Safe Landing ...

[sunny-dave]

... top effort by Virgin Pilot and crew.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30625945

Can't have been much fun circling Gatwick in a 747 for three hours to burn off the fuel, knowing you were going to have to land on a partially stuck undercarriage.

[youngmafbog]

No, it can't. Good result though.

Virgin Atlantic have always been my favorite. Their business class (upper) is far superior IMHO and now it seems the pilots are top notch too.

[sunny-dave]

Fascinating - if the plane had skidded & caught fire then there'd be a thread many dozens of posts long about the heroics of firemen, unreliability of jumbos etc etc etc.

But no-one was hurt, thanks to the considerable skill of the pilot & his team - so the thread has one reply ...

[tonyav]

Great flying, Dave.

[237SJ]

I remember seeing this one on the runway after the event. Can`t believe it was so long ago. I seem to remember they found the missing part that caused the problem on the beach at the end of the runway in LA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NprTbTVl1Uk

[Ann]

Must have been very frightening - so glad all ended well.

[janbee]

Excellent landing by a wonderful pilot and crew. A friend of mine works at Gatwick and they were all following it as it progressed. It was a nailbiting time but an excellent end result. Well done to the pilot.

[237SJ]

" so the thread has one reply" Well, it did have more but you didn`t acknowledge them ;-)

[FrogNog]

Someone at work said, "oh fgs, emergency landings happen every day!"
Must have been a bit scary when they were told to brace.

[237SJ]

They don`t happen every day but they do happen. I can`t believe one guy was filming whilst he was in the brace position though!

[askyourgran]

My nephew hates flying and he was persuaded to go on holiday to Majorca, the plane developed a fault and the pilot told the passengers he would have to dump the fuel and return to the airport. All the passengers were praying and crying and there were lots of F'ing and blindings especially when they had to brace before landing. They were all escorted off the plane and had to wait a couple of hours before being put back on it. He said that he almost didn't go back on.
It does happen, and not all of them are publicised.

[237SJ]

Dumping fuel is par for the course if you have to turn back. You can`t land with all of that fuel because you would be too heavy. Its not an emergency to dump fuel.

[DaisyNonna]

Excellent outcome. Congratulations to well trained crew and seemingly mostly calm passengers.

[askyourgran]

The reason for dumping the fuel and offloading the passengers for over two hours must have been for some emergency 2347sj. What bothers me is where all this fuel is being dumped....

[237SJ]

AYG - the fuel is dumped over the sea if that is possible. I haven`t been on an aircraft that dumped fuel for years but the last time we did it, it was over the North Sea (turned back from Singapore flight over Denmark)

[Prudie]

The front page of the DM is now littered with scary plane stories

[237SJ]

There is always a scary plane story in the Daily Mail. It it`s not scary, they will make it so :-)

[askyourgran]

Speaking of which, has there been any mention of the AirAsia plane that came down yesterday?

[DaisyNonna]

Correction, there are always scary stories in the Mail

[237SJ]

Yes. They have found the wreckage. Apparently it is in quite shallow water so it might not take them too long to find the flight recorders.