Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear (opens in new tab)

I got my CPL the same year my first kid was born. The procedure/checklist culture transferred really well between baby tasking and training.

When you are robotically rolling to unload Gs does it still make your heart go boom!?? I love the idea of flying. I see crop dusters and private planes flying in all the time and it makes me wonder if I ought to try it out.

I was on a commercial plane where the pilots could not tell if the gear was completely down and locked and got someone on the ground to look as we flew by slowly at low altitude. It appeared to be down, but they still landed very gingerly. Thankfully it was fine.

I recall a mid air collision that occurred that way once. I forget the exact crash name, but IIRC a civilian aircraft was trying to spot for damage on another aircraft and they got too close.

Not that people shouldn’t help but you gotta be careful with maneuvers you don’t typically make, even if trying to be helpful / are a pilot.

You'd gain nothing, they can already see it with their eyeballs, and they don't require anything else like faster response or a different viewpoint. You'd lose in terms of putting another hole in the aircraft and maintaining another system, and you'd still need the manual procedure in case the camera didn't work.

A lot of aircraft could do this but the rules are most likely the same for the majority of air planes large and small.

Newer aircraft have external cameras that can be pulled up on screens in the cockpit.

There's a lot of daylight between an oh shit emergency and normal operations. For example, the plane lands without its front gear, nobody appears to be dead, there's likely limited risk of further injury and endangerment, and you're asked to depart the plane in a slightly nonstandard way.

You have completely miss understood the complaint.

The complaint is about the FAA hold passenger items after the emergnecy is over while they "investigate"

The process should be

Evac -> Fire Dept clears the plane > Airline gets passengers there stuff

it should not be

Evac > Fire Dept > NTSB Looks at things > FAA Looks at things > Someone 3 years later Passengers get their things

because the FAA as the latter policy, people will be more prone to try to take their stuff, then if they knew once evacuated they would get their belongings before leaving the airport, not at some undetermined time later

FAA Policy increases the danger for everyone.

If you don't want to risk losing it in an emergency, keep it on your person during the flight. If it doesn't fit in your pockets, leave it: You might need your hands and want them empty.

The last thing everybody on the plane needs is you fetching that one important small thing from the overhead bin/under your seat/the aisle after you dropped it/...

>>government-issued laptop and phone (to use the phrasing in another comment).

yes if you did not pay for the items, it will not cost you anything to replace the items then doubt you would think about them...

it will be shocking for you to learn that some times people travel with possessions that are not paid for by other people.

And it’s not always just laptops. It can be ID documents. Picture a college student on a trip. Maybe with couple friends. Involved in an accident, but off to the lawn safely, following all instructions.

Now their driver’s licenses and their credit cards are all in handbags around seat 34A/B. They won’t be able to rent a car, make calls, or even prove their lawful entry to the soil they’re on.

I almost always have my wallet and a phone in trousers and/or jacket pockets anyway, so this is likely never be a problem for me, but not everyone even has a pocket on their clothings.

And the policy certainly is stupid, as its second-order effects increase the risk that most of the passengers will die in the explosive fireball-like conflagration that could quickly follow a fire during evacuation.

In this instance yes, but presumably the policy is a general one for all sorts of aviation incidents.

You could argue “well they should rapidly diagnose and make a decision” and, sure, but that diagnosis is exactly the question isn’t it?

The remedy would be to have a rapid replacement of all your belongings.

The counter-argument is that in some circumstances, is no certainty that a fire will not break out at some arbitrary time after the plane has landed and come to a stop. And if one does break out, there is no certainty around how long there is between ignition and Shit Going Badly, so the prevailing result is to get the plane stationary, get everyone off as quickly as possible, and then assess the situation.

edit for clarity: I understand the issue you face regarding your medication being trapped on the plane and believe airlines should indeed have a duty of care to ensure you have rapid access to replacement medication at their expense, but I'm specifically addressing why they have the policy of telling people to not grab carry-on items during evacuation.

That’s a good point! I’d be genuinely shocked if the policy didn’t account for a way to solve that.

And when you say "Aviation is safe" you mean specifically Scheduled Aviation ie people buy tickets and go on a plane with some guys they've never met flying it. Scheduled Aviation is remarkably safe.

GA (General aviation, people who own a little plane and maybe just fly it for fun, or it's a professional expense for say a plastic surgeon and allows them to fly 300 miles home on Thursday evening after working four days in the big city) is not safe. A few hundred of these people die, not just smash up their planes or get hurt, but die, sometimes with family or friends aboard, every year. It might make the local TV news, at most. Unless they were a celebrity it won't make national news.

Commercial is more complicated because there are so many possibilities. Cargo is pretty safe, if your job is to move boxes of stuff from one big jet airport to another in a civilized country you'll likely die in bed of old age. But if you fly a police helicopter, or medevac, or you're a crop duster, or you fly custom pick up jobs, when the client wants and where they want - those jobs can go badly wrong much too easily, without you really understanding what you've got yourself into until it's too late. These people are (or at least should be) better trained than in GA, but they're also often flying more demanding missions. You may operate out of somewhere with not-so-great capabilities, on short notice, in poor weather and/or at night, and you may be expected to go places that you ordinarily wouldn't, close to buildings, close to other aircraft, even close to the ground - all of which narrows your options if things go wrong.

Military is also pretty bad as I understand it. It needn't be, but there's some sense that the job is "supposed" to be dangerous, which maybe makes sense for front line infantry, but really not for the vast majority of military pilots - way too many of them die far from any enemy, as a result of somebody screwing up, just like in GA or commercial.

The specific plane (1), N955AT, is 22.6 years old. So not young, but not completely geriatric either. Delta seems to be the only major operator of the plane type, so don't think there'd be too many buyers. Delta also seems to have a fair few in storage(2) so a fair guess would be that they'd scrap it but keep the parts that they could still use on other planes as spares.

1) https://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b717-55017.htm 2) https://www.airfleets.net/listing/b717-1-statdesc.htm

It really is amazing how resilient planes are, I'm pretty hooked on this YouTube series in which a guy gets given a plane that's been sitting in the open for 15 years or so on the condition he can make the thing run again. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5IMg7-HLL1Y4K06HdsDB...

> Airplanes rarely get scrapped for parts because of incidents like this. They have pretty extensive maintenance and repair checklists, ...

And yet these "extensive maintenance checklists" did not prevent such a serious malfunction. They were lucky that the weather was cooperating. In bad weather and strong winds who knows what would have happened.

That's an insane story. As much as I hate flying, modern aviation infrastructure is one of mankind's most impressive feats.

Oooh, this is something I know a little about. At university we were tasked with building software for estimating the usable area of a runway given its configuration and obstacles.

Runways have 3-4 different defined areas, each with different properties and usable in different ways. For example, the grass at the sides is important for safety, must be cleared a certain distance back, must not rise above a certain level above the tarmac, etc, and all those rules are distinct from the rules that apply to the concrete at the ends of the runway, distinct from the rules regarding surrounding buildings and trees, and so on. The area managed as a runway can extend kilometers out on every side.

Now, if you have a plane break down at one end, or a support vehicle crash on the grass or something, you don't actually have to put the runway out of action, but you do have to re-declare the usable distance, and that's based on the location, size, and importantly height of the obstacle. You then need to plot the angle of landing/takeoff based on that height, accounting for the segment of the runway it's in, and the given runway's pre-approved angle (varies by city/terrain).

It was a fascinating project and a good example of how problems are often so much more complex and nuanced than they initially appear.

Overweight landings are a thing and it's very, very rare for the airplane to break apart or even be damaged when performing them: https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_...

Generally, the displaced threshold is not because of the load of touching down, but because of clearance of obstacles. When landing, where you are aiming to land, and a standard glideslope, puts you over obstacles at a certain height. In some cases if you landed on the very end of he the runway, that would cause you to collide with (or have too low a margin of safety) over obstacles before the runway. The displaced threshold moves the glideslope further forward, allowing for better clearance over obstacles.

Source: Advisory Circular 150/5300-13B Airport Design, 3.5.3 (https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...)

  When it is impractical to locate a threshold at the beginning of the runway, it may be
  necessary to apply a displaced threshold. A displaced threshold reduces runway length
  available for landings in one direction. The portion of the runway prior to the displaced
  threshold typically remains available for takeoffs. Depending on the circumstances
  surrounding the displacement, operations from the opposite runway end may or may not
  be affected. Refer to Appendix H for related information on declared distances.
  Generally, a runway threshold displacement provides:
  1. A means for obtaining additional RSA prior to the threshold.
  2. A means for obtaining additional ROFA prior to the threshold.
  3. A means for locating the RPZ to mitigate incompatible land uses.
  4. A means for obstacle clearance prior to the threshold.
  5. Increased arrival capacity with certain parallel runway approach procedures. See
  FAA Order 7110.308, Simultaneous Dependent Approaches to Closely Spaced
  Parallel Runways

Glossary:

  RSA: Runway Safety Area
  ROFA: Runway Object Free Area
  RPZ: Runway Protection Zone

Note that all of the given reasons are for clearance of obstacles or various other mandatory safety areas based on clearance from taxiways or other runway traffic, not for durability of the runway.

I don't think the airplane is going to break up, just that it would need inspection and perhaps repair if touching down over weight.

Blancolirio covers this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D2Kj0t4t9s

you can right click a shorts video, copy the URL, and paste that to get the normal non-crippled YouTube player

https://youtu.be/W12w7NkqGCM

What's the actual point of Youtube Sharts? It just seems like encouragement for people to film vertically and not frame the shot well.

And on the watching side you're pushed into a needlessly unfriendly UI. Like I generally just use the YT web interface and don't go out of my way to routinely yt-dlp or Newpipe, but now I might have to change that.

The prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder would disagree.

Flying for me ain't fun but as soon the bird is on the ground I'm all good!

based on the photos, they did pop the slides on this incident. but evacuations are often not called in these situations if there isn't a fire or something.

there's a real risk of injury from evacuating, so it needs consideration by the pilot.

Planes have to be sturdy and flexible to handle the environment they spend most of their time cruising in. This is probably nothing next to the turbulence planes are expected to shrug off while maintaining a ground level environment eight miles up for decades of service life.

> there’s no indication that anyone who left the plane without their ID or passport is just being left in the terminal for days

Because US Airlines have such a good reputation for taking care of their stranded passengers? /s

Probably didn't want everyone standing up in the aisle messing with the overheads all at once.

As soon as they said something was wrong I’d be working to get any important work off my laptop and onto my phone or any other alternative storage I could think of. Also, wallet/passport/keys etc come out of my backpack and into my pockets.

Not the parent poster, but I carry that stuff in a pocket of the backpack I take around pretty much everywhere. On planes it's a carry-on. I certainly wouldn't be happy losing it in an emergency, but oh well, not really something I optimize for.

First of all, contrary to popular belief you don’t need physical ID at airports, you can go through another process to have your identity verified, it takes longer but it’s trivial.

Second, any place that doesnt take Apple Pay is not a place you should do business at. Even lowly kiosks and vending machines accept Apple Pay now. The places that are NOT accepting Apple Pay are a red flag, they are doing something nefarious by holding onto the old system of credit card processing (there are benefits and incentives to use contact less payments and places that refuse are actively missing out for a reason, there is literally no good reason to not take Apple Pay).

Most of the time I don’t carry any ID. My drivers license stays in the car where it belongs. I don’t buy packs of cigarettes or alcohol. It’s fine.

Station ID is every hour. Also you have to say it in a very specific format: Call letters, city; or call letters, frequency, city. No additional words in between: “WKRP in Cincinnati” would be invalid.

TV stations are allowed to do it visually. When I was young it was common to see it as a full screen ID in between shows (often with a quick weather report, “time and temperature”). Later most stations I saw quit that and just put it as a bug at the bottom of the screen over top of the show.

Fun fact. My college radio station had the station ID WTBS (technology broadcasting system or something like that). When Ted Turner was spearheading one of the fairly early major cable TV stations, he bought the ID for what I imagine was a lot of money for a college radio station for the Turner Broadcasting System or something similar.

My favorite is WACO (Texas), the only radio station whose call letters are also its location.

Rochester NY has WXXI for a PBS station on channel 21. It is also curiously reused as the call sign on local AM and FM NPR radio stations. For whatever reason that is allowed.

I knew this was the general rule, but also knew about KDKA-Pittsburgh (a very old station, east of the Mississippi). In looking into why that one got a K, I found this that might be interesting to people reading this far down this subthread: https://archive.is/HpUc3

W is for East. What a country!

Can confirm in New Orleans WYLD has their transmitter in Algiers on the west side of the river and I’m sure that situation applies to other stations can’t recall any Ks around here

In St. Louis most stations are K but there are a few Ws.

I still know wwdc is dc101. Impressionable youth and all that.

8 hour limit + 0.04 = They can drink a lot the day before, but they have to aim pretty well…

Just to nitpick, this landing technique is something every pilot has to demonstrate to an FAA designated examiner to get their first pilot certificate (or, the private pilot license). So it's kind of like saying "Wow, you did the thing every pilot has to do!". I get what you're saying though - there's an emotional difference between doing this when everything is fine and when you have a real emergency.

Not even close to a hull loss. Delta's Tech Ops will have this plane back in service very quickly.

And documentation could take a page out of other engineering disciplines. I do my part in both.

If you suspect you're gonna turn into a hunk of bent metal sliding down the runway, I'd rather there only be a couple of gallons of fuel left, rather than a couple of hundred gallons.

Everything is done via checklists. You don't just "try a few more times" unless there's some indication that you should. They only had 30 minutes of fuel left, and if they had an unrelated go-around and ran out of fuel while setting up for another landing, everyone dies.

Once you've run all the relevant checklists and ARFF is in position, you land the plane.