Polish hero pilot lands 767 without wheels. (Warsaw)

^ Maybe I should make up a father and a brother so that I can claim that they are both pilots. That's what our Moania once did, isn't it?

hmm i would rather believe someone who says he is a pilot of a 767 and gives his expert 'opinion, rather than some idiot who thinks the smolensk report did not point to pilot error. polmed stop poluting this thread.

I’m eagerly awaiting the report by the Boeing expert stating that all systems were go, infect it was the idiot pilot that forgot to lower the landing gear. It’s to be expected of Yanks and their expert opinion. LOL

Forgetting to lower the undercarriage before landing would be as stupid as forgetting to pull up when the terrain warning system is shouting at you to pull up when you can not see the runway, i.e. no chance of it happening.

That’s a cheap shot and poor attempt at humor on your part but it proves my point of expert opinions as that was one of reason given by the expert wasn’t it?

Sorry. Moania never claimed that her father and brother were pilots. She actually claimed that I am an airforce pilot`s daughter and I have some deeper knowledge and compassion than the average person . and later went on to claim that he was also the commander of the air force base.

Apologies to all for my grave error.

Harry and isthatu2, any more name calling will lead to an instant suspension, final warning.

Where do I start?
Ok
1)
"No professional would comment on cause of a plane failure"?? Really?? Here's just for your pleasure:
pprune.org/rumours-news/467899-polish-lot-767-wheels-up-landing.html

...and this is just one forum, there are many others not including the airline specific ones that are normally restricted to employees only. Within 6 hours of this incident we were already receiving information from Boeing and from other airlines. Why? Because learning from other accidents might save lives. I guaran-damn-tee you the current LOT crew had reviewed the Hudson River accident in the past, and many other accidents and incidents too; it's part of our culture, we learn from others to enhance everyone's safety.

2)
You say that I should be praising the crew. Well, did you actually read what I said? Please read it again because I think you totally missed my point. As isthatu2 correctly pointed out I did in fact praise the crew (thank you I2 btw), I have no idea why you tell me to shut up?? Perplexing to say the least but whatever suits your boat I guess.

isthatu2: ...skysoulmate did nothing but praise the flight crew..."
------

Polmed
The old duck tried to speculate on something he has no clue , even though he is a pilot . Why ? because he is not an engineer , he knows how to fly a plane , but he has got no idea about the plane construction , besides some general information the pilot should have .

...No one in Poland formalates any conclusive opinions . TVN 24 invites many experts to the studio and no one speculates on anything .
...So far they say that there was a failure of two systems . What is interesting is the fact that it happens rarely that the emergency system also failed..."

Old duck? Hmm, I'm in my 40s but I guess that's old for some here. LOL. I'm actually fairly "young" amongst my peers, lucked out and trained/got hired early on. ...and to confuse you even more, yes, I actually used to work as a flight engineer, in the past it was a fairly common transition for airline pilots - to start of as a flight engineer and progress to the pilot seat, so I'm not totally clueless but I digress.

I don't know why the gear failed to extend, neither do you or anyone else at this point. It will take a while for the investigation to be completed however I think I'm entitled to express my thoughts on what I think MIGHT have happened? To emphasize that this was just my speculation I added the highlighted portion in the sentence below:

"I wouldn't be surprised to hear about a maintenance error although it could be something else..."

We'll see, it was a very unusual event for sure but the crew did a great job. I said it in English and even tried to say it in Polish. Somehow you missed that? I'm thinking that my earlier Smolensk comments made you highly allergic to me. Yet even there you misstated my opinions, you cherry-picked the comments you agreed with and discarded the ones you did not agree with. Has the blind justice become the selective justice? Oh well, it's really depressing that everything becomes so antagonistic here, even something that is so positive...

I wish all the pro-Polish or anti-Polish pilots comments disappeared from this thread. Nationality is totally irrelevant here. There were two great pilots upfront on this flight; this time they happened to be two Polish males, tomorrow it could be 2 Italian females, or a mixed gender British crew, etc., etc. Let's focus on good airmanship rather than the nationalities, shall we?

PS. IF (I repeat, IF) this was a maintenance problem then it's possible it was performed in Sewark (yes, that's what most of us call that airport LOL) and if so it would be an American maintenance crew. Again, this has nothing to do with Polish or American, it has to do with two good pilots upfront who handled an emergency by the book. We (ntsb, etc) also have to figure out what happened so it won't happen again, everyone, please drop the nationalistic bs, doesn't belong here!

You see , sometimes just one badly selected word spoils all your good efforts .

You just started by finding someone to blame . That was your mistake and that`s why I commented the way I did . In my opinion it is too early to formuleate any conculusions at this stage .

I have got nothing against you and your skills as a pilot .

PWEI: Forgetting to lower the undercarriage before landing would be as stupid as forgetting to pull up when the terrain warning system is shouting at you to pull up when you can not see the runway, i.e. no chance of it happening.

Considering the "other" accident has already been mentioned here this is a pretty morbid analogy, wouldn't you say? :(

PS. ADMIN - In the past I could highlight and quote from my iphone. This function doesn't seem to work anymore?

Not really. My point was that all possible causes must be taken into account and until it is eliminated, that includes pilot error. There most certainly have in the past been times when pilots were first called heroes and later found to be very much at fault (the Kegworth crash springs to mind).

PWEI:
Not really. My point was that all possible causes must be taken into account and until it is eliminated, that includes pilot error. There most certainly have in the past been times when pilots were first called heroes and later found to be very much at fault (the Kegworth crash springs to mind).

All true. I wouldn't have used the terrain warning analogy simply because it's still a very sensitive subject. Otherwise, it's true, everything has to and will be looked into. My personal prediction (just me!) is that the pilots will be found to have acted professionally and accordingly to all Boeing/LOT procedures. I'm somewhat biased of course but that's what I think.

This is BIG news in Poland, the main PL news sites stil have it as front news headlines - alongside missing tomeks cat returning, and the sun rose at dawn :D

You do seem to be getting mixed up with life in a rural Welsh village. Understandable.

Have you ever considered getting help for your Polish obsession?

LMAO!

You can fool the Polish-Americans who can't speak a word of Polish, and who never travel to Poland, but you can't fool me - I've been to Poland many times, and I've seen plenty of "speculators" on television - just like over here!


Exactly!

Of course it is. The last big news here involving a plane was a fatal crash due to pilot error. This however is good news - the pilot saved everyone. A crash landing of a transatlantic passenger jet in a city of 3 million (and one where the airport is actually in the city rather than outside it and has had a couple of big crashes already) would be news anywhere. Being in some way the reverse of Smolensk makes it very big news indeed.

And the only other thing happening today (constantly on the rolling news channels) is something fairly banal about an unpopular politician, so yes, it is a pretty big event.


Yes!

Didn't the guy spend an hour going around the airport before landing? that's what I heard, maybe he knew and was running out of fuel and made the call?

Last resort and fair play to him for getting it right, talk about pressure...,
Nice to have a bit of good news for a change.

Perhaps Sky can comment as to whether or not burning off excess fuel is SOP.

You'd imagine so but I'm not a pilot... yet :)

claiming that tvn 24 as a reliable news source is a bit of a joke, isn't it? more like they had loads of people who claim to be experts talking about nothing in order to fill time until the pilot does his press conference.

boeing sent people over to cover their asses. from what I have heard the pilot knew 5 minutes out of newark that there was something wrong with the landing gears. he did an outstanding job.

I have flown transcontinental warsaw to north america loads of times. I will not do it until Lot gets their new fleet. The planes are falling apart. I have personal experience with this. This latest event is even more reason to not fly Lot.

I have also flown loads of times in my life. both my parents were in the Canadian air force- in no way would I ever claim to be an expert but I did grow up living on military bases and going to military schools- this pilot knew what he had to do and he did it. there is no conspiracy.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_airliners_by_airline

List of accidents and incidents involving airliners by airline[/url] (Wiki).

LOT seems to have had only three major crashes, Aeroflot not looking too good but I am not sure how reliable this info is and you also have to take into account, the number of flights, I suppose.

And two of those can be directly attributed to the Russians and not to LOT.


Well, would you want to land with more fuel than necessary?


Almost certainly would be in this case, they'd want to land with as little as possible in the tanks as the plane wouldn't be going anywhere anyway afterwards.


And you trust the delay-ridden Dreamliner (which is being rushed into service, that much is certain) over a tried and tested 767?

This sort of thing simply doesn't happen very often.

I wouldn't stay up in the air for longer than necessary unless I was aware of a problem.

he was dumping fuel- he didn't have the option to land in the wisla.

He was minimizing the risk of a fire upon landing. It worked and it was a good decision.

iirc, dumping fuel allows the pilot to land with a reduced stall speed, which makes landing safer than landing a heavier plane at a higher airspeed/stall speed.

And a plane with minimal fuel is less likely to burst into flames/explode on landing than a full one.

I'm sure skysoulmate will correct me if this is wrong.

Slightly off-topic: Chuck Yeager says many times in his autobiography, that one of the reasons they had to dump fuel on approach to dry lake beds, was to avoid crashes due to flimsy landing gear of their Bell X-1.

I couldn't agree more, it was a great thing to be able to do. He made it look easy even though it wasn't I'm sure.

The problem wasn't staying up in the air, the problem was landing. I don't know if 767s can dump fuel or can only burn it off, but even if dumping was possible the citizens of Warsaw might not appreciate having an hours worth of fuel dumped on them.

youtu.be/eyYS-mbCPJ8

The engines looked like they scraped along the ground. Was there a chance that one of them could have snagged on something if the people were unlucky, turning the plane sideways etc.?

Yes,a big chance,that and losing one entirely,thats why its a text book emergency landing.