of impact, but still moving.

Even with a complete engine failure a long way out, there should be enough air pressure on the props to keep them moving.

#2: No idea. Guess work says that a fuselage strengthened to cope with presurisation could manage a decent knock, but not sure.

I did see some photos of the aircraft in a hanger, and that had dents on the sides where the props had hit.

#3: With empty seats? No idea. Don't want to have to find out :-) However, if the plane's full, you're out of luck. You'd be required to remain seated, with the seatbelt on, assuming the position.

Hope that this helps - perhaps one of my other visitors can shed some light on this?

Flyinkiwi said...

I can answer #3, they had all the passengers move to the back seats, I guess they were lucky the plane was not full. I would think there would be a procedure to follow if the plane was full (like padding the windows or something) but I don't know what it would be.

Rodney said...

Another reason to sit down the back, away from the engines? :-)

Charles said...

I was going to ask if the objects in the photo were indeed the prop blades. But after reading the previous comments I see they were. WOW!!
The crew did a good job it appears.

I would love to learnn more of the details. I am going to research this incident a little more.

Great Photo

Rodney said...

Hi Charles,

Thanks for visiting! Yeah - it was a big story here in New Zealand when it happenned [NZ commercial aviation is generally very very safe]. Happy hunting around for more information.

Rodney

Flyinkiwi said...

I just want to make one last comment about this incident. And thats my utter disgust at the criticism directed at the pilots for not attempting to land at Wellington because "the hospital facilities there are superior to Blenheims". 1) Woodbourne is an RNZAF base so they had a full crash crew on standby. 2) Wellington hospital is less than 20 mins away by helicopter (which is a lot less than it would be by Ambulance at that time of day). 3) Woodbourne is a lot less busy than Wellington Airport and would better cope with having the runway closed for a few hours after the incident. I bet there are a few international passengers and Airline Executives who were quietly happy their precious schedules were not disrupted by this event.

Rodney said...

Euan, putting aside your very good comment about passengers and airline execs [they don't count for much when deciding where to land in an emergency :-)], you make very very good points.

As someone in the industry and likely much wiser than I said [roughly something like this]... 20 people is roughly half a bus load of people. Are these [naysayers] people saying that the area could not handle a bus crash? Are they now going to demand that no buses travel in the area [to vineyards and the like]?