VHHH | Fly Me Friendly

Wild Ride

Falcon124 | October 6, 2008 | 8:08 pm

I received an email from a friend of mine this afternoon after a rather wild attempted landing at Hong Kong (VHHH). Gotta love that inflight Internet access, no?

I am currently typing this at 29000 feet, 804km/h, sitting in row57h on an A330. We took off from Taipei .. got to Hong Kong and was put in two holding patterns with 4 circuits each then we start the approach in to the airport …. Mate I have never been thrown around like we were !!

The plane was like out of control …sliding and buffering and then lurching ….crazy !!!!

The wheels went down … I held my breath …. We were all over the place … I couldn’t see anything as the fog was so low.

Then out of nowhere in the middle of a lurch to the left a wheel hit the ground and then we had full power come on and we went hard up and took off straight away !!

So now were are on our way to Taipei again to refuel and then come back ….. but now the captain has told us we don’t have the fuel to get there so we are going to a smaller airport closer called Kaohsiung. We are to refuel there and then head back to Hong Kong

That’s certainly worse than my scariest landing which was going into Boston (KBOS) on a dark & stormy evening, rocking & rolling all over the place. Looking out the window at gray water then gray sky, engines spooling up and down – woo hoo – quite the ride. At least on my flight we made it down and didn’t need a go-around (all be it we touched down with a very positive return to earth).

Comments: No Comments »
Categories: General Information
Tags: abort, KBOS, Landing, VHHH, weather
Comments rss
Trackback

Gear Up please, FO

Falcon124 | August 31, 2008 | 2:15 am

It’s been over a year since I was last with my friend Carlo in his B737-800 simulator. Back then it was out at the QANTAS sim center near Essendon airport where it was being evaluated by QF for procedures training. Since then they’ve opened up a store in the CBD and set it all up there as part of Flight Experience here in Melbourne.	Sim interior
I got the call this evening from Carlo suggesting a bit of fun after dinner, so we zipped into the city and set up the sim for some fun. First up was a flight from London Gatwick airport over to Naples in Italy. I was to be Captain and pilot flying while Carlo would be First Office and pilot not flying.
Captain Falcon	We got the APU on and kicked in the systems, then programmed in the way points from EGKK to LIRN. After that it was push back from the gate, taxi out to 26R and take off. I flew manually although I kept the flight director on and was basically following the pink lines. Makes it MUCH easier, especially when you’ve not flown for over a year :)
Once we were on our way and were set on a few way points, we engaged the autopilot and ran a few checks and evaluations of our situation. We then set the sim to run at 4x speed while we stepped out of the sim to have some drinks and nibbles. Back in the sim and back to normal speed about 20 to 30 minutes out from Naples, we double checked the programmed course and approach. Carlo had added a STAR that had us flying a circuit around & across the airport so we played around with the waypoints and changed over to an approach with less mucking about.
As we cleared 10,000′ I took over flying and continued our descent with a wide right hand turn to align with the runway. We were at 7,000′ over BENTO and continued our descent to 1,800′ over POM and then it was in for landing. Nice one :)	Love those throttles
We then reset the sim to be at old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong (VHHX) where I did a take off and then followed Carlo’s directions on a scenic tour of the bay before coming back around and landing at Chek Lap Kok (VHHH). The plan was to do a touch-n-go then Carlo would take over as pilot flying as we touched down. Sadly, my approach was a complete disaster and I was all over the place. We slammed on and Carlo took over – good thing crash mode was turned off…
So now we left VHHH and headed back to Kai Tak with Carlo flying and me setting the systems. We followed an A340 in and landed right behind it (Minimum safe distance? What’s that?) then taxied to a parking bay, shut down and turned everything off.	The A340 that landed ahead of us
It was a great evening of freeing our imaginations and flying around the world. The sim is so much fun and an amazing replica inside. Lack of motion isn’t such a big deal and the price difference to purchase, operate & maintain a fixed base unit compared to full motion is enormous (about 20 times more for a full motion system). We both enjoyed it and I’m definitely looking forward to our next session.	Waiting for the A340 to taxi past