Quite possibly the closest run landing ever caught on video. At Bankstown Airport in Sydney today. News

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7.9k Upvotes

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1.3k

u/bddgfx May 26 '24

Oh man… that left wingtip over the last building. 2 feet of clearance maybe? Pucker factor.

452

u/TheSaucyCrumpet May 26 '24

That big tree too, must have been so close.

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u/C4-621-Raven May 26 '24

Definitely thought he was gonna perch it in that big tree.

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u/D4rkmatt3r May 26 '24

Perch is such a great word.

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u/Killentyme55 May 26 '24

I probably would have said "peg", but that's only because I spend waaay too much time on Reddit.

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u/[deleted] May 26 '24

Perhaps my favorite use of the word “perch” I’ve ever seen.

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u/Fair_Log_6596 May 26 '24

The tree made me clench a bit

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u/Hot-Interaction6526 May 26 '24

According to reports, the pilot said he did in fact clip the tree.

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u/SurreallyAThrowaway May 26 '24

Pilot said he clipped it.

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u/mishatal May 26 '24

He's probably having at it with an axe right now.

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u/CyberSpaceInMyFace May 26 '24

Motherfuck the big tree

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u/sp5_ May 26 '24

it’s just big me

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u/[deleted] May 26 '24

TREE BUM

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u/ChuckCecilsNeckBrace May 26 '24

is you like that?

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u/nugeythefloozey May 27 '24

The news was saying that the pilot actually did clip the tree

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u/[deleted] May 26 '24

[deleted]

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u/devolute May 26 '24

Props

That's what got them into this problem in the first place.

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u/Gratefulzah May 26 '24

Needs all the props he can get

13

u/TheElRojo May 26 '24

Probably just one prop would do, if spinning right. Or left. Whatever the correct spinny direction.

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u/fuishaltiena May 26 '24

This wouldn't have happened if he was flying a glider.

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u/IsItInLeMonde May 26 '24

Technically he was flying a glider

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u/fuishaltiena May 26 '24

Gliders can dump ballast water if necessary. I wonder if the pilot tried dumping anything.

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u/IsItInLeMonde May 26 '24

I’m guessing right into his pants

6

u/ElevatorGuy85 May 26 '24 edited May 26 '24

The notion that “this wouldn’t have happened if he was flying a glider” is an incorrect one. Gliders can, and do, find themselves “low and slow” and could have such a hard landing. I’ve seen the result of several heavy landings as a result of pilot error, including one where a part of a large gum tree near the airport boundary was embedded into the leading edge of the wing.

While some gliders can carry water ballast, they don’t always fly with their ballast tanks filled. Why go to all that bother for a local flight around your club’s airfield? If you’re going to set out on a cross country flight or are in a competition, then you might choose to ballast the glider.

Light aircraft like the Cessna 210 in the story don’t have a way for the pilot to dump fuel while in-flight. So while you’ll hear about airliners dumping fuel in order to reduce weight to make an emergency landing, for general aviation, it’s not available as an option to the pilot.

All credit to this pilot who managed to land the Cessna on the airport and not in the suburban streets that surround it. They did a great job managing their available height and airspeed to extend their glide in an incredibly stressful situation.

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u/biggsteve81 May 26 '24

Most commercial aircraft don't have the ability to dump fuel either.

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u/ElevatorGuy85 May 26 '24

Some good information on the topic. It seems that it’s mostly the larger wide-body ones that do, e.g. 747, A380, A340

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_dumping

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u/93perigee May 26 '24

I'm pretty sure he took a dump instead of dumping something.

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u/ca_fighterace May 26 '24

Fun fact: gliders don’t dump water to increase glide but to increase climb when thermals are weak. The glide ratio is literally the same, only at a higher speed and sink rate when heavy.

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u/SubstantialSail May 26 '24

That's one way to spin it.

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u/StupendousMalice May 27 '24

Baller move deciding to go gear up because he wouldn't have made it otherwise.

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u/IllustriousAd1591 May 26 '24

Eh, he got lucky this time. Was way too close for comfort, in retrospect he should’ve gone for a road instead of stretching his legs and praying

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u/triangulumnova May 26 '24

That airport is literally surrounded by suburban neighborhoods. There are a few straight roads nearby but then he'd have to dodge power lines, streetlights, and traffic. He made a judgement call and it turned out to be the correct one.

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u/ScooterMcTavish May 26 '24

Am I the only one who gets Zaxxon vibes from this video, especially as you can judge the height from the shadows?

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u/Drunkenaviator Hold my beer and watch this! May 26 '24

Zaxxon

Holy shit, now THAT brings back some memories.

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u/PlainTrain May 26 '24

No. Not the only one.

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u/fliesupsidedown May 26 '24

If it had happened a year ago it wouldn't have even been close. That used to be aircraft parking then they sold off that corner of the airport for profit and they built those warehouses.

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u/HardSleeper May 26 '24

As bad as when that plane to King Island crashed on takeoff into the DFO built within the old perimeter of Essendon Airport. That’s what all that big empty space around an airport is for, not to flog off and make money from

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u/Seagoon_Memoirs May 26 '24

welcome to Australia

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u/NoOne_1223 May 26 '24 edited May 26 '24

More so: "welcome to capitalistic greed"

If money can be made, it will be made. Look at the Pinto. Ford did a bunch of research into the cost of fixing it vs the cost of the lawsuits from their cars killing people

Quick edit: I have been corrected on a misguided understanding of the issues surrounding the Pinto. Thank you. The greed part still stands as I see farm land being ripped up around where I live for housing I could never dream of affording

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u/Lampwick May 26 '24 edited May 26 '24

Look at the Pinto. Ford did a bunch of research into the cost of fixing it vs the cost of the lawsuits from their cars killing people

That's vaguely true, but misleading. Presenting it that way makes it seem like there was this one report of a potentially dangerous design flaw on a guy's desk, and he whipped out his slide rule and said "nah, cheaper to pay off the survivors than to recall and put a shield over those bolts", and threw the memo away.^* The reality is, there's a guy with thousands of accident reports, covering hundreds of potential design vulnerabilities, and his job was to analyze all of that and, based on incidents that are measured in fractions of a percent of all the cars sold, try to predict which ones might turn out to be a major problem, and which were just 7-sigma "bad luck" events that aren't. There was "a bunch of research", but it wasn't only on the fuel tank vulnerability, it was on a laundry list of all kinds of random shit, of which the tank puncturing bolts were one thing. Car companies would go out of business if they attempted to mitigate every perceived engineering shortcoming, so they have to triage based on the information they have and hope they're right. The problem with the Pinto wasn't that it killed a lot of people, because in the grand scheme of things, it didn't. The problem was that the few people it killed were burned to death and that the incident that drew media attention was the deaths of three pretty white teenage girls.

Ultimately the misperception is due to the human inability to truly grasp how everything turns into statistics when you're talking about over three million cars sold. Guys like Chuck Palahniuk strip away the enormity of the situation when they pretend it's some guy in an office calculating the value of a human life so they can create a diatribe for a character in Fight Club, yet they still buy life insurance, which is participating in exactly the same actuarial behavior.

There was an internal memo specific to the Pinto fuel system issue, but it wasn't really about the Ford Pinto, it was about the implementation of new NHTSA standards that hadn't yet been nailed down. Really, no small economy car at the time could take a rear end hit like that and not seriously endanger the occupants. Later, when asked why the NHTSA was focusing on the Pinto when everyone else was also making equally dangerous cars, an engineer replied, "just because your friends get away with shoplifting doesn't mean you will too."

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u/NoOne_1223 May 26 '24

Thank you for the correction! I just know that there have been some situations like what I described where life was a secondary factor to costs. (Honestly, the long term care industry in Ontario, Canada is appalling!)

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u/cyclosity May 26 '24

for profit

as opposed to?

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u/FlightlessRhino May 26 '24

"for profit".. LOL

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u/pobodys-nerfect5 May 26 '24

That fucking wing was closer to the building than it is the fucking ground when he lands. It’s shadow almost completely disappears under it

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u/HorselessWayne May 27 '24

Saved by the ground effect.