Small Scale Military Headquarters

Check out this incredible pic of a 747 jumbo preparing to land at the old Hong Kong "Kai Tak" airport which was known for it's demanding approaches. He can't be more than about 15-20 secs. from touchdown of the mains as the jet appears to be directly above, or very close to the runway threshold, and he'll have to get lined up and straightened out very quickly, or be forced to abort and go around. Assuming that the pilot of this bird pulled it off, he's good... really good....

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Singapor ... 0881106/L/

Think its called cross wind landing or something, very common for old hong kong airport

some youtube videos of this were pretty jaw dropping

incidently, discovery channel in my ao is gonna show soon a feature on the world's scariest airports, Kai tuck is surely gonna be on it

this show is def not for the squeamish or those with fear of flying, I know I won't be watching it

I'd still like to know if this guy piloting the jumbo landed or had to go around...?? I've only been on one jet that had to execute an aborted landing, and I can tell you that the "pucker factor" rises sharply in the passenger cabin when moments from touchdown the guy suddenly bangs the throttles forward and pulls away steeply....

I once had a really cool aborted landing. We were coming into San Fransisco, which is always pretty cool anyway, since the runway is out over the water, but in this case, our rear wheels had touched, but the front was still off the ground when the pilot hit the throttle and we shot back up into the sky. He explained that some ground traffic had failed to clear the end of the runway we were trying to use, so he opted to go around. We got a really nice low altitude tour of S.F. then out over the Golden Gate, a big left turn to follow the coast south, then back over the hills to approach over the bay again. It was one of my best moments of commercial flying.

To make things even better, this was after we had gotten a great aerial tour of Yosemite earlier in order to burn excess fuel we had due to favorable winds. The pilot let us know about 30-45 minutes beforehand with an announcement something like this:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to announce that we've had some very favorable winds on this flight, and this has left us with some extra fuel onboard. We'd like to burn a little of it off before we land, so what I'm going to do take us a little further south than normal, and down a little, then make a nice wide banked 270 degree turn above Yosemite. For those of you seated on the left side of the aircraft, you'll get an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime view of Half-Dome as we circle it, and for those of you on the right side of the aircraft... Next time try to sit on the left..."

"I'll let you know about two minutes in advance, so you can have your cameras ready"

I was quite lucky, as I had a window seat on the left side of the plane. My father, who was sitting next to me, also had a good view, but his overall experience was somewhat less than mine, due to the sudden influx of right side passengers into/onto his seat as we turned. It really was a great view of Half Dome, and the pilot was right, I'll probably never get one like that again. And the pilot's commentary and humor, both for that announcement, and others, really made the flight one to remember.

Shame flying doesn't seem to be like that anymore...

MV

Ruger,

I don't know how you do it but I'd be cowering in my seat with white knuckles after that abortion, to heck with yosemite!

There are commercial planes now with personal tv entertainment system that allows you to see several external views from the plane with mounted cameras, I feel a lot less uranus puckeritis when you can actually see your landing approach head on and have some sense of anticipation and awareness of the whole thing


Ostketten,

Here's a couple of videos of the kai tak crosswind landings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtnL4KYVtDE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PCOcyt7 ... re=related

Glad I never flew into the old Hong Kong airport.

I have seen these before, but it still is pretty hair raising. Wonder what the pilots think of this "landing approach"?

I'm sure some of the more experienced pilots would be more then happy to show off his skills to his green copilot or some hot aircrew

I can imagine being a passenger looking out the window and SEE the runway head on

I had a lot of landings like that at Lajes Field in the Azores during winters. When I was sitting at the SS-3 station, I could look out the window and see the runway heading out anywhere between the nose and wingtip during the approach, which was bad given that I'm sitting in the middle of the plane, right over the wings.

I liked sitting at the SS-1/2 stations better since there were no windows there. Ignorance was truly bliss!