Viral debrief.
Coming up!
Hey, 74 crew! Welcome back!
If you don't know me, my name's Kelsey.
I'm a 747 pilot.
My channel, 74 gear, is all about aviation.
If you have a video that you think would be great for this series,
send it to my Instagram 74gear.
I can't thank all of you enough for continuing to find and send these videos to me.
Let's get into it!
This is St. Barts.
And on first look, it looks like this pilot could be reckless.
Flying so close to people so far away from the runway.
Some of you heard me say that typically you want to cross the threshold,
which is the beginning part of the runway, 50 feet in the air,
but that's a normal runway.
The descent into the St. Barts' runway is a six degree descent,
which by itself wouldn't be bad.
But look how short this runway here is.
It's very short.
A typical descent path is three degrees.
This is double that. Six degrees.
Which means that as a pilot, if you develop muscle memory
and you don't adapt for the different situation like this,
you can get yourself in a lot of trouble
because as you can see on the chart here at St. Barts,
this runway is very short at 2,119 feet.
You may notice this chart looks a little bit different
from the charts that I normally show you.
And that's because this chart isn't in my iPad
because at 2,119 feet,
Boeing doesn't think that it's long enough to land a 747.
Despite me proving I could do it, kind of,
on Microsoft Flight Sim.
You've also heard me talk about how we typically aim to land
a thousand feet down the runway,
which would put it right here in the middle of the runway,
which wouldn't leave you much stopping distance.
So a lot of rules don't apply for a runway that this short.
This means the pilot has to be very spot on with his energy management.
If he has too much power that's going to land there,
he's going to end up floating and going off the end of the runway.
I actually made, I think one of the first viral debriefs, was on that situation.
The pilot came in too fast, landed too long.
Didn't do a go-around. Didn't have time to stop.
So if you keep the power setting where you would normally keep it
on a three degree glide path,
you're going to end up going and floating down the runway and landing long.
So you have to adapt to the situation.
And that's why there's special training required
when you go in there.
As you can imagine when you're flying this low
and this close to the ground with people on your aircraft,
you're going to require some additional special training.
And it may surprise you because you might think,
oh, these pilots probably saw those guys there,
but I don't think they did.
You heard me talk about how, when you're getting ready to land,
we get hyper focused on what we're doing.
So the pilot is probably more focused on his speed and energy management
so he doesn't end up floating down the runway
and focusing on his area that he's planning to be landing.
So you wouldn't really be looking over the nose to see the people there,
because you're going to be so focused on what you're doing.
I've had people say,
oh, did you see these people that were shooting or taking pictures?
And it's like,
no, not while I was landing, I was kind of focused on that.
So it's interesting that these guys had enough common sense
to duck when they saw the plane,
but not enough common sense to stand right in the flight path of a plane
getting ready to land.
Well, that's a good way to wake all the passengers up
before they have to get off the plane.
Something I didn't see there is a windsock.
If you aren't familiar with the windsock is this thing right here.
And what it shows you is the direction of the wind.
Because that's not something that I can see in the video,
I had to make a few assumptions of what was going on.
Now you might think, typically,
that pilots are looking at that or focus on that.
I typically, personally, I don't.
Because when I'm coming in, I'm just reacting what the plane is doing.
I don't really have the time to check the speed,
look outside the plane, see where I am on the runway,
and then try to find a windsock and see what it's doing.
Sometimes on a smaller plane,
the plane's moving so slow, maybe about 70 knots,
that you have time to kind of look at that and adjust and gauge.
But when the wind is really whipping around, for me,
it's easier for me to just see how the plane is reacting
and react to the plane,
to keep it lined up to go right down the middle of the runway.
So the way the aircraft is positioned here,
I'm going to assume the wind is coming from the right side of the aircraft.
You see how the rudder is slightly back
and the nose is pointed toward the camera?
Planes, including large planes, which is a huge misunderstanding that I had
because my flight instructor had incorrectly explained something to me
was that they're all impacted by the wind.
I had thought that with a large plane, let's say my plane,
that's weighing 300,000 kilos
that's going through the air that something like 20 knots of wind wouldn't impact it.
The theory that she explained to me was
imagine if you're a fly
and you're a fly that's flying right in front of a fan.
If a fly was to fly right in front of this fan,
it would blow it a long ways,
but imagine a large bird flying in front of it.
It wouldn't really impact it.
Now, this flight instructor,
she was great. Very smart, a very competent pilot,
a little bit of a fiery personality.
Imagine like the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket,
except wrap that up in like 105 or 110 pound,
little female flight instructor.
That's kind of what she was like.
But she wasn't all talk. She was a great pilot.
And one of the days that we were out doing training,
the wind was gusting. Probably about 25 knots,
directly sideways, a direct crosswind of 25 knots.
And we got up and she said,
Hey, we're going to go flying.
All the other flight instructors went inside
and they went into this area where you could see the runway
but they didn't want to take anybody up flying.
Except for her.
She said, Kelsey, let's go fly.
I thought, great.
I got the one instructor who wants to have a death wish
to go flying in this weather.
It was gusty and rainy.
So I had to go pre-flight in the pouring rain
and then get in the plane and once I had everything done,
then she came out there and jumped in.
So she jumped in and one of the other instructors said,
Hey, can I come and watch how this goes?
Because I want to understand how to do this as well.
So I said, yeah, sure, come along.
I don't have anything to lose.
So we got up and we're doing these crosswinds at about 25 knots,
which was the max demonstrated crosswind of this aircraft.
This is what I was doing my multi-engine training on.
Now, I had to fight that plane to get on the ground with her help.
She was teaching me a lot of different skills and I'm thankful to her forever
for really boosting my confidence and dealing with that.
Because the reality is is that sometimes you'll go out
and only fly in fair weather and things look good.
But if you get yourself jammed up
and you don't know deep down side that you can handle that,
then it can be very scary.
So having her up there and forcing her outside of my comfort zone,
because I definitely was not volunteering to go up and fly in that weather,
I'm really appreciative of.
But one of the things that she said was incorrect, which was,
Hey, on these really gusty windy days,
it's not going to matter if you ever end up flying big jets.
Because, at the time, I really had no idea.
I'd buy end up flying to 747.
But I remember thinking that and that's not true.
Those winds are going to have a massive impact
and that's because of the tail of the 747 is big.
So even though we may weigh 250,000 kilos or
550,000 pounds,
with a rudder of this size, there's a huge surface area for the wind to hit it.
And I found a picture with guys standing next to it.
So you could just see the absolute size of this rudder.
It's massive.
So when you have wind hitting it,
it's going to push the tail that way,
which is obviously going to push the nose the other direction.
And that's how I knew that the wind was coming from the right hand side.
As you can see, the pilots were doing a great job coming in here.
And right here, they're lined up with the runway and the wings are level,
but they've straightened out the plane a little bit too high.
Which is exactly what I did when I was new on the 747.
I made this exact same mistake.
Well, partially what he did.
And that is if you start to straighten out the plane too high,
you're too far from the ground and the wind is going to start pushing you away
from tracking down the middle of the runway,
which you don't want to do on a wide body aircraft.
Then you can see the pilot start dipping the wing.
As your plane gets bigger, you always want to land with your wings level
for a few different reasons.
But especially on, let's say a 747,
where you have pods or you have engines that are way out there,
you can't bank the plane too much so it's a terrible habit to get into.
Then you start to see the pilot overcorrect.
First to the left
and then you see the right wing go down again.
Sometimes you've seen examples of where the pilots overcorrect
or push one tire into the ground,
which bounces the plane up and then slams the other tire down.
I don't think that's what happened here.
It looks like the pilot is probably moving the yolk around and causing all of this.
Then an attempt to get stable,
they push the nose over or let the nose come over.
On a big plane like this,
you cannot let the nose touch before both mains are down.
If you let the nose touch, you can actually end up crumpling that nose gear.
So that's a major thing that's happened in the past.
So you always want to have both gear down
because the plane is structured for both main gear.
I mean, you can pound that main gear down.
I mean, just about anything that main gear can take it.
But if you hit that nose too hard, that nose will crumble.
It's not designed for that.
It's kind of like a race car.
You see those race cars are doing all these crazy things
and a ton of g's as they move around a racetrack,
but then one little bump with another car,
and it's like, all these pieces go flying everywhere. And you think,
how can you handle all of this
but you can't handle just a little tap on the side?
It's the same thing.
The main landing gear of a plane can take a massive impact,
but the nose is not designed for it.
And then at this point,
they're just going to have to let the momentum of the plane settle out.
There's not much you can really do and you're just along for the ride.
Having the plane in that condition where it's moving around like that
is not only uncomfortable for all the passengers.
It's not really safe
because for that second or two, until the plane kind of settles out
and gets normal,
you don't have control of the plane.
And as a pilot, you never want to not be in control of your aircraft.
So when it's moving like that,
and it's trying to settle all the way to shifting around
you don't have control of the plane so it's not very safe.
Now could they've gone around?
Possibly but they were already kind of committed once that nose went down.
There was really no point in trying to do a go-around.
They were already on the ground, even though it was kind of ugly and messy.
Now what will happen is once they taxi into the gate,
they'll do a debrief and I call them "Closed door landing".
When you ever notice a pilot has a terrible landing,
usually they don't open the door until a lot of the passengers have left.
And the reason they don't open the door is
because they're talking about what just happened.
What went wrong, so they can talk about that.
So they can prevent that from happening later that day
or later in their future
while it's fresh in both people's mind, they want to do it.
Now I've seen it take three or four minutes,
but I also seen it on a 747 where we emptied off the entire plane
and got everybody off and the flight attendants are waiting for us.
I've seen that as well.
The situation was so not stabilized and not good
that we ended up and it was fine. It wasn't unsafe,
but there was a lot to talk about how, what went wrong,
what needed to be corrected
that during that entire time they deplant an entire 747.
So that's what I call it: Closed door landing.
That one actually surprised me a little bit,
especially on a plane with propellers like this,
because you're able to get a much more instant reaction
when you need one from the flight deck.
If you're flying the 747-8, for example,
which is the largest 747 they make.
We have these big, beautiful, very fuel efficient engines.
The problem is it takes a while for them to spin up.
This is a picture that I pulled from my Instagram
and you can see these different fans here.
Those fans are working very similar to propeller at very low altitudes.
But you don't get the instant response that you get,
like when you're flying a propeller aircraft.
Because there's a lot more components to that engine,
as far as things that need to spool up.
So you may add power,
but it takes a couple seconds
before the plane really starts reacting and doing what you need it to do.
So in something like a dash eight,
you really have to be thinking ahead a couple seconds of your plane,
otherwise you'll get low, slow,
and then you're in trouble.
Because if you add a bunch of power,
it's going to take a couple seconds for it to react.
At this point, surely the pilots would've known right here,
they weren't going to make the runway.
And had the pilots add it power right here?
They could have just leveled off.
And instead of bouncing on the road here,
you could have just made it to the runway.
Now it worked out perfectly.
I mean, you bounced off the road, landed on the runway.
I'm sure the plane's not damaged.
You've had a bunch of people filming it.
So not ideal.
But the reality is is that when you're new on an aircraft
and I'm not saying these guys are new.
But when you're new on an aircraft that you want to be sure
about the energy management.
And make sure that you can see,
Hey, we're not going to make it
before you start trying to land at the very start of the runway.
On a commercial civilian aircraft,
we always land a thousand feet down the runway
for this exact situation.
Because if you do something like this on a civilian aircraft
in a civilian airport,
there could be lights. There could be a bunch of things there.
And now you have an accident.
So you don't want to have that.
So you land at a thousand feet down the runway.
And that's why I always say,
when you're flying a small general aviation aircraft,
you should aim to land at a thousand feet down the runway.
Because if you land at a thousand feet down the runway and you come up short,
not a big deal.
If you aim to do what these pilots did,
which is land at the very start of the runway
and you come up short,
you possibly could bounce on the road.
And if you're a new pilot, you may not be able to control it as well
as these pilots did.
They handled it great. They bounce,
landed and it was like, yeah, no big deal.
We totally planned that.
But if you do bounce a plane like this with a plane full of passengers,
your chief pilot is definitely going to want to have a chat with you.
If you enjoyed this video,
you're definitely going to like one of these two up here.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Until then,
keep the blue side up.