Re: How to fly a AIRBUS A320 in high winds
 

Is that the Millenium Dome in the background?

Re: How to fly a AIRBUS A320 in high winds
 

Yes thats London City Airport the Kangerooing 146 landed at.

Re: How to fly a AIRBUS A320 in high winds
 

I was on an ATP that was hit by lightning and literally fell out of the sky before landing - I was scared then and we were in no danger.

I would have completely shed by insides had I been on this plane - Makes great TV though

Re: How to fly a AIRBUS A320 in high winds
 

Good thing those 146's have got robust landing gear.

Re: How to fly a AIRBUS A320 in high winds
 

I think next time the crew say "fasten seatbelts for landing". I might take heed and not have it just loosely draped across my lap :erm:

Re: How to fly a AIRBUS A320 in high winds
 

The point was, how do you know it had enough fuel to get to a different airport? Where was the next closest airport? Did that airport have the same high winds? (having just read it was a hurricane) Where was the next airport that didnt have these winds?

And Im guessing it did land normally or it would have been reported that it never.

---------- Post added at 00:18 ---------- Previous post was at 00:16 ----------

Probably is the the one word you shouldnt use if you dont have the facts. There is probably a lot of things that shouldnt happen, but do.

Re: How to fly a AIRBUS A320 in high winds
 

True, but it would have at least enough fuel on board to get to the divert airport and then some. The plane was on a domestic Berlin > Hamburg flight. Bremen, Lubeck, Hannover and Wolfsberg are hardly far away, each about 150 km or less which is about 15m flying time.

The plane was on a Hamburg > Munich hop [1], 775km [2] which for an A320 with a range of 6,800km and a fuel capacity of 29,840l [3] would mean that if all they had was the fuel to get to a diversionary airport the thing would have needed about 700l of fuel in the tanks, perhaps Hom3r can add but I would imagine that they had much much more than that in the tanks.

To expidite turnaround on the shorter flights carriers fill up less often and the additional cost of flying the weight around is offset by the ability to get an additional flight out of the plane over the course of a day.

So I did use the word probably, but I used it after putting some serious thought into it. Now if this had been an A320 in business config that had just arrived from New York my comments would have been different.

[1] http://www.flightglobal.com/articles...urg-storm.html
[2] http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=e...93&ie=UTF8&z=6
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A320#Specifications