A320 grounds left wing during aborted crosswind landing in Hamburg today

[eppy]

This was so close to a disaster today...

Here's a video of a Lufthansa A320 ripping off its left winglet on the runway at Hamburg earlier today in an aborted crosswind landing.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ddb_1204404185

And here's a photo of the wing strike.

http://www.airliners.net/uf/view.file?id=536882887&filename=phpOltUWB.jpg


The A320 has a crosswind landing limit of 33 kts gusting 38 kts

According to the data at the time, the wind was 35kts, gusting 55 kts.

EDDH 011220Z 29028G48KT 9000 -SHRA FEW011 BKN014 07/05 Q0984 TEMPO 29035G55KT 4000 SHRA BKN008

[eppy]

Further info:

The incident happened at  13:55 local time
The flight LH 044 (D-AIQP),  an A320 from MUC (Munich)
The landing runway was 23 LOC-DME (ATIS gave no other option)
after the go-around the pilots elected runway 33 also LOC-DME approach and landed safely but minus the left winglet...
immediately after the incident ATIS gave runway 23 and 33 as well

[Avanthused]

Holy crap. This could've ended real bad. Looks like the exceeded rudder control and had to use a little aileron, which allowed the wind to get under the right wing and...my my.

[athaker]

how the heck do we have both video and high-res photo taken at the exact moment of impact on this incident THE DAY it happened?!

[bigj93702]

Im not a pilot; like a lot of you....

But didn't this jet Stall - just before they gunned the engines and take off?

Overall this is an AMAZING video; how scary for all on board.....

[koni]

how the heck do we have both video and high-res photo taken at the exact moment of impact on this incident THE DAY it happened?!

That´s easy. During strong storms like that one a lot of spotters are heading towards airports to make shots like those. I was at MUC that time. Great time for spotters!

[Avanthused]

Im not a pilot; like a lot of you....

But didn't this jet Stall - just before they gunned the engines and take off?

Overall this is an AMAZING video; how scary for all on board.....

A stall that low would've likely been unrecoverable. With this kinda cx, They were probably coming in at a much higher landing speed, so they had some to burn off during the flare.

In the classic crosswind landing, the pilot angles the wing into the wind, and keeps the ac aligned with the rwy via rudder control, but the rudder can only correct for so much...the pilots obviously knew this, but they either underestimated the gusts or overestimated their and their ac's abilities...which is clear from eppy's weather info.

[tov]

Pilots did a grat job!

http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video284096.html

tov

[aevins]

Made it to CNN today

[RedOct]

I would rate it as pilot error. There was too much left rudder, and the crew failed to utilize partial spoilers on the right wing to force it down. See Korean Airline crew successfully land a 747 in extreme crosswind - notice the partial spoilers engaged on right wing to force it down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cub3n4QrCrs&mode=related&search=

[bogman]

EDDH 011220Z 29028G48KT 9000 -SHRA FEW011 BKN014 07/05 Q0984 TEMPO 29035G55KT 4000 SHRA BKN008

Im no pilot I was wondering could some one explain to me how to read the above,I know it has something to do with the weather but that is it.

[wayne530]

EDDH 011220Z 29028G48KT 9000 -SHRA FEW011 BKN014 07/05 Q0984 TEMPO 29035G55KT 4000 SHRA BKN008

Im no pilot I was wondering could some one explain to me how to read the above,I know it has something to do with the weather but that is it.

google for information on decoding metars.  basically it says the airport's ICAO identifier (EDDH) the day (01), the time (1220Z, z for zulu or universal time), winds 290 @ 28 kts gusting to 48 kts, visibility 9000m, light rain showers, few clouds at 1100' AGL, broken clouds at 1400' AGL, temp 7*C, dew point 5*C, the local altimeter in hectopascals.. TEMPO = temporary deterioration of conditions.. winds 290 @ 35kts gusting 55kts, 4000m visibility, rain showers, broken cloud layer at 800' AGL.

[Avanthused]

I would rate it as pilot error. There was too much left rudder, and the crew failed to utilize partial spoilers on the right wing to force it down. See Korean Airline crew successfully land a 747 in extreme crosswind - notice the partial spoilers engaged on right wing to force it down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cub3n4QrCrs&mode=related&search=

Left rudder seemed alright...they had to align the plane...but they may not have balanced it with enough right aileron along with spoilers as you said.

[zenwick]

The guy was sideways coming over the fence.  Don't you all agree that such an unstabilized approach should have been abandoned without a second thought?  He took a heck of a risk trying to put that thing down.

[cessna157]

The guy was sideways coming over the fence.  Don't you all agree that such an unstabilized approach should have been abandoned without a second thought?  He took a heck of a risk trying to put that thing down.

Armchair quarterbacking here, but that approach looked as stabilized as they get.  It didn't get out of hand until he got down on the runway and the wind got under the right wing and lifted the whole airplane.  A trait with the airbus is that sidestick movement doesn't command airleron deflection, it commands rate of roll.  So they cannot just put in crosswind correction once down, like every other normal airplane does.  As I do not fly the airbus, I do not know what the specific technique for crosswind correction once on the ground is.  But all looked good up until the point the aircraft rolled. 

And yes, the pilots did take a risk.  It was an unnecessary one.  The media is crowing these guys as heroes.  But if they had followed their limitations and ops specs for the airplane and their company (they landed over their crosswind limitation), this would have never have happened.