A380 landing at Heathrow

[Sparks]

Just saw the A380 landing at heathrow on the news.  I'm not a pilot but it looked "sporting". Pitching like hades and to me on roll out the right wing tip looked a lot closer to the ground than the left ?? Big crosswind ??

Anyone else watched it ?

[beet1e]

I'm going to watch it on the 8am news in a few minutes. I'm not surprised it was pitching around - bloody windy down here yesterday.

[Furball]

Originally posted by Sparks
Big crosswind ??

as beet1e said - was very windy in London yesterday.

[Debonair]

i landed in 45kts once.
it was right down the runway, though....

[Golfer]

Once I got close to landing, but still crashed.

Sorry Mr. Mc-D (reference avatar)

On a positive note...I was glad to see that Bradley, CT re-commissioned it's visual approach.  They decomissioned it sometime early last week and in the several times I've been back it's been ILS's down close to minimums.  I celebrated with a squeaker landing and received compliments from the passengers ::Warm Fuzzy Feeling::

Hope all the New England AHers came out of that firehose okay.

[Yeager]

any pictures?

[Sparks]

Just seemed the pitch oscillations in particualr for such a big aircraft were huge. Vid is on BBC.co.uk News Page

[Yeager]

thanks sparks!

Thats an impressive gigantic aeromachine...almost looked like a mini RC for a minute there...... doh!

[eagl]

Yea, it looked like he was pumping the controls down final.  Pull - push - pull - push.  Ugh.  Maybe they were checking out a new pilot because it sure looked like they were flying a visual approach and chasing their aimpoint all over the place.

Amazing they let that thing taxi with the engines over the grass like that...

[beet1e]

Originally posted by eagl
Amazing they let that thing taxi with the engines over the grass like that...

Part of the job of making designated airports A380 ready is of course the widening of certain runways - and taxiways. Not sure if that's been completed, and in light of what you said probably hasn't.

I googled this pic of LHR T5 - the new terminal which will handle the A380, and has been built with double decker loading ramps. This picture is facing ~east, and shows T5 at the western end of the aerodrome, nestling up against the M25 London Orbital Motorway - a ring road that goes all around London and is 122 miles long. The section you see in the foreground is the busiest stretch of motorway in Europe. Roadworks have been in progress here for at least two years, widening the motorway and enhancing the access roads into T4 and T5.

The A380 landed on runway 27L - that's the one at the far right of the picture, and the A380 would have been landing towards the M25.