There are a lot of aircraft landing videos out there that make for interesting viewing, but this has to be one of the wildest that I’ve ever seen…
TAP Air Portugal Airbus A321 has shocking landing in Madeira
This incident happened today (Tuesday, March 26, 2024), and involves a four-year-old TAP Air Portugal Airbus A321neo with the registration code CS-TJQ. The aircraft was operating a short 36-mile repositioning flight within Portugal, from Porto Santo (PXO) to Madeira (FNC). The flight took well under 15 minutes, and only had a crew onboard, without passengers.
Madeira is known for being a challenging airport to land at, due to winds frequently being strong (and they’ve been especially strong in recent days). It’s also a popular airport with plane spotters, given that there are frequently some “interesting” landings.
Well, this particular flight had what might just be the most bizarre landing ever captured on video at the airport. Give it a watch for yourself below.
There seem to be two major factors at play:
- It’s obviously very windy during the approach, as you can see the number of corrections the pilots are making as the plane approaches the runway
- The plane is also probably at its lightest possible weight, given that there are no passengers or bags onboard, which can impact flying performance
As you’ll see in the video, the plane basically just floats above the ground, and refuses to land. That’s despite the plane being at a pretty steep nose down angle. Eventually — just short of the halfway point of the runway — the plane touches down, with the nose gear touching down first (by a long shot).
Not surprisingly, the plane had no issues coming to a stop once it did touch down, though I imagine a gear inspection will need to be carried out before this plane can reenter service.
What were the TAP Air Portugal pilots thinking?
This is beyond my area of expertise, so I’m curious if any commercial pilots can fill us in on what exactly was going on here. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there are any sort of situations (aside from an emergency) where operating procedures allow for touching down with the nose gear first.
In this case, it’s not like there was a sudden downdraft, and the pilots weren’t expecting the nose wheel would hit first. Rather, they had the plane’s nose angled down the entire way down the runway, so surely they knew this was how it was going to play out.
Did the pilots really intentionally touch down this way, rather than performing a go around? And if so, was it just because they were impatient, or is there any reasonable explanation for something like this (other than blaming it on DEI)?
Bottom line
A TAP Air Portugal Airbus A321neo had quite a memorable landing in Madeira today, as the jet touched down with its nose gear first. What makes this so strange is that the plane was angled nose down the entire way down the runway, so presumably the pilots knew it was going to happen, and were fine with it.
Obviously the conditions here were challenging — you had strong winds combined with a very light aircraft — but still, that doesn’t explain this kind of a landing.
What do you make of this TAP Air Portugal A321neo landing?
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