This was almost unbelievable. As a pilot, 'Go Arounds' are rare, and when they happen it's always a serious, 'moment of truth' incident. Talk about adrenalin...

I totally freaked out when I saw this. A beautiful recovery from a Life - Death situation. I thought I had seen some serious situations (like landing with one of the landing gear indicator lights not indicating DOWN and LOCKED). This was amazing... Cross wind landings in small aircraft are one thing. In an airplane this big, one rarely sees such a pronounced effect. But 150 mph gusts? Unbelievable they even attempted to land. The article says: Lufthansa jet, flying from Munich to Hamburg with 137 passengers, veering back and forth in 150 mile per hour gusting winds.
http://elsmar.com/gif/Airplane Landing in cross wind.gif

Aircraft 'Heavy' Passenger Jet Landing in Cross Wind.flv (http://elsmar.com/pdf_files/Flash_.flv_files/Near%20Airplane%20Crash%20Cross%20Wind.flv)

This is a Flash file. If it doesn't play for you in your browser, download it and use VLC (http://www.videolan.org/) (The Best 'Plays Everything' Player there is!).

I saw this on CNN this morning - amazing. In fact, when one passenger was see narrating the incident, I could sense the Life and Death sitaution from his face.

Great job done by the pilot that saved 137 lives. :applause:

The 150 miles per hour is a bit off
They reported up to 94KM/H or about 60mph winds around 2pm in HAM. No info yet on exactly how bad the winds did get but the pictures show it was bad enough.
A realy bad situation cover 2 differant aircraft doing a crabwalk not to mention all those pilots that wound up diverting that day
An A320 cliped off its wing tip. Have a link to a picture of the actual impact
Aircraft Wing Tip Hits Ruway (http://www.airliners.net/uf/view.file?id=536882887&filename=phpOltUWB.jpg)

Here is a link to other clips of the same situation seen at various other locations and with other aircraft (Videos). http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f78_1184881277

They actual test for this during aircraft qualification.

Excellent. I know for small planes I flew 30 mph cross winds were 'interesting', to say the least. 'Slip' (aka 'crab') and try to straighten out right as you hit the cement and retract flaps at the same time. The problem came in where you seriously 'predicted' a potential 'Go Around', because you wanted those flap positions if you had to go around. You dump (retract) flaps to make the aircraft 'less flyable' with respect to speed when you hit the runway.

How was the video captured. Another plane? Passenger?

Yes, I saw that film yesterday. Whew... That was probably about as close as you can possibly get without actually ending up in a prang. Well done by the pilots to get out of such a sticky situation, but I also have to say that I think they should have aborted earlier than they actually did.

Btw: This must be very rare these days, what with all those technical whiz things around to assist the flight crew, but a few weeks ago I experienced an aborted landing for the first time in many years. The man in the front office made no attemt to explain it away: He told us straight out that he had bungled the landing by coming in too high and too fast... He also aborted early, which I find commendable.

How was the video captured. Another plane? Passenger?It looks to me as if someone on the ground did it.

/Claes

Makes you wonder why these planes don't have all-wheel steering, then it could land crab-fashion and continue it's way down the runway with the nose still pointing into the apparent wind. :magic:

The guys getting these pictures are refered to as "plane spotters" they hang out at airports to capture pictures of the types of aircraft, paint schemes and when they know conditions are like they had reported looking for that "exciting" shot.

By the way, Lufthansa expects that jet to be out of commission for a week. Just one day to inspect and replace the wing tip, but several days to replace the soiled seats in the main cabin...http://www.ugoplayer.com/forum/images/smilies/rofl1.gif

I remember back when I worked at the local international airport here we had a similar day, where for about 5 hours we had steady crosswinds of 45mph with gusts up to 80 or thereabouts. Watching the aircraft line up for approach was interesting, it looked like they were trying to do barrel rolls while doing a bee line approach...each one tried about 4 different times before diverting to New York...I couldnt help but imagine it must've been distressing to be aboard one of those aircraft.

The worst part was the construction for a new glycol recovery system (2 one million gallon tank installations) left a giant pile of dirt next to the excavation sites which was being blown across the entire airport. The fire department finally hosed it down with two of their crash trucks because pilots were having to brush piles of dirt out of the engines...man that was a strange day to be working on the tarmac lol. Looking at this video I wish I had been able to record some of the aircraft approaching that day, it looks similar, only imagine watching multiple aircraft do the same thing a couple times over. It makes you wonder how often safety is disregarded in order to make money.

I read an article about this in the German Magazine "Der Spiegel-Online" and basically they do not know yet if the Pilots were Heroes or Dummies. They say that multiple planes before and after landed no problem, otheres used the alternative to go to Bremen. The Pilot was also offered a different runway but decided on this one because it had electronic guidance build in. They did not say anything about the wind condition especially at this moment. It was a 39 year old pilot and supposedly he needed a while to get his 24 year old copilot back into shape to leave the plane.
I am sure glad for the people and the pilot that they got out of this situation in one piece.