Spill your coffee, or tea what have you
 

This will make you spill your coffee, or tea what-have-you.

Darned awesome video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIyYK9oz9Go

lol I love the fact that the narrator delivers the dump n burn like some sort of special feature

The fun part to me was the matter of factness of the commanding officer in his closing remarks.

All in a days work lads... LOL

I still don't get why the used the arrestor hook, if anything it helped slamming the plane on the tarmac more than let it gently glide and stop and well done to the guy who ran away without helping his colleague..

Perhaps they didn't want it to slide so much that the fuel catches on fire.

naaaah, as any good pilot they don't have the faintest idea of what they're talking about... the times of the highly flammable JP-4 are long gone, JP-8 is not like piston engines avgas, it has a flash point of 46 °C (or 100 °F), it's pretty much like diesel, it takes some good effort to light up. The most intelligent approach would have been to flood the runway with fire retardant and let the big bird sit on it as gently as possible: as soon as it's down on its own weight, the thing will stop quite quickly anyway,then you can release the arrestor hook if need be, cos the arrestor cables are at the extremities of the runway.. I just found it a pretty awkward emergency landing procedure, but if the Ozs are happy with it.. :rolleyes:

or slide off the runway, anyway amazing work from the pilot.

was this F-111 was made flyable again by the RAAF ?

pitty the F-111 is nowadays out of service :(

EDIT: found it, it never flew again->
"The other aircraft was retired in 2006 after suffering damage from landing on its belly after one of its main wheels separated during take off; although the aircraft was repairable it was judged not worthwhile doing so due to the impending retirement of the entire F-111 fleet"

hardly, those things are heavy,coming down at full flap means they're touching down at 130-140kts IAS, you will soon stop in half runway. The use of arrestor hooks is more understandable in case of a high speed landing (i.e. hydraulic failure and no flaps/airbrakes)when u come down at 300kts and u need to slow the thing down properly and above all to keep it aligned with the runway. It was a redundant manouvre, and if anything they risked to crack the fuselage open with such a hard slam on the runway other than injure the crew. But hey, that's the fun of it, as we say:"any landing you can walk away from is a good one" and judging from how fast they ran out of the thing, that must have been a damn good one indeed ;)

Awesome vid, thanks nearmiss.

The one below is equally gripping. Very, very cool pilot makes a great forced landing. All the better for us as it was recorded from his helmet cam in excellent quality with ATC audio too.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=552_1297792559&p=1

PPanPan

nice moustache

you've got fancy planes and ugly planes, ugly planes often being still cool looking. But this thing is just horror. Weird nose, no real logical form. just plain ugly.


btw peterpanpan, your vid isn't working. atleast for me it isnt.

Nice catch.

Blasphemy, there is no such thing as an ugly plane, only ugly faces of the pilots who fly it.:grin:

yeah, I see that now, thanks. For some reason the 'embed' doesn't work. Just click on the link in the top of the video window and you can then watch it.

I didnt get the arrestor hook either, like said if they are coming down slow you would think they would want to ease the plane onto the tarmac instead of losing airspeed fast with the hook and bellyflopping. I mean thats australia and in the summer I wouldnt be surprised to see the tarmac being able to cook an egg on.

Also why didnt they dump their fuel before the landing? Isnt that standard procedure for emergency landings?

That's why they needed the arrestor hook, it was stinking hot and there were a couple of slabs of beer in the fridge, and the crew didn't want too miss out by landing at the other end of the runway, this also explains why one of the crew jumped out leaving his mate behind ;)

*cough cough*

http://aerovideos.com/images/photosPage/transavia.jpg

yep, here's a pic of the ATC tower

http://www.thedrum.co.uk/pub/files/p...in.fosters.JPG

That bit at the beginning when they fly over the coast very low reminds me of when I was surfing in the middle of nowhere and an F/A-18 did the same to me. Scared the living crap out of me!

i still think that thing looks better then the f-111.

The hook must be a fairly standard procedure for emergency landings where fitted. The F-111G isn't a naval aircraft yet it still has a hook. Back when we operated Phantom II's hooks were used used during emergency landings and most of our big RAAF bases have arrestor cable systems.

I guess that using it is to stop the plane in the shortest amount of time. Ejection from an F-111 is to be avoided if possible. From memory it almost always causes back injuries to the pilot and navigator.

Anyway they are the experts so they should know what they're doing!


Cheers

I is double decker and also doubles as a clothes washing machine.

As has a can opener built in.

Multipurpose appliance.

Good video to watch the landing. Pilot's fly bys and 2 attempts to land looked very good, but the comments along with the story were a bit weird.

If they were worried about the 3000 litres of fuel exploding, why not fly about until it ran low? Perhaps because they weren't worried. And given that landing it on its belly meant it would never fly again, why bother landing it at all if it put the pilots in danger - they could have just ejected. Again, presumably because it wasn't that dangerous (or they don't value the life of their pilots).

perhaps the RAAF didnt trust the F-111 ejection system for 100% ? you know, the whole cockpit is ejected in this plane.

and sure, the fuel should be no proplem at all, as all the flightshows are showing when the F-111 are "burning" their fuel... there is an emergency releaese for fuel.

Most likely because they had a written plan/policy for what to do in a similar event, and as you know military people follow policy to the letter (you dont get rewarded for inginuity normally) so they just followed their policy.

Still why didnt they dump the fuel? Its flamable and it weights the aircraft down...

When you eject from the F-111 the whole cockpit is rocketed away from the aircraft and comes down with it's parrachute and lands as a unit (it is actually used as a life boat over water). It is designed to save the crew ejecting at very high speed and zero altitude. Because of the envelope that it's designed to work in the process is VERY harsh and almost always causes back injuries to the crew.

I guess that if there is a more controlled way of putting the plane down that the option they'll take.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8l79lSjVMg

Cheers!

without giving away too much, i remember that day very well, i learned over the radio that a colleague of mine had been required to attend the incident in an official capacity.

i was SO jealous i didnt get to see what happened close up.

:(

That is a remarkable piece of flying, incredible.

the pilots circled for a good 3 hours to burn the fuel they had in the tanks, fuel dumping is not allowed for obvious environmental and security reasons.

Uh and I dunno who said that "if they do it it's a standard procedure for it" I can tell you NO, there's not such "standard procedure". You're giving the means and the scenarios, but you cannot fathom any possible solution.
A close friend of mine flies with F-18s in Canada and he said that he would probably deploy the arrestor hook once he hits the ground, not BEFORE ("we know of the F111 guys, that was a non standard procedure that could have gone very, very wrong.."), cos you're gonna slam the plane on the tarmac.

What about bellylanding on the grass? Not an option?

nope, that thing comes down quite fast (120mph - 200km/h)and you want a hard surface that won't deform on impact and that can keep the plane relatively steady.