Great job by these two pilots Hail Strikes Plane, Forces It to Land

[700UW]

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/hail-strikes-plane-forces-land-32970224
 
And the AutoLand.

 

[LD3]

Congrats to the flight crew, it's amazing how their training kicks in and they sound so calm...

 

[WorldTraveler]

agree it was great pilot skills but the question that has to be asked including by the FAA is why they were in that region. There are pictures of flight tracking for the flight and satellite images overlaid. The line of storms was line and I'm not sure how other aircraft were routed but a flight at cruise altitude was apparently unable to get around the storms. This isn't China and they should have had all of the resources available to know what the were getting into. Supposedly a 30 year FA was onboard and said it was the worst turbulence she had ever experienced.

DL apparently had a recovery flight waiting in DEN along with the IROP cart but some passengers chose not to continue by air.

 

[Kev3188]

NW brought a fantastic meteorology team to the party, and contrary to popular belief, it very much still exists. There's also a ton of weather info easily available to anyone, not just flight crews.

I'm sure the FAA, NTSB, or whoever will find a root cause in due time.

 

[WorldTraveler]

Help us understand the popular belief that says that meteorology expertise doesn't exist.

DL has one of the few in-house meteorology depts. in the world which raises the question even more how this situation developed.

yes, the FAA needs to figure out what happened.... were other planes flying thru the same area - which is heavily traveled with overflight activity - and DL was just unlikely, did the pilots not have the info, did the dispatcher not pass along info, or did know once report issues.

It was indeed an outstanding job of piloting skills to get the plane safely on the ground after that encounter... but so too were the AA 787 and DL 744 incidents that occurred over China.

We've seen affirmation that the US has some very good pilots who fly for the US legacy carriers.

but it is a whole lot easier to understand how things went bad in China esp. when it immediately became apparent that the DL pilots had repeatedly asked to deviate and were not approved by Chinese ATC to do so.

Flying in the US where ATC is very supportive and where there is some of the best severe storm technology in the world - including at DL's HDQ - makes it harder to understand why these pilots had to demonstrate their skills and why the passengers, rest of the crew, and the aircraft were subjected to that kind of weather event.

 

[nevergiveup]

A stormy area on radar may have hail one day and look identical another day with no hail. If any crew of any carrier suspects hail, they will avoid it. 

 

[WorldTraveler]

absolutely... but it is worth having the FAA investigate.

If there is nothing to hide, nothing will be found.

if things can be improved, then that is what should happen.

No one is throwing stones or implicating anyone.

while the FAA may be criticized on some bases, they do a pretty good job of keeping US aviation some of the safest in the world.

 

[southwind]

Help us understand the popular belief that says that meteorology expertise doesn't exist.DL has one of the few in-house meteorology depts. in the world which raises the question even more how this situation developed.yes, the FAA needs to figure out what happened.... were other planes flying thru the same area - which is heavily traveled with overflight activity - and DL was just unlikely, did the pilots not have the info, did the dispatcher not pass along info, or did know once report issues.It was indeed an outstanding job of piloting skills to get the plane safely on the ground after that encounter... but so too were the AA 787 and DL 744 incidents that occurred over China.We've seen affirmation that the US has some very good pilots who fly for the US legacy carriers.but it is a whole lot easier to understand how things went bad in China esp. when it immediately became apparent that the DL pilots had repeatedly asked to deviate and were not approved by Chinese ATC to do so.Flying in the US where ATC is very supportive and where there is some of the best severe storm technology in the world - including at DL's HDQ - makes it harder to understand why these pilots had to demonstrate their skills and why the passengers, rest of the crew, and the aircraft were subjected to that kind of weather event.

DL didn't have a meteorology team, before the merger. We just watched Weaver the Weatherman on channel 2!

Soooo, was the NW team responsible for flying them into or out of said hail storm?

 

[WorldTraveler]

they're all DL employees now and have been getting their paychecks from DL for going on 7 years - and it is a pretty good guess that some of the meteorologists may not have even come from NW. The A320 was never fenced so it could be DL and/or NW pilots.

 

[nevergiveup]

they're all DL employees now and have been getting their paychecks from DL for going on 7 years - and it is a pretty good guess that some of the meteorologists may not have even come from NW. The A320 was never fenced so it could be DL and/or NW pilots.

Sometimes the radar one sees on an iPhone will be very different from what is see by the pilots due to the angle of the radar.

 

[WorldTraveler]

exactly... and every entity should be pushing for the BEST and MOST amount of information for crews.

If looking at ground based radar AND the aircraft's radar provides the best solution, it should be made available to pilots.



if the FAA recognizes that and gives their recommendation to do that - all the better.

again, who knows what the pilots "saw" but the best and safest should be the goal for all airlines.

 

[topDawg]

agree it was great pilot skills but the question that has to be asked including by the FAA is why they were in that region. There are pictures of flight tracking for the flight and satellite images overlaid. The line of storms was line and I'm not sure how other aircraft were routed but a flight at cruise altitude was apparently unable to get around the storms. This isn't China and they should have had all of the resources available to know what the were getting into. Supposedly a 30 year FA was onboard and said it was the worst turbulence she had ever experienced.

DL apparently had a recovery flight waiting in DEN along with the IROP cart but some passengers chose not to continue by air.

not sure what you are talking about but when the crew made the choice to go into what would become the storm they had a gap between storms and in a matter of ~ 10 minutes that gap closed. 
 
Also hail is very very very hard (basically impossible) to read on radar. Not only does it not produce a good signal but it can also fall miles away from the storm that produced it. 
 

DL didn't have a meteorology team, before the merger. We just watched Weaver the Weatherman on channel 2!

Soooo, was the NW team responsible for flying them into or out of said hail storm?

Really? 
 

exactly... and every entity should be pushing for the BEST and MOST amount of information for crews.

If looking at ground based radar AND the aircraft's radar provides the best solution, it should be made available to pilots.



if the FAA recognizes that and gives their recommendation to do that - all the better.

again, who knows what the pilots "saw" but the best and safest should be the goal for all airlines.

 
and this info would have been given to the crew. It is very easy to look at this in hindsight but at the time they thought they could shoot the gap but the storms changed rapidly and they got into trouble. My guess is if they would have seen the hail on radar they wouldn't have tried to shoot the gap and would have gone north, but again, finding hail on radar is very hard to do. 

absolutely... but it is worth having the FAA investigate.

If there is nothing to hide, nothing will be found.

if things can be improved, then that is what should happen.

No one is throwing stones or implicating anyone.

while the FAA may be criticized on some bases, they do a pretty good job of keeping US aviation some of the safest in the world.

arguable. FAA does a lot of stupid things. 

 

[WorldTraveler]

No system is perfect but the process of a review outside of the company is a healthy process unless you are hiding something.

if any system or organization or person is discarded because it never was 100% effective, there wouldn't be much going on

Again, this DL flight might have been the unlucky flight after others managed to successfully get thru the same storms.

If DL pilots could have made better decisions by having more information to see in the cockpit with their own eyes, they should have it. and if the FAA can help get better information to crew members, then DL should be happy to see whatever rules regarding access to ground based data changed in order to facilitate the process. Given that all DL mainline and all 2 cabin DCI aircraft have IFE, there is no realistic limit to the amount of data that pilots could be given.