Fedex MD11 crashes in Tokyo

[RAIDER14]

Fedex MD11 crashed in Tokyo while landing in high winds

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7958367.stm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3HTORkwtFE

[SFRT - Frenchy]

 

[RAIDER14]

CNN reporting that pilot and copilot were killed

[crazyivan]

Yeah that didnt look good.

[Yeager]

what the hell?  sudden downburst?

[eagl]

The few bounces they show look like "classic" porpoising, but with a really big plane instead of the little puddlejumpers that you usually see do that sort of thing.

Landing on nosewheel first = teh suck.

The youtube vid about mid-way through appears to show a hard landing followed by a bounce, followed by a very hard nosewheel first second touchdown.  The first hard landing is where I suspect the porposing started.  The higher quality news video shows only the second "landing", doesn't show the previous (first?) touchdown and bounce.

[TheZohan]

See Rule #4

[Golfer]

See Rule #4

If you had any clue just how poor taste that is you wouldn't have even thought it.





The hard impact after the bounce happened with such force that if you pay attention to the #2 (tail mounted engine) you'll see that the gravitational forces imparted on the engine appear to have caused it to dislodge from its mounts taking a significant portion of the tail structure with it.

The pilots, ANC based, did not survive.

[texasmom]

Wow, I haven't seen too many things more awful than that.  The newsreels I saw were a little bit more expanded at the beginning & showed more bouncing than what was on those clips.

[Serenity]

If you had any clue just how poor taste that is you wouldn't have even thought it.

It matches his name.

[Rolex]

According to local news in Tokyo, wind shear was reported by the plane landing prior to the Fedex plane and the pilot received the report about 4 minutes prior to landing. Winds were very strong at the time with little crosswind component. The wind change unluckily happened just before landing, resulting in the plane dropping in for the first hard landing and subsequent porpoising. It is being reported as remarkably bad luck in the wind shear timing and something the pilots could not have anticipated or recovered from.

[Bodhi]

See Rule #5

[Denholm]

See Rule #4

[Golfer]

See Rule #5

[Cobra516]

Man that is terrible.  Really hate to see that.

After the massive bounce it looks like he really pushed it over to drive it onto the runway - couldn't imagine that he would have given it that kind of control input voluntarily. 

Maybe he didn't have the power available to go around.  I've heard that the reversers deploy as the mains touch, is that true?  Seems like a very bad thing to have in case you needed power quickly for a go-around - thought reversers were manually controlled by the crew only.

Does anyone know the spool up time on the engines from idle to full power in approach mode?  Also, the MD-11 has a tendency to pitch up rather moderately as the spoilers come up on touchdown, especially at aft CG, then the autobrakes kick in about 2 seconds after that, so one second you're pushing and the next pulling on the yoke. 

Friend of mine just retired from FedEx, flew the MD-11 - just recalling some things I've heard him talk about, I could be mistaken.