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Hamburg Wing-strike – Pilot a Hero or Lacking Technique?

By admin | March 3, 2008

By now, I’m sure if you’re at all connected to aviation (or the nightly news for that matter) you’ve seen the video of the Lufthansa A320 landing in a crosswind in Hamburg, Germany. The media, once again, seems to be less knowledgeable about aviation than they are about selling advertising because you read headlines such as:

“German Airline Says Pilot Averted Major Crash” – Rueters

“Lufthansa ‘Hero’ Pilot Saves Life of 137 Passengers” – maltaStar.com

“Pilot Saves Jet From Disaster in Gale” – Independent UK

Here’s the problem. This near “Disaster” was not the cause of anything other than the pilot’s inability to control the aircraft. How do I know? I’ve been landing airliners in stronger crosswinds than this for years and yes, even in tropical storms. (Never hurricanes. That’s suicidal in it’s own right.)

How it’s supposed to happen: Crosswind Landing Technique

Handling crosswinds in an aircraft is all about understanding vectors. You have to fight the horizontal vector of the crosswind with either a competing vector of your own by flying into the wind enough to remain aligned with the runway, or with a horizontal component of lift created by banking the aircraft into the wind. The first method is easy. If the wind is coming from the right, you turn your nose into it using the wind to keep your aircraft aligned with the runway. This is called a side-slip or a “crab,” and is the most common method for dealing with crosswinds in all phases of flight, except for the touchdown.

And that’s precisely where the second method must be used. This one’s a little more complicated. Since a landing while in a “crab” will put extreme side loads on the landing gear, possibly collapsing them, a pilot must straighten the nose of the aircraft prior to touchdown. This is done with the rudder pedals that control the yaw, or side to side movement of the nose of the aircraft. Left rudder in a right crab will bring the wheels in line with the runway, but there is a catch. You’ve taken away your competing horizontal vector against the wind, and there’s nothing to keep it from blowing you off the runway. So off the runway you shall go…unless you find another way of creating that competing horizontal vector.

This is accomplished by lowering the upwind wing (the right wing, in this instance). Since aircraft lift only ever points straight up (in relation to the aircraft, not the ground), when you bank the wings you are producing a horizontal component of lift, exactly the horizontal vector we need to counter the wind. So, by simultaneously straightening the nose and dipping the right wing, the horizontal component of lift will counter the affects of the crosswind and bring you safely to earth.

Watch this video of a Northwest A319 which demonstrates textbook-perfect technique. Much like the Lufthansa Airbus, this A319 flies a “crab” angle until just prior to touchdown when the pilot inserts left rudder, straightening the nose with the runway. But watch how the Northwest pilot dips the right wing into the wind, thereby preventing any gusts from picking it up, and making a very smooth landing on the right main landing gear, just as it should be.

How it Happened in Hamburg:

So what happened in Hamburg? Exactly as I described above, you see the aircraft flying sideways in a “crab” to counter the wind. The approach looks textbook as the pilot kicks the left rudder to align the nose with the runway, but one thing never happens. The pilot doesn’t lower the right wing. In fact, he seems to raise it. The effect is entirely predictable, and the aircraft veers sharply left, nearly resulting in an infinitely more exciting video for those two amateur videographers.

“But it was a gust of wind the pilots could have never planned for.”

Rubbish. There are gusts of winds all the time, many stronger than the one that pushed this A320 around like a toy. The pilot is (or should be) trained to handle these gusts closed to the runway without damaging the left wing. In fact, most crosswind wing-strikes happen on the upwind wing (the right wing in this case) because the pilot has compensated for the crosswind with more bank than the ground will allow. So why did this happen on the downwind wing? Because the pilot did not dip the right wing as is fundamental in landing an aircraft in crosswinds. How do we know? Had the pilot dipped the right wing like he was supposed to, and gust of wind would have pushed the wing down, not up. The aircraft would still have drifted to the left with the gust, however this would have been easily corrected by adding more horizontal component of lift with more right bank.

Why did the pilot raise the right wing instead of lower it? I’m going to give the pilot the benefit of the doubt that he did not do the exact wrong thing by raising the right wing. More probably, the wing raised itself because the pilot failed to make the necessary right bank correction. Watch the wings as the left rudder is kicked to align the aircraft with the runway. The left turn of the nose causes the left wing to move slower through the air, and the right wing to move faster. This means the right wing will be producing significantly more lift than the left, and it will want to raise. Once the wing raises, the wind catches it, and the almost-mayhem ensues. It takes the pilot several seconds to lower the wing to prevent the aircraft from drifting off of the runway, but the damage was already done.

Notice the difference in outcome of the first example where the Northwest pilot lowers the right wing into wind and has a nice comfortable landing compared to the Hamburg version. The crab angles are nearly identical which indicates comparable wind (to me the NWA crab looks a little more aggressive which would mean they had a stronger crosswind, but I’ll leave that judgment to the reader.)

What seems obvious to us pilots as a botched landing due to poor technique is apparently not so obvious to the general public. The moral of the story is not that pilots lack the technique like the one that made international news with the Hamburg almost-landing, rather that pilots are so skilled that they make landings in stronger crosswinds than this multiple times a day, without videos making it further than flightlevel350.com. And that this wouldn’t have happened if it was a Boeing… ;)

Edit – For those of you who takes things too seriously to notice the little wink emoticon, or to appreciate the Airbus vs. Boeing banter that inevitibly takes place in the online aviation community, you obviously missed the humor in the last sentence.  Don’t take things so seriously.  Of course it could happen in a Boeing.

But this never would have happened if it was a Douglas… ;)   (<— notice the wink emoticon.  Typically used to demote sarcasm or tongue-in-cheek.)

Topics: Videos | 38 Comments »

  • http://rcd.typepad.com/ Robin Capper

    Thanks for that, interesting to read a pilots view.

    “It” didn’t happen to the Northwest aircraft and it’s “not a Boeing” too :-)

  • John Sawyer

    Thanks for this story its good to hear another side to the story that the sensationalist news carriers however I am curious on two things.

    1) Why do you say this wouldn’t have happened to a Boeing, your well balanced article is flawed but this unsubstantiated comment.

    2) Is it not possible that the pilot did attempt to apply the necessary bank as he pivoted onto the run way but that a sudden gust was countered his efforts. I am not a pilot so I don’t know if that is possible or not.

    John

  • http://www.airlineempires.net miller22

    John,

    Thanks for the input.

    1) There is no significant difference between Airbus and Boeing when dealing with x-winds. It was just a feeble attempt of mine at humor. In pilot circles, the debate almost always seems to find it’s way to Boeing vs. Airbus, and I’m just making light of that. The smiley got forced to the next line, so it’s easy to misunderstand my jest.

    2) Had the pilot inserted the bank appropriately, the wing would have been pushed down with the wind gust, rather than up. This is the core element of a crosswind landing, and I think it’s easy to see why. There are several more factors as to why the pilot may not have inserted appropriate bank, most notibly that the aircraft was drifting to the right, which is very intuitive to correct with left bank. In this instance, it should have been corrected with less right bank, allowing the crosswind to correct the drift.

    There should be no chance for the wind to raise the wing, if the procedure is followed correctly. If still in the crab, a gust will just push an aircraft sideways, and the nose will automatically vane into the wind helping your efforts. While exiting the crab, the wing immediately has to drop to prevent the wind from picking it up. There is no room for chance if it is done correctly, only room for error.

    One other point of interest is that even when aircraft are firmly on the ground after a crosswind landing, the pilots will continue to provide full wing-down controls to keep the wind from picking it back up. The wing doesn’t actually dip, since the aircraft is on the ground, but the wing-down controls spoil any lift from that wing should the wind pick it up. As soon as the right wheel leaves the ground from a gust, the controls will bring that wing right back to level.

  • Mark Conner

    The winds during the day (don’t have exact observation since I have not seen the time of the aborted landing) were from about 290-300 true with gusts up to 55 knots. EDDH has 05/23 and 15/33 runways, so I’m almost certain the landing was on 23 given the video. Why would the airport have chosen to continue landing aircraft on 23 in these conditions? Not wanting to reduce capacity by only using 33?

    The winds were relatively steady direction-wise most of the day, so no one should have been caught out by a sudden change. Wind speed, while gusty, was not all that variable either.

    I’m not a pilot, but am a meteorologist who has supported aviation for some time. Seems to be some questionable decisions both air- and ground-based.

  • http://www.airlineempires.net miller22

    I’d be very interested to hear on which runway the aircraft did eventually land. Assumming worst case according to Mark’s numbers, the aircraft would have had a 70 degree crosswind gusting to 55. Not easy, but not dangerous either…or shouldn’t be anyway.

    Regardless of what runway the airport is landing, the pilot always has the final decision on whether or not to use the runway. I wonder how many other aircraft made this approach successfully and without complaint. This is often the biggest reason for an airport not to close a crosswind runway.

    Regardless, there are airports here in the states with only parallel airline runways. ATL, LAX, BNA (with 31 closed), PHL, MCO, etc. Trust me that the winds blow hard in these places as I’ve landed in a 90 degree crosswind gusting to 65 knots in BNA. It’s either you use the runways, or you close the airport. So that EDDH kept 23 open is not that big of a deal; the pilot can always refuse.

  • http://unknown Rob

    We I seen this video I said to myself “Thats a botched Landing if I have ever seen one. It looks like these pilots lacked the proper skills to make this kind of landing. The video that was shot looked very inpresive to an untrained person who is a pilot. But the fact is this type of landing is done all the time in those types of cross winds. They made these guys look like hero’s that they are not. They just go very lucky that they were able to get the chance to do a go around.

  • Scott

    @miller22, there was a short video segment on CNN.com where they talked with one of the passengers on the plane. The passenger said that they eventually landed on a different runway about 10 minutes later — supposedly, where they were flying into the wind instead crosswind.

    One of the passenger’s comments was also interesting. He said that, while he’s not a pilot, he’s an engineer and to him it was predictable that the plane would dip to the left like it did when the pilot caused the nose to point down the runway (without correcting) — he understood that that would cause the right wing to move faster than the left wing and generate more lift on the rignt. Although he didn’t come right out and say so (presumably, since he’s not a pilot), he seemed to imply that even he thought the pilot did something wrong.

  • bobvian

    Anyway, let’s appreciate that the pilot remained calm, that he corrected the eventual failure(s) and that he saved the life of the passengers and his crew. It could have been a disaster.

  • http://www.airlineempires.net miller22

    bobvian,
    If you’re the reason your passengers lives are in danger to begin with, does that mean you saved their lives when they didn’t die?

    Without knowing the history of the pilots, I think this could possibly raise issues about some of the Ab-Initio flight training programs taking place in the EU. Again, I’m not saying these pilots were a part of that program, only that this is the exact type of problem forecast by opponents of such a program for some time.

  • Jerry

    Thank you for this educational and well writen analysis. I discussed the video with a fellow private pilot and engineer; indeed we came to the same conclusion: bodged landing!
    This video will prove very usefull in pilot education on what not to do in crosswind conditions.
    As a private pilot my experience is limited to much smaller and slower planes; however the mechanisms are the same. Touchdown must be on the upwind wheel, first, as your video and sketch illustrate. If the plane touches on the downwind wheel the friction adds a vector that makes matters worse and gives the plane a “skipping” tendency. A high upwind wing will get you in trouble fast.

    My friend found on the internet that the relatively unexperienced 25 year old co-pilot had the controls at this 1st landing attempt. Seconds from desaster the captain took over and the go-around and subsequent landing were performed by the captain. The fact that the highly experienced captain let the co-pilot attempt the landing indicates to me that conditions were within limits.
    We may be looking at a combination of poor training and poor skills.

    Thanks again!

  • Brian Jeffries

    Way of topic but please – Who is the singer doing the wonderful rendition of “Volare” on the other videos that accompany the set that includes the textbook Northwest Airbus landing?

  • Charles

    A friend of mine is command level Naval aviator. He’s flown every fighter used by the USA, is a Top Gun ‘winner’, now trains the best of the best, and has hundreds of foul weather carrier traps under his belt.

    After viewing the recent Lufthansa/Hamburg incident, he remarked, “We’ll have to wait and see why they even TRIED to land in those conditions!”

  • Sully

    Does anyone know the maximum demonstrated crosswind for an Airbus 320? I know that airliners don’t have a hard and fast limit, but I’d be interested in what they used in the flight tests. In the Navy, we actually have a limit to go by. For a P-3C Orion, it’s 35 knots- really pretty low. Any more than 9 degrees angle of bank will result in a prop strike because of the outboard engines. One good thing about a straight wing, though, is that you can use wing down/top rudder, which you can leave in throughout the flare and touchdown.

    Navy Tactical jets almost always land right into the wind, because the Officer of the Deck has to keep the generated wind within about 20 degrees (maybe less?) of the angled deck heading.

    The guy should have waved off earlier if he was not confident in his abilities. He’s kicking himself over it. With all the hype about him being a hero, he might keep his job. I feel bad for him and hope he can overcome it.

  • Cookie

    Wind:

    * TO and LDG

    X wind: max demonstrated for takeoff 29 Kt
    X wind: max demonstrated for landing 33 Kt
    X wind: max demonstrated gust 38 Kt
    max tail wind 10 Kt
    *Max crosswind values have been demonstrated with flight controls in normal law as well as in direct law with and without yaw damper.

  • Chris

    I am not a pilot. Im a frequent passenger and familiar with physics to the point that all was clear for me in the above text. I do know that Lufthansa pilots are trained in the US. I know this because I know one. He flys the 319-321 series. What I dont know is what standards are requied by US carries for the pilots they hire. I have read about fatal incidents by major US carries that were total pilot error to the point of idiocy.

    So….what are the standards?

    A concerned frequent (card carrying) flyer…

  • Peter

    Wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t a boeing, bull****, a 737 with winglets probably would have been hit worse that an a321 because of the 737s larger tail and blended winglets. Also that sudden gust of wind would have been enough to flip a cessna even IN the crab position, the fact that the pilot crabbed, then rotated for landing, was pushed at least 40 metres to the left, and managed to take off again while only slightly grazing his wing is amazing.

  • davin

    I'm only a gamer and I know I need to dip my wing into the wing when I kick the nose with the rudder on landing…

  • Mike

    I'm a pilot as well and it is clear what happened. Journalists are stupid, they should get proper information before publishing rubbish. Any pilot will tell you that it was a clear and elementary pilot mistake. This stuff is tought at the very beginning of any flight course. Whoever flies knows this, even just a freshly winged pilot.

  • LLL

    Can't see any flaps, was this guy really trying to land?

  • Dave

    No mention of dutch roll? Heavy metal…the swept wing kind…will roll sharply with abrupt rudder inputs. Big iron usually have rudder movement limiters during high speed flight, but full authority at landing speeds. Smooth coordinated control inputs are the key.

  • J. Nabrand

    Well explained, just wrecked by the last sentence. I sence some frustration there.
    I reckon Airbus and Boeing are just as safe, reliable and well built. So I do not see any added value to the story mentioning “And that this wouldn’t have happened if it was a Boeing… ” It may just as well have been a Boeing in the hands of the same pilot.
    He still managed to keep it together though and correct his “mistake

  • Boeing7xx

    Naked eye analysis (youtube'ing the whole thing) can never replace the DFDR, so unless you really had your hands on the DFDR its quite unlikely that you'd be able to figure out what were the winds gusts and what was the reason for the angle correction, and why the dead rudder applied did not bring out the results you'd expect.

    PS: The last line is really messed up. No pilot worth his salt makes such comments.

  • Paul

    Pardon me if I seem ignorant, but I still disagree about this. (For what it's worth, I'm a beginner pilot, and have been around planes my whole life)

    For one, I find the comparison between the NW and LH quite poor.

    1) It seems as though, after the NW straightens out, he hangs out for quite a while with level wings, just dipping the wing a second before touchdown. This almost makes me wonder if the wing dip itself was in fact an error (just a wing-low landing) or even a corrective action, rather than a preventive action

    2) The NW also was much higher above the runway when it straightened out, and even when it dipped it's wing, as opposed to the LH straightening out. I am also aware that some of this thought may be distorted by poor depth perception given the end-of-runway shot and a noticeable dip in the runway, but I still think that's a fair statement.

    3) The winds are clearly…crappy, to say the least, in the LH video. In the NW vid, they seem to at least be steady, and weather isn't too degraded, as shown by the sky. Now, that being said, I understand the wing-low is the preventive action for crosswind, but you can only go so far down with one wing low. This video looks to me almost as if it picked the plane off the runway as it was about to touchdown, rather than pushing it out of the air.

    In any case, this is an amazing video to watch, I find.

  • Blu Yonder

    I read your blog and I really find it hard to believe you are actually an airline pilot. Words like “.. rubbish..” regarding something like a crosswind landing sound very immature and unprofessional. Firstly we should NEVER judge without a proper DFDR report. Secondly you should NEVER consider yourself a know-it-all and the macho attitude” this can never happen to me” is very unbecoming to an airline pilot. I was always trained to learn from errors happening around us to prevent it happening again. So i fail to understand your smart Alec blog explaining vectors and crab angles during a crosswind landing.
    Finally your comment “…and this would have never happened in a Boeing…” is the last nail in the coffin. Never further from the truth!
    On a lighter note, while landing in Hamburg some months ago in similar conditions, my first officer spotted camera crew shooting approaches just before the runway! Someone looking for a scoop maybe!!

    regards

  • Airport Dog

    Sorry, but I think this is the 'textbook' example of a crosswind landing in a high performance, swept wing aircraft.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAljM7CaY10&feat…

    The idea is to stay in the crab until you feel like you are about to touch down. Then, and only then, to you kick in the rudder to align the aircraft with the runway. This reduces the need to lower the upwind wing (if not eliminating the need completely). Landing in a full side slip may be an option in a C172, but in a swept wing airplane like a Citation X or a Boeing 727, it won't work. In the Citation X, the wing sweep is so significant that too much bank while in a nose high (flare) position will surely cause a wing tip strike. On the 727, the problem is not so much striking the wingtip as it is the outboard flap. If I remember correctly, we were taught in both aircraft that somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 degrees of bank will put metal on pavement. Ten degrees of bank is not much to work with at all. Now in the Luftansa Hamburg and the Northwest videos it seems the pilots may have started the round out and flare a little too soon and thereby put themselves in a vulnerable position of having to add some major bank angle to correct. That said, when the wind is really choppy (not just gusty), airspeed variations of plus or minus 15 or more knots in addition to large changes in crab and pitch angle make it difficult to judge the flare. On top of that, you may judge it correctly but a gust of wind (or the cessation of a gust) will change things in short order when you are already committed to the round out. All you can do is the best you can do at each split second of variability that mother nature throws at you. Remember too, a 20 knot crosswind can be very different from one airport and weather system to another. Terrain and other obstacles play a large part in changing things up. It would be foolish to assume every landing (crosswind or not) is the same; on the contrary, they are almost all unique for one reason or another. On another note, I have to agree with Blu Yonder. As professionals, we need to learn from mistakes, including our own. Granted, the media may not accurately report on aviation, among other topics, but talking down about an incident like this is immature. By the way, a crab is not a side slip as you state early in your comment. You go from a crab into a side slip to align the aircraft with the runway for landing (unless you're flying a B-52). Stay safe everyone and good flying.

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  • delphin

    you must have currege to land in so a situation

  • delphin

    you need currage to land like this.

  • delphin

    you must have currege to land in so a situation

  • delphin

    you need currage to land like this.

  • voi
  • Av_now

    Landing as aircrew in Shemya, AK in a P-3 Orion, we had a 35kt crosswind component. The pilot was one of the better sticks in the squadron and nailed it first time, no damage, no problem.

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  • Tinhead

    So, this test pilot did it wrong too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5pGlw4o3Ks ? Or is landing a A380, 737, Cesna and a Microlight the same? I doubt they behave the same even in your Microsoft Flight Simulator sir.

  • Nob

    sure. The sky is full of cowards circling till they run out of fuel.

  • Marc

    Airport Dog is so right in his comment. You don t know a single the fact concerning this landing. The report of the BFU (the german NTSB) stated, that all people ivolved in this incident did no MISTAKE.

    One of the main problems, was the fact that the main gear had already touched down. So the computer switched from flight to ground mode, so the pilots were for 3,5s not able to bank here any angle… So they weren t able to do perform the wind correction needed at this point and

    that s why the plane became a toy of the wind.

    As soon as they were completly back again in the air, they gained back full control of the aircraft.

    So, next time I suggest you to collect the corret information before writing an article and to state some oppinios that lacking the truth!!!

    Just have a look here, you ll find the complete report in english ;-)

    http://www.bfu-web.de/cln_030/nn_226422/EN/Publications/Investigation_20Report/2008/Report__08__5X003__A320__Hamburg-Crosswindlanding,templateId=raw,property=publicationFile.pdf/Report_08_5X003_A320_Hamburg-Crosswindlanding.pdf