Plane landing

[Atadconfussed]

Trigger warning flying for those that may not be keen … x

Am I being unreasonable to think that the below was a bit concerning / any pilots want to enlighten me?!
have flown a lot when younger / pre children but felt this was different

budget airline flight, approx 300 passengers Boeing 737
landing very wobbly on approach ( think close to runway)
huge bang on landing / touch down landing gear
worst bit!!! Very very intense what felt like attempts to break without slowing …. Loudest reverse thrust noise ever and the cabin shaking so so much
I felt pinned back in my seat and awaited a huge issue!
afterwards everyone was studded … one women crying and a few choice words heard through the cabin….
Thoughts please

I flew in and out of Bristol a lot and never found it bad at all. Sumburgh airport (Shetland) can be quite exciting though - lots of wind and the runway juts out into the sea so you feel like you’re going to land on the sea until the last second. You also have to drive across the runway to access the airport which I personally find more traumatic than the landings tbh.

I only start to panic if the air stewards look worried.

This is quite common in Bristol when there is loads of wind and it always feels like it won’t stop but it always does.

Landing in the early 90s at the old Kai Tak Airport was something of a heart in mouth experience. The runway was between blocks of flats.

This happened to me. American Airlines out of JFK. We had 2 aborted takeoffs due to an "error message" and then a long argument ensued with the crew whispering (I was back row) that they didn't agree with a third go. We were moved back into the terminal, given a sandwich and put on another!

Love Cabin Pressure! 🍋

i mean this with no disrespect, but you’ve greatly exaggerated the number of people on the plane, Ryanair planes hold 197 people at most, so you’ve also possibly exaggerated the rest. What you’ve described is a very routine crosswind landing.

a firm landing with Ryanair is normal and it is much, much safer than a silky smooth landing, especially on a poor condition runway (Bristol isn’t the best).

I fly regularly and have experienced what you’ve described with any airlines, Ryanair landings are actually safer/better than most in my experience, even though they may not feel that way at times

Similar happened to me years ago. Flying from LPA (Gran Canaria) to Belfast International, I fell asleep shortly after take off and woke up in Majorca. It was a bit disconcerting - I'd slept through all the announcements and only woke up when people started disembarking, got into the terminal and realised all the signs were in Spanish. Apparently there'd been some sort of fault that required an emergency landing.

They eventually put us back on the plane which was (so we were told) fixed, and attempted to take off but swerved at the last second so it really was like a handbrake turn. We were taken back into the terminal, ended up being fed and put up in an hotel for the night, and put on another flight back to BFS the following morning.

I'm not at all a nervous flyer but that swerve scared the shit out of me. I remember there being a little column about it in one of the trashy Sunday papers a week or so later, probably an equally terrified passenger.

Can't remember the airline, may have been Spanair.

@blueshoes Yes, Tioman only for small prop aircraft, the pilot literally has to fly directly at a rock face, alarmingly for passengers, only turning sharply onto the runway at the very last second…thrilling.

It’s very remote, a honeymoon hotel island (Didn’t grumble when I was sent there as a passenger once “to rescue” a RN sailor who had been put ashore after injuring himself playing football on the deck of HMS Ark Royal in the olden days…)

I’m not the best flyer, and have had 3 experiences that have contributed, all with the RAF:

One really heavy landing in a Tristar with overhead lockers flying open and bags falling out all over the shop. Captain came over the air and apologised saying “and I can’t even blame my co-pilot, because that was all me” - the air was pretty blue.

Taking off in a Hercules from Gibraltar, the clouds were down and we’d already been delayed by a day. Very senior Captain (poss Commandant or Air Commodore keeping his hours up) comes over and says to my team “let’s get on board and I’ll take a scoot down the runway. If I can see, we’ll take off”. Honestly petrified, especially when there was a loud BANG shortly before we lifted. Spent the whole journey convinced we were going down. Bang was one of the runway lights being hit apparently.

Another Herc in Norway. Loud explosion shortly after taking off. Turned out to be a life raft accidentally deploying and flying down the plane. Had to turn and head back. Wasn’t sure I was getting back on the flight, and I wasn’t the only one! Again another journey spent praying and convinced we were going to crash.

Commercial flights seem tame in comparison!

I did that approach from up front a few times shortly before Kai Tak closed, it was certainly interesting..

Rule one : Don't forget to turn...

I have a good (not hard) landing story.

qantas flying into Sydney, moments before touchdown pilot aborts, scares the shit out of us and climbs steeply back to the sky.
turns out that the clocks went back overnight and it was 5am not 6am as it was supposed to be. Airport does not accept landings before 6am. Just staggered that this did not become clear until we were actually descending over the beginning of the runway. You would have thought somebody might have said sthg!

anyway we circled for an hour and landed at the absolute stroke of 6am!

😂

Haven't read the full thread, but in answer to the Tioman island 'runway' yes it is just propeller places that land there. One of the windows on the plane had sellotape on it too 😂

Early 90s landing on a beautiful day in the old Beijing airport with Air France. The landing gear down ready to land when the pilot did a hard swing and violent climb because a Chinese pilot thought there was enough space and time to jump the queue. Fortunately, it was a clear day.

Bristol (Lulsgate) Airport was built to test wartime pilots in foggy conditions. That's why its built on top of a hill. Years ago I went on a school trip to the airport and we went into the control tower. The controlllers were free to ask our questions because the flights were being diverted to another airport.
Ironically the other runway in the Bristol area was at Filton where the village of Charlton was knocked down to create a longer runway for the development of the Bristol Brabazon and later Concorde. Its now closed and being built on.

Planes have to be thrown down in certain weather conditions although have noticed some airlines seem more gung ho at hard landings on a regular basis, KLM am looking at you

To be fair, I landed at Leeds Bradford just after a large passenger plane had crashed, which was very worrying.

Turns out, it hadn’t, and it always looks like that. Who knew?

Yeah, I voted YABU - not because you’re being unreasonable to be concerned, as such (they’re never fun, those landings) but because I’ve sat through so many of them that I know they are quite commonplace.

There’s bad weather here and across Europe at the moment, gusty winds making landings tricky and as pp‘s have said, there are many reasons why some landings are a bit more abrupt than at others. So I expect a terrible landing each time, then am pleasantly surprised if it’s smooth 😁

Short runaway at Edinburgh on Ryanair? Been there, OP.

It's a world away from landing at, say Newark, in a BA 747!

Sounds like a classic Ryan Air slam down, always worst on a short runway.

I think the thing apart a faster landing saving fuel is a myth, but maybe not.

Ha! My favourite flying story was the time our pilot legit plotted a course for Berlin instead of Budapest and only realised half way there…and then had to turn round, come back to Manchester, refuel and take off again 😂😂😂. I thought there were systems in place, like having to submit flight plans, to ensure this kind of thing could never happen! His tannoy announcement admitting the mistake was an epic example of someone quite obviously desperately wishing they had to say literally anything else 🤣

Given what you were told I'm not sure what follows was a factor in your story but FWIW Sydney had (has?) some very strict noise abatement rules which can cause complications with the clock.

One was that depending on season ( I think winter) some Long Haul flights could land between 5 A.M. and 6 A.M. but only on the north westerly heading runways ( the approach to those approach brings you in over the sea and Botany Bay, so you are not making noise over central Sydney).

The crucial factor in whether you could actually land in that direction was the tailwind (maximum for many types was 15 knots). After 0600 (I think, if I recall correctly), all runways were available so you could land into wind.

Result of all this was if you were heading to Sydney overnight and were going to arrive in the 0500-0600 time window you needed to take a hard look at the weather forecast before you departed from wherever (e.g Singapore) and if the wind was close to the limits decide to either delay departure to make a 0600 arrival or go on time with extra fuel, with the option of assessing the wind on arrival.

It wasn't completely unknown to fly down the approach to one of those north westerly heading runways well before 0600 whilst listening to the actual reported wind that was being transmitted by the tower controller and make a decision at 200 feet as to whether to land or not, depending on the magnitude of the tailwind. If you couldn't land you'd bimble off to hold until you could land after 6.

In these more fuel and emission sensitive days I'm not sure that solution to the Sydney curfew gets used much, if at all, anymore.....

(Just remember the above is another example of there is nothing to a pilot's job and that the computer/autopilot does all the work......🙄)

@SabbatWheel that is facilitating reading.

27th December - 2 passengers taken into questioning, relatives of Iranian footballer ☹️ A mother and daughter, didn’t get back on the flight.