The Aviation Herald has the story of what looks like quite a scary go around that happened at Quito Airport on Saturday, August 11, 2018:
An Iberia Airbus A340-600, registration EC-LEU performing flight IB-6453 from Madrid,SP (Spain) to Quito (Ecuador), touched down on Quito’s runway 18 when the crew initiated a go around. The aircraft entered a hold for about 20 minutes, positioned for another approach to runway 18 and landed about 30 minutes after the go around. One of the body gear tyres was found blown after landing.
Here’s a (poor quality) video of the incident:
I’m not even sure what’s scariest about that — how hard the plane lands, the blown tire, the angle of the plane as it starts to climb again, or what.
Quito Airport is known to be difficult to land at. The airport is at an altitude of almost 10,000 feet, so planes have to be coming in at a much higher speed than usual on approach, making landings here difficult. Add in the fact that it can get windy, and you’re looking at a challenging airport.
And this airport is still much easier than Quito’s old airport, which closed a few years back. In 2007 an Iberia A340-600 overran the runway at the airport. While there were no fatalities, the plane had to be written off, and to this day it’s the only A340 that Iberia has had to write off.
It’s tough to say how close this was to being a serious incident, though I can certainly say that I’m happy I wasn’t on that flight!
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