[Peetwo]

Recent OS Jet airliner occurrences of interest & intrigue -

From the Times, via the Oz... :

Cricket ball-sized hail strikes plane

This AtlasGlobal-operated Airbus A320 plane safely landed after the aircraft was hit by huge hailstones, smashing the aircraft’s windscreen. Picture: Oleg Lungul/Facebook

• HANNAH LUCINDA SMITH
  
  
• The Times
  
  
• 4:26PM August 1, 2017
  
  

A pilot has been decorated for landing a passenger jet safely during a storm in Istanbul despite giant hailstones having smashed the aircraft’s windscreen.

Pieces of ice the size of cricket balls cracked the cockpit windshield of Captain Alexander Akopov’s Airbus A320 jet as he brought it in to land at Ataturk airport in the city on Thursday evening, with 127 passengers and crew on board.

The badly damaged AtlasGlobal-operated Airbus A320 after landing. Picture: Oleg Lungul/Facebook

A photograph taken shortly after the aircraft landed shows its nose caved in and the windows so damaged that it would have been almost impossible to see through them. Its autopilot mechanism was also knocked out.

Voice recordings from the airport’s ground control station picked up staff’s fears that Captain Akopov, a Ukrainian, who works for the Turkish airline Atlasglobal, would not be able to land the jet safely.
A voice on the ground could be heard saying: “He won’t do it, he won’t do it.”

Applause broke out at Ataturk airport, which had been shut as the storm hit, as Captain Akopov landed the passenger jet safely.

He has been awarded the Ukrainian Order of Courage by President Poroshenko, who called the pilot personally to congratulate him.

“It was hard but the main thing is that people are alive,” Captain Akopov said.

“I have been flying for 30 years. Well, did you see the plane landing? Was it OK? The passengers are alive. It is normal. This is our professional reliability.”


[/url]Captain Alexander Akopov who safely landed the plane.

He was flying the aircraft from northern Cyprus to Istanbul but its systems had not picked up the freak storm, which came in the middle of a baking hot day.

Under blackened skies, Istanbul was battered for 20 minutes by huge gusts of wind, driving rain and the massive hailstones.

Windows across the city were smashed and at least ten people were injured. There was also severe flash-flooding, with several roads and Metro lines becoming submerged in the downpour.



The freak weather was the result of a supercell storm, an extremely rare but dangerous condition where the storm cloud rotates upwards. Supercell storms are most common in the central United States.

Images posted on social media shortly after the storm blew over show passengers on one of Istanbul’s ferrys putting on lifejackets as they are tossed about on the Bosphorus and lightning streaking horizontally across the sky.

Cranes were toppled at the Haydarpasa port on the Asian shores of the city and uprooted trees were strewn across roads.

& via the UK Daily Mail - OOPs!

Pilots suspended after their aircraft nearly ran out of fuel because they'd forgotten to bring up the landing gear

• The Airbus A320, with 99 on board, took off last Saturday from Kolkata 
  
  
• But with the wheels affecting the aerodynamics it burned excessive fuel
  
  
• They reportedly only realised the gear was already down when they diverted 
  

By Ted Thornhill for MailOnline

Two Air India pilots have been grounded after their aircraft nearly ran out of fuel - because they’d forgotten to retract the landing gear.

The Airbus A320, with 99 passengers on board, took off last Saturday from Kolkata, bound for Mumbai, but with the wheels affecting the aerodynamics it burned excessive quantities of fuel.

It wasn’t able to climb above 24,000 feet nor accelerate beyond 265mph, when it should have been able to cruise at 35,000 to 37,000 feet and reach 520mph.


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Two Air India pilots have been grounded after their aircraft nearly ran out of fuel - because they’d forgotten to retract the landing gear (file image)

The two pilots were oblivious to the landing wheels being down and diverted to Nagpur when the fuel ran low, it was reported.

It was when they tried to lower the landing gear as they prepared to land that they realised it was already down, a source told The Times of India.
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A spokesman for Air India told the paper that the two female pilots have been suspended.

He said: ‘The pilots were de-rostered (taken off flying duty) after the incident was reported.’

A serving long-haul airline captain told MailOnline Travel that he was surprised the pilots hadn't noticed the landing gear being down, if that was indeed the issue.

He said: 'I would say it is pretty staggering that the pilots - and cabin crew - wouldn't notice the huge difference in noise levels with the gear left down.

'It is also strange that they had such a lack of performance caused by the drag but took so long to analyse what was going on.

'And "Gear...Up" is on the after take-off checklist, which should also have been done.

'I would suspect some sort of human factor involved in this incident - where the crew working well together? Were they distracted by something else? Were they fatigued?' 

Air freight pilot and aerial photographer [url=https://jpcvanheijst.com/]Christiaan van Heijst commented: 'It happens every now and then that pilots need a lower altitude and slower speed than usual. This can happen because of various reasons, for example turbulence, pressurisation problems or other technical issues that require the aircraft to fly lower.


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The Airbus A320, with 99 passengers on board, took off last Saturday from Kolkata, bound for Mumbai, but with the wheels affecting the aerodynamics it burned excessive quantities of fuel (file image)

'Air Traffic Control will always try to accommodate pilots in those requests and has no reason to ask for the reason why. When pilots need a lower altitude they have a good reason to do so.

'Why this particular aircraft flew with the gear down for a long period of time is something I don't know and dare not to speculate about since I was not there and do not know what kind of possibly complex situation these pilots were facing.

'I'm looking forward to the final investigation report to learn about any additional factors that contributed to that decision of the pilots and maybe can learn from it myself as well.'

Issues with the landing gear usually revolve around lowering them.

For example, in February 2016 a Boeing 727 touched down on its nose without any functioning landing gear.

The Asia Pacific Airlines plane pulled off the risky landing at Guam International Airport without injuring the three crew members who were on board during the 'training flight'.

Just 20 minutes before the plane was due to land, airport control received an alert that a developing situation could affect the aircraft's safe landing.

The plane flew an hour over schedule and released fuel to make the aircraft lighter before the landing, airport spokeswoman Rolenda Faasuamalie told the Pacific Daily News at the time. 

It then practiced a landing, technically known as a 'touch-and-go' maneuver, before successfully touching down.  [/size]

MTF...P2