This is both scary as heck, and a testament to how well built commercial aircraft are…
Air Canada 777 makes abnormal landing in Toronto
This incident happened on Monday, November 13, 2023, and involves Air Canada flight AC2 from Tokyo (HND) to Toronto (YYZ). The flight was operated by a 15-year-old Boeing 777-300ER with the registration code C-FIUV.
The 11hr20min flight was totally routine, except the last few seconds. Moments before touching down on Toronto Pearson’s runway 24L, the heavy jet made an abnormal maneuver, leading to a very dramatic landing.
As you can see in the below video, the jet seems to rapidly sink, then suddenly banks right very hard. The right rear gear makes such a hard impact that the plane bounces up, and then the left rear gear has an equally hard impact, before control is regained.
For what it’s worth, at the time of the incident, air traffic controllers were advising pilots that winds were 310 at 10 knots, gusting to 22 knots. Those gusts are pretty significant when you consider that they were 70 degrees off the runway heading, but that alone probably doesn’t explain this. It’s not clear to me if this incident was due to some last second wind shear beyond what was expected, wake turbulence, or what.
Can you imagine what that landing must have felt like for those onboard? Presumably there was no major damage to the aircraft, as it ended up flying again the next day, operating AC1 back to Tokyo.
Well done to the crew and plane!
It’s hard to know how close this was to having a different outcome, since we weren’t in the cockpit, and don’t fully know what conditions were like. Furthermore, the angle at which the video was filmed could possibly make things look more dramatic.
Regardless, a couple of things do stand out:
- The pilots seemed to do a great job recovering from the situation, and stabilizing the landing; it seems like it was too late to perform a go around by the point that this all happened
- It really is incredible how sturdy jets are; I mean, these planes weigh hundreds of thousands of pounds, and you can imagine the pressure on the gear with such a hard impact?
Bottom line
An Air Canada Boeing 777 had a dramatic landing at Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday. There was either some last minute wind shear or wake turbulence, which caused the jet to have a very unstable landing. Fortunately everything ended as well as it could, there were no injuries, and the plane didn’t sustain any damage. But goodness, that’s still quite a dramatic landing!
What do you make of this Air Canada 777 landing?
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