Flight AC837 on an Emergency Call | Hacker News Reader

Flight AC837 on an Emergency Call

39 pointsainiriand40 comments

Flight AC837 from Madrid to Toronto is on an emergency call burning fuel.

https://www.flightradar24.com/ACA837/23be1953

Apparently she is missing a wheel.

This link has some information, but this looks likely to be a fairly pointless HN speculation-discussion this early in the process.

https://www.thelocal.es/20200203/madrid-airport-prepares-for...

Feed of the airport, supposedly should see the landing from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B189mltra0&feature=youtu.be

Looks like the plane will attempt to land at 7:30pm GMT +1 (according to many comments in the feed)

Washington Post is also saying they will attempt to land at that time, 1:30 Eastern.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/world/eu...

Watched them come down. Looked like an uneventful landing from that feed's perspective. Hopefully everything is ok.

That pilot was great

The landing was around 19:06 local time if anyone is looking for it in the stream.

More info, it seems one tire has blown out and debris entered and damaged one of the engines. It's a Boeing 767-300. https://www.thenational.ae/world/europe/air-canada-plane-to-...

God, what the christ do you even do in such a situation? I'm guessing just clear the runways and go for the emergency landing at the lowest speed you can with as little fuel as possible?

And of course, it's Air Canada. I have had/heard of no end of maintenance issues with their planes.

My heart goes out. I hope they can land this one safely.

I would imagine a water landing over still water would be best. Go as slow as you can while skimming over the water letting it slow you down and have emergency boats out there to quickly rescue passengers.

A plane that size probably can't slow down to the point that water provides any more cushion than asphalt, especially with less control due to a bum engine. Plus, its MUCH harder to rescue everyone over water than surrounded by the resources of a major airport.

Water doesn't provide cushioning at any speed. It is, for all intents and purposes, incompressible.

Absolutely not. A water landing is absolute worst case. So much harder to get first responders in. Plus drowning.

There was a “West Wing” episode where Air Force One’s landing gear wouldn’t come down; they talked about the possibility of a “hard landing” on a runway sprayed with (fire suppressing) foam, IIRC.

Edit: looks like the foam practice was discontinued in 2002: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foam_path

>And of course, it's Air Canada. I have had/heard of no end of maintenance issues with their planes.

Their safety record regarding maintenance is pretty good as far as I know.

Alternate link to view live flight path:

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/ACA837/history/20200203/...

And live airport map: https://it.flightaware.com/live/airport_status_bigmap.rvt?ai...

I hope they make it safely!

The plane was flying at low height over Madrid. I listened clearly a few hours ago.

A F18 is doing a visual inspection to see the damage. Looks that perhaps would be formed to take earth on Torrejón Air base . Updates on Spanish : https://twitter.com/aeropuertoMAD/status/1224381048173334530...

also, I don't know if is related, but this morning some traffic was delayed or rerouted to other airports because there was a incident with drones flying too near of Barajas airport.

Depends on the wind I guess. Under favourable conditions, a skilled pilot should be able to land without loss of life even without landing gear at all.

I certainly hope everyone lands safely. I know it's obvious that missing a wheel is bad, but as a non-pilot, how survivable is this? Is this marginally dangerous or extremely dangerous?

Also not a pilot, but a lifelong aviation buff: It's not safe, but it's a lot less dangerous than many other things that can go wrong. A landing with main gear locked and nose gear misbehaving is pretty survivable; a belly landing is dicier, but still well within the "everybody walks away" range of likelihood. And if it really is just a single missing wheel - well, that's why there are two of them on each axle. Again, it's not the day you want to have, but if that's the only thing wrong then chances are good of everyone walking away.

edit: That said, as noted elsewhere in the comments, it's pretty pointless to speculate, especially when a linked article mentions more issues than just a wheel having come off. (Although it's not unreasonable to notice that in particular, seeing as an Air Canada Dash-8 dropped a wheel on takeoff just last month.)

A single engine landing with no nose gear is definitely trickier since you'll lose steering authority as the plane slows down--more danger of bouncing off to the side and flipping over, but overall I'd expect everyone to walk away from this with no more than minor injuries. The minor injuries happening when people have to use the rear escape ramps that are at too steep of an angle because the plane is nose down on the ground and the tail is way high in the air.

Chances are they'll have that plane back up in the air in a few months in regular service unless it was right on the edge of retirement already.

According to Air Canada, it was a tire rupture (one of 10) on takeoff and the emergency landing is due to an engine issue. Presumably the tire entered the engine.

"A spokesperson for Air Canada told Sky News: "Air Canada flight AC837, Madrid to Toronto, experienced an engine issue shortly after take-off. A tire also reportedly ruptured on take-off, one of 10 on this model of aircraft."

https://news.sky.com/story/air-canada-flight-returning-to-ma...

I'm not involved with the airline industry in any way, but I would think that since landing gear is a highly mechanical, moving piece with plenty of failure points, airliners are probably designed with a margin of error to withstand gearless landings without loss of life.

This is absolutely the case. Both in cases where the gear is semi-functional, and when it is not functional at all. For reference, here is what a belly landing looks like on a 767:

https://youtu.be/UC8ySY_GlUk

Need not be a big problem, some planes landed missing a wheel without even noticing.

https://avherald.com/h?article=4c29e455&opt=0

https://avherald.com/h?article=4b92a56d&opt=0

https://avherald.com/h?article=4b4af152&opt=0

https://avherald.com/h?article=4a7d012c&opt=0

Gear up landings aren't that uncommon in smaller planes.

A similar 767 made a gear up landing in 2011 with no injuries. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOT_Polish_Airlines_Flight_16

Common risks are Aircraft skidding of the runway, fire in the wheel well.

Mitigating factors: Rear wheel brakes should still work. Reverse thrust can further help slow down the aircraft.

Given the response time of emergency evacuation + fire response teams, likelihood of mass casualties are low.

Not very dangerous, they have procedures for this. Depending what is missing they may do a belly landing or if it’s one of the main gear they might even be ok to do a gear down landing.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-air-canada-eu...

also conversation on https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1440333

She’s down safely it seems!

But the whole landing gear looked fine

https://i.imgur.com/t1HANaG.png

Closer https://i.imgur.com/xwpjRtB.png

It does look a bit asymmetric on the left there. But difficult to say given that there are 4 wheels on each side.

Edit: NVM forgot to use my glasses..

Twitter Said engine issues too: https://twitter.com/sepla_pilotos/status/1224352617964429314...

It appeared to land safely. Well done!

Everyone talks about planes being packed with tons of redundancy but this is simply not true - where is the landing gear redundancy?

Planes are designed to land without or with partial landing gear. That's the redundancy.

Having 4 or even 6 wheels per landing gear.

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