Wing Strike!

No doubt you will have seen the footage of the Lufthansa Airbus hitting it's wing during a crosswind landing.

For those of you who haven't, the video at the link was taken by a couple of guys standing underneath the approach lights in Hamburg as the plane came over during some pretty nasty weather. Obviously it was crabbing in at an angle to compensate for the crosswind. As it approached the runway it straightened up and started to float down to the surface. Suddenly the right wing lifted, the left gear struck and the plane tipped over striking the left wingtip on the ground. The pilots executed a go-around and landed without incident a short while later.

Now a couple of things strike me about this (and I'll get onto how this affects private pilots in a moment)

1) Moments before landing the plane drifts across to the left of the centre line and assumes a much more crabbed position than previously
2) Apart form that this didn't seem to be anything more than a seriously windy crosswind landing

So what actually happened? Well I assume that this is similar to the 777 crash at Heathrow recently in that there will be lots of opinion and conjecture, but very little known about the truth for a while. However, it is probably fair to say that the pilots were comfortable with the approach right up until the point the plane's undercarriage touched when, it appears, a gust of wind tipped the right wing up causing the result you saw.

But the question does present itself of 'When should you execute a go-round?'

I've flown many, many landings during my training when the conditions included something of a cross wind on approach. Personally I find these landings more fun and challenging and like to do them. But they're not easy.

There are 2 schools of thought for flying crosswind approaches in single engine planes. One is the 'crab-and-kick' approach (similar to the A320 Airbus in the video) where the plane is flown in level but crabbed into the wind, the pilot kicking the plane straight with the rudder just prior to touch down. (This video shows that it can be done on really big planes as well!). The second school is where you always fly the plane down the centreline of the runway but counter the crosswind by banking the plane into the wind (Wing down). This effectively puts you into a constant turn which is counterbalanced by the wind pushing you back. That's the way I was taught.

Both of these have benefits and downsides. The downside to the first approach 'crab-and-kick' is that you are susceptible to any sudden gusts of wind from one side which can upset the balance of the plane by pushing one wing higher than the other (as, I believe, happened in Hamburg). The downside to the second approach is that, by definition you are coming in with one wing lower than the other. This means that the chance of a wing strike increases. This is also the reason larger planes don't do this. The benefit of the second approach is that you can consistently keep the plane on the centre line of the runway without having to worry about drifting off left or right in a crosswind.

So how does this apply to us private pilots? Well, ordinarily we would like to be in a position where we only land when there is a minimal or zero crosswind (ideally we would like to land right into the prevailing wind!). But that doesn't always happen. There are many reasons for this: What happens, for example, if you're local airport/airfield has a perfectly good runway heading into the wind but some student has made a particularly hard landing and blown a tyre on their PA28 thereby rendering the runway u/s until they change it? (Yes, I was that student, but in my defence I made a perfectly good landing that time: it was the heavy landings earlier on in the session that caused the problem...) Now all the other planes in the circuit are having to land on the crosswind runway. Everything from 5 hour beginners to experienced Gulfstream are landing into a right to left crosswind.

This is the time when your airmanship really comes into play. Crosswind landings are tricky for the reasons I've already said, so knowing when to make the 'go-around' call and when not to becomes even more important. Chances are if you're coming in 'crab-and-kick' then you're going to have to anticipate any sudden gusts which would send you off the centreline. Depending on where you are in the approach (Long Finals, short finals, over the numbers) your reaction is going to be different. I always work on the basis that if I'm in a situation where I'm going to have to work hard to make the landing then I'm going round. This could be because I'm too high, too low, too fast, not mentally prepared (doesn't happen often, but when it does I'm definitely going round), way off the centre line or when the runway ahead isn't clear. I would much rather do another circuit and make a good landing than struggle to get down, make a mistake and end up as a statistic or a video on Youtube.

If you're coming in 'Wing-down' then the same principals apply.

Always make the call as soon as possible. If you're with the instructor he or she will respect you for displaying good airmanship. If you have passengers they will appreciate you making the landing smoother and more comfortable. If you're by yourself it will give you another approach to practice, another circuit to do and more flying time. It's a win-win situation.


So should the Lufthansa pilot have made the go-round call earlier? I know I probably would have done. From the point about 4 seconds prior to the main gear landing when the plane started to drift off to the left. That would have been my go-round point.

I wouldn't have made the news headlines in such a spectacular way, but my record would be blemish free and Lufthansa would have one less piece of maintenance to worry about...

photo (C) Lars Trejau