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Mar 04, 2008

Cross-Current

Posted by : Jon Clausen

The Atlantic has a new blog feature called The Current and I caught a link to this YouTube clip today with the following commentary:

The pilot's handling of the crab was by the book. So was what he tried to do 38-40 seconds into the clip: "kick in the rudder," which means quickly swinging the plane's nose around so that, at the instant it touches the ground, it is pointing straight ahead along the runway's axis. Kick out of the crab too early, and the plane will drift sideways off the runway before it touches down, risking a crash on the tarmac. Kick out of the crab too late, and the wheels will still be pointed sideways when they strike the runway, also likely causing a crash.

The pilot crabs the airplane's gear down toward the runway, and kicks the rudder in just barely in time. When everything goes wrong, he does one last thing exactly right: engines are immediately and instinctively thrown in full power to get the airplane as far as possible away from where the danger is: close to the ground

Here's the vid, which is both scary and awe-inspiring:

 
Continuing the discussion ...

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Jon:
I lost your email...please email me.
db

db's Gravatar Posted by : db - Apr 29, 2008 6:20 AM

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