I’m not sure what exactly happened here, though this certainly doesn’t seem like it was handled very well, as flagged by The Aviation Herald.
In this post:
Turkish Airbus jet has tail strike during go around
This incident happened on Sunday, May 11, 2025, and involves Turkish Airlines flight TK1771, which was operating the 926-mile flight from Istanbul (IST) to Prague (PRG). The flight was operated by a five-year-old Airbus A321neo with the registration code TC-LSL.
At 2:19PM local time, the jet touched down on runway 12 at Prague’s Václav Havel Airport. However, after making contact with the runway, the pilots initiated a go around, during which time the jet suffered a tail strike.
The plane ended up climbing to 4,000 feet, and then positioned for another approach, and landed on the same runway roughly 15 minutes later, without further incident, even taxiing to the gate. As you’d expect, the return flight was canceled, and the jet is still on the ground at the airport, a few days later.
Okay, go arounds and tail strikes happen, but the video footage of this tail strike is kind of wild… check out that angle!
Below you can hear the air traffic control audio from the incident, with the pilot of an aircraft on the ground reporting the tail strike to the air traffic controller, in case the Turkish Airlines pilots weren’t aware.
What went wrong in this incident?!
For what it’s worth, at the time of the incident, winds were calm and there were no adverse weather conditions, according to the METAR.
As you can see, this go around was initiated after the aircraft touched down, and it even seemed to be a pretty stable final approach. Presumably the pilots had their reason for performing a go around, though I’m curious what it was. Did they land too far down the runway, were they going too fast, was there something on the runway, or what?
The way that the nose is jerked up is just hard to make sense of. I know that the Airbus sidestick can be quite responsive, but still, what on earth?!
While I have no qualms flying Turkish Airlines, the airline certainly has its fair share of incidents. I mean, keep in mind that Turkish Airlines names its aircraft after parts of the country, and this particular A321neo is named “Midyat.” It’s not the first plane to have that name, as the previous plane with the name was a 737-800 that had to be written off in 2019, due to a landing incident.
Bottom line
A Turkish Airlines Airbus A321neo suffered a tail strike during a go around at Prague Airport. While go arounds happen all the time, and tail strikes happen once in a while, the video of this tail strike is one of the more unusual ones that I’ve ever seen. The extent to which the nose is just pitched up is… not normal.
What do you make of this Turkish Airlines tail strike incident?
The ghosts of "Midyat" are not happy ....,
The Czech audio commentary in the video actually provides a hint: after touching down, the plane tilted right, possibly due to a sudden wind gust. If the left wheel actually lost contact with the runway, the pilot may have opted for a late go around out of caution. Unfortunately they seem to have overrotated.
"The way that the nose is jerked up is just hard to make sense of. I know that the Airbus sidestick can be quite responsive, but still, what on earth?!"
The A321 doesn't have a lot of margin from tail strike from a normal flare attitude, when combined with the pitch-up attitude induced by the sudden change from idle to TOGA thrust on underslung engines it is easy to over-rotate if you try to pull...
"The way that the nose is jerked up is just hard to make sense of. I know that the Airbus sidestick can be quite responsive, but still, what on earth?!"
The A321 doesn't have a lot of margin from tail strike from a normal flare attitude, when combined with the pitch-up attitude induced by the sudden change from idle to TOGA thrust on underslung engines it is easy to over-rotate if you try to pull up at the same time. Unfortunately, while this is something crews should anticipate, it's still a common mistake seen in training departments.
similar to the recent Frontier incident in San Juan
I avoid Turkish Airlines
Me too.
You can Google VMU aircraft testing where they deliberately drag the tail down the runway. VMU stands for Velocity Minimum Unstick which is the absolute minimum takeoff speed. It’s achieved by pulling back to the maximum which for an aircraft on the runway is till the tail hits.
If you saw a runway incursion in process a tail strike might be indicated if taking off was the only way to avoid a collision.
User error
Yep, it's not complicated.
Pilot error.