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.

regards

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.

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