Amazing....

[Canary_Yellow]

The landing looks dramatic, but I seriously hope it is a very easy landing for any pilot of such a plane. If not, I'd like to ask why they are trying to land it at all? If it was a difficult landing, I'm sure we'd have many planes crash landing every day, as I'm sure there are many daily landings in strong wind around the world.

Yes, it's relatively routine.

In very stormy conditions with a lot of gusting, you'll see a few go-arounds, but steady-ish winds which don't impact the stability of the aircraft, but require a bit of a sideways landing, are probably considered good fun for a pilot! Who doesn't like a bit of a challenge, after all?

 

[Rlburnside]

I was more amazed at how 600 tonnes seem to hang there

I’ve been lucky enough to play twice at a course right next to The Farnborough Air Show when it was on( can’t remember the name of the course offhand and I think it’s closed now)

I’ll never forget looking up from the fairway at the airbus it looked like it was just hanging there , what skill those pilots must have, it was a amazing sight and what a noise we had to hold our hands over our ears.

Played with 2 of my brothers you’ll know Golfmmad but my other brother is the opposite of him? short temper and angry?. Anyway this brother was in a bunker and I said “ look out here comes the Airbus again”

Can’t tell you what he said but it involved a lot of swear words followed by I’m not playing here again.

What a brilliant day out that was.

 

[Foxholer]

I’ve been lucky enough to play twice at a course right next to The Farnborough Air Show when it was on( can’t remember the name of the course offhand and I think it’s closed now)
...

Army?
Pretty sure it's still going.
I can appreciate the noise from Farnborough though. The one time I was/(we were) there was in 1988 - when the monstrous Aeroflot beast was there....very noisy!

 

[williamalex1]

Some very knowledgeable posters here.
Could one of you tell me please.
Are these A380s very forgiving and easy to play with given all the technology that's gone into them?
Were the WW2 Lancaster pilots more skilful than today's passenger airline pilots?

They had to be, no auto pilot back in the 40s, or was there ?.
BTW I've been on automatic pilot a few since the early 60s .

 

[SocketRocket]

I was more amazed at how 600 tonnes seem to hang there

I think they're heading into the prevailing wind so the air passing over the wings is creating sufficient lift. Pretty big wings on those birds.

 

[SocketRocket]

Once upon a day job a long time ago I was in a small group of Guidance, Control and Navigation System Engineers (cool job title eh!) that designed, amongst other dead clever stuff, aircraft Terrain Avoidance systems…what’s one of those you might ask….errr ??

1220 Lab?

 

[Rlburnside]

Army?
Pretty sure it's still going.
I can appreciate the noise from Farnborough though. The one time I was/(we were) there was in 1988 - when the monstrous Aeroflot beast was there....very noisy!

No don’t think it was Army, probably Southwood

 

[Golfmmad]

I’ve been lucky enough to play twice at a course right next to The Farnborough Air Show when it was on( can’t remember the name of the course offhand and I think it’s closed now)

I’ll never forget looking up from the fairway at the airbus it looked like it was just hanging there , what skill those pilots must have, it was a amazing sight and what a noise we had to hold our hands over our ears.

Played with 2 of my brothers you’ll know Golfmmad but my other brother is the opposite of him? short temper and angry?. Anyway this brother was in a bunker and I said “ look out here comes the Airbus again”

Can’t tell you what he said but it involved a lot of swear words followed by I’m not playing here again.

What a brilliant day out that was.

It certainly was a great day.
Just to add to that day......
The new (at the time) European Jet fighter

I’ve been lucky enough to play twice at a course right next to The Farnborough Air Show when it was on( can’t remember the name of the course offhand and I think it’s closed now)

I’ll never forget looking up from the fairway at the airbus it looked like it was just hanging there , what skill those pilots must have, it was a amazing sight and what a noise we had to hold our hands over our ears.

Played with 2 of my brothers you’ll know Golfmmad but my other brother is the opposite of him? short temper and angry?. Anyway this brother was in a bunker and I said “ look out here comes the Airbus again”

Can’t tell you what he said but it involved a lot of swear words followed by I’m not playing here again.

What a brilliant day out that was.

It certainly was!
Just to add to that :
We watched the new European Jet Fighter display, and it was absolutely awesome, the ground shook. In fact earlier the Red Arrows did their customary display and the E jet fighter was louder than all of them together!
Playing golf and having an Airshow flying above is almost utopia!

 

[patricks148]

A shout out to Logan Air pilots landing in 60 mph Cross winds at most HIAL airports. Last time I went to Benbecula, looking out the side widows of the twin prop, you could see straight down the runway , all the American tourists on it were crapping it?

 

[Grizzly]

The landing looks dramatic, but I seriously hope it is a very easy landing for any pilot of such a plane. If not, I'd like to ask why they are trying to land it at all? If it was a difficult landing, I'm sure we'd have many planes crash landing every day, as I'm sure there are many daily landings in strong wind around the world.

I'd say that was a 2 or at most 3 out of 10, though made spectacular by the sheer size of an A380 (and the fact that by the time of filming the pilot might well have passed the point of no return and been committed to touching down at all costs)

 

[Swinglowandslow]

Autoland and ILS aren't the same thing. ILS tells you where the runway is, autoland puts you on the ground. The landings in the videos will still have used ILS for approach, the pilot has to decide by around 200 feet altitude whether the ILS has missed approach and they need to abort and go around.

Autoland is only used in extremely poor visibility when there's a risk that the runway isn't visible to the pilot for landing, e.g., very dense fog.

A380's are fascinating but pilots can't fly them without computers. It's impressive/scary depending on your point of view.

It is scary if your last sentence is correct??. I would have thought that there was a master switch to turn off the computer and fly manually.
Wasn't it this problem that caused a crash (Paris was it?) when the computer wouldn't n the the polite take over to throttle up?
Surely, in the final analysis the pilot should be able to go manual.
I cannot believe it is tolerated that he cannot.

As for ILS- it does more than tell you where the runway is. By computer, it guides the plane on to the glideslope, I.e. the plane becomes lined up with the runway and flies toward it on a descending path to touchdown on the runway.
About 200ft or so the pilot switches to manual to control touchdown, throttle and braking .
Some aircraft ( Trident) could autoland, I.e go right down to touchdown and the throttle, brakes would automatically adjust to then let the pilot taxi off the runway. Sometimes just ILS landings would be chosen, or full manual landings.
Comets had semi automatic in that throttle was always manual.
Full manual landings are required of the pilots from time to time in order to keep their landing skills current.
No good doing ILS landings for months/years and then a malfunction requires manual and you are out of practice?
The latest airliners may be even more sophisticated.

 

[Swinglowandslow]

The ILS transmits a beam which the aircraft radios can be tuned to, this provides a visual aid on the pilots instruments showing lateral and vertical guidance to the runway. THe autopilot can be programmed to fly down this beam, an then the aircraft can land itself if visibility is below specified levels. Not all airports are ILS, some may have it only one end of the runway. Obviously without an ILS a plane cannot carry out an autoland, so its a diversion if weather is too bad.
Pilots will land manually 99% of the time, however leagally they have to carry out an autoland (once a month or so) to keep themselves and the aircraft current.
Whilst most modern airliners can happily land theselves in zero visibility, an aircraft may still be required to divert if RVR (Runway Visual Range) is too low as ridiculously the pilot won't be able to see enough to taxi safely to the stand!

You clearly know more than I do on this, Saint. I understood it was mostly ILS landings the pilots did, with manuals now and again , as required to keep skilled.?

 

[Jimaroid]

It is scary if your last sentence is correct??.

It’s correct. They are entirely fly by wire. There are no mechanical manual or direct
controls to fallback upon.

They’re fully redundant systems though, there isn’t just one computer, there are many computers and they constantly verify each other to ensure correct behaviour.
It’s pretty safe. The A380 hasn’t crashed yet but it’s been a commercial flop - I think Airbus are ending manufacture as not enough were sold.

The recent cases of air crashes I’m aware of are all the Boeing 737 Max incidents and that really is an alarming controversy. Essentially in those cases the computers were disagreeing with the pilots and preventing them from recovering from a stall. It’s a lot more complex than this but basically the pilots couldn’t get the aircraft into the correct pitch because the computer was telling them something different and Boeing had covered up the need to re-train pilots in the new instrumentation and systems. Really really really bad!

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

1220 Lab?

Blimey, that’s from way back then. Was that RAE (Farn) or BAe - I can’t recall which. I‘m thinking maybe the former but it’s a good while ago now. I wasn’t in that team as I was in latter in Bristol working mainly on TRN systems (inc the very earliest use of GPS), but if RAE(F) then we worked very close with them, in fact if RAE most of the work I did was for them. And mostly not for aircraft.

Most definitely the most interesting job I ever had, did it for 12 yrs from 1984 - really interesting and cutting edge TRN and guidance (inc BMD) projects. Unfortunately I felt I wasn’t smart enough to progress much as I worked with a lot of very smart cookies, and the maths was pretty darned complicated. I think of it now and can’t believe I managed to work out the stuff I did. Instead I shuffled off to IMSO in F’Boro HQ.

 

[SocketRocket]

Blimey, that’s from way back then. Was that RAE (Farn) or BAe - I can’t recall which. I‘m thinking maybe the former but it’s a good while ago now. I wasn’t in that team as I was in latter in Bristol working mainly on TRN systems (inc the very earliest use of GPS), but if RAE(F) then we worked very close with them, in fact if RAE most of the work I did was for them. And mostly not for aircraft.

Most definitely the most interesting job I ever had, did it for 12 yrs from 1984 - really interesting and cutting edge TRN and guidance (inc BMD) projects. Unfortunately I felt I wasn’t smart enough to progress much as I worked with a lot of very smart cookies, and the maths was pretty darned complicated. I think of it now and can’t believe I managed to work out the stuff I did.

That was at BAE Filton. We were both there at the same time, I believe your dept worked in 1220 Lab. I was a Principal Engineer in the Production Engineering Dept in the MPS building.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

That was at BAE Filton. We were both there at the same time, I believe your dept worked in 1220 Lab. I was a Principal Engineer in the Production Engineering Dept in the MPS building.

My dept was part of Systems Engineering. I was originally in the single storey Terrapin (?) building down by the car park adjacent to the golf club (was a member) and we moved into the new brick building built just up the hill on the boundary (20R I think it was, next door to the Z building that wasn’t there). For a while we were moved across the runway to the old 501 site. Now that was fun…especially when an F111 or a Concorde was taking off. What an unbelievable noise, everything in the building shook, and conversation had to stop.

BTW…loved the big old canteen from back then…and trying to get more mainframe cpu off Geoff.

 

[SocketRocket]

My dept was part of Systems Engineering. I was originally in the single storey Terrapin (?) building down by the car park adjacent to the golf club (was a member) and we moved into the new brick building built just up the hill on the boundary (20R I think it was, next door to the Z building that wasn’t there). For a while we were moved across the runway to the old 501 site. Now that was fun…especially when an F111 or a Concorde was taking off. What an unbelievable noise, everything in the building shook, and conversation had to stop.

BTW…loved the big old canteen from back then…and trying to get more mainframe cpu off Geoff.

Golf course lane site was mainly Space Systems. Yes the main canteen on Golf course lane was good, all gone now I believe. Never played Filton then, I lived in Portishead and played at Clevedon.

 

[SaintHacker]

You clearly know more than I do on this, Saint. I understood it was mostly ILS landings the pilots did, with manuals now and again , as required to keep skilled.?

ILS (Instrument Landing System) is a type of approach, not landing. There's lots of different types of approach; ILS, VOR, NDB, precision, non-precision, visual (looking out the window), but landings are either manual or auto. Auto requires an ILS system. Most pilots prefer to land manually (its usually a smoother touch down). The approach is down to wht equipment is available, and what the pilots and ATC want. A busy airport like Heathrow will have all aircraft lined up nicely on the ILS, somewhere quieter the pilots may request a visual to save time (and fuel)

 

[SaintHacker]

It’s correct. They are entirely fly by wire. There are no mechanical manual or direct
controls to fallback upon.

They’re fully redundant systems though, there isn’t just one computer, there are many computers and they constantly verify each other to ensure correct behaviour.
It’s pretty safe. The A380 hasn’t crashed yet but it’s been a commercial flop - I think Airbus are ending manufacture as not enough were sold.

The recent cases of air crashes I’m aware of are all the Boeing 737 Max incidents and that really is an alarming controversy. Essentially in those cases the computers were disagreeing with the pilots and preventing them from recovering from a stall. It’s a lot more complex than this but basically the pilots couldn’t get the aircraft into the correct pitch because the computer was telling them something different and Boeing had covered up the need to re-train pilots in the new instrumentation and systems. Really really really bad!

Airbus are fly by wire but they can be flown in 'direct law', where it is flown as a 'normal' aircraft. In this mode the control surfaces are directly controlled through pilot inputs. THis would usually only be used in the event of a major system malfunction. THere are two other modes above that of higher computer authority.

The MAX crashes were a bit more complicated than that. The new MCAS system was only recieving data from one angle of attack sensor, which in both crashes was faulty. THis made the aircraft think it was pitching up too high so it commanded the trim to bring the aircraft nose down. had the pilots been made aware, either by Boeing or by their airline that the system could act in this way they would have just assumed it was trim runaway, hit the trim cut out switches, trimmed the aircraft manually and then landed quite safely. Unfortunately they didn't and the aircraft kept pitching nose down until it flew itself into the ground.
The system has now been modified so it takes info from 3 sensors so this will never happen again

 

[Jimaroid]

Airbus are fly by wire but they can be flown in 'direct law', where it is flown as a 'normal' aircraft. In this mode the control surfaces are directly controlled through pilot inputs. THis would usually only be used in the event of a major system malfunction. THere are two other modes above that of higher computer authority.

Yep, you know I’m generalising. Even in direct law it’s still an electronic connection between the pilot and the control surfaces. There isn’t a complete set of mechanical linkage to the pilot by rods and wires like older and light aircraft (Fly by wire is an odd term).