Geek Habitat

I am really glad I wasn’t on this Lufthansa Airlines flight which attempted to land in extremely high crosswinds. Note: the did make a successful landing on their second (”go ’round”) landing attempt.  Further, for non-pilots, the yaw back and forth and the aircraft’s odd sideways, not lined up with center line, approach to touchdown on the runway *is* proper (indeed the only safe) procedure for landing in crosswinds–it’s call “crabbing”, since it looks sort of like how a crab runs sideways in relation to where it’s head it facing. Even a heavy crosswind landing in a Cessna isn’t fun… I love flying with Justin but my least favorite approach and landings are when we are faced with strong, especially gusty (wind’s there one moment and suddenly gone the next, etc.) crosswinds.  It’s like riding a bucking bronco, and I have no idea how hair-raising it is to land, but judging by Justin’s look of complete concentration, it’s no fun.

Video:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/03/03/germany.plane/index.html

That was *not* a pleasant ride for the passengers and crew, but the pilots did exactly what they needed to by not trying to fight the wind and the bird and just going full throttle to make another landing attempt.

I don’t know what the winds were like, but every airline and pilot has their own rules and decisions regarding what’s acceptable given the type of aircraft, the length of the runway, etc.