Passengers onboard British Airways flight 492 were on edge and praying after a wild aborted landing attempt in strong crosswinds on the headland of Gibraltar.
Video filmed from the ground and from inside the plane showed the Airbus A320 rocking from side to side, as it climbed after an aborted landing at around midday (local time) on Monday.
This lunchtimes @British_Airways flight from London Heathrow has diverted to Malaga due to strong winds at Gibraltar Airport 😬 #Gibraltar #Airport #GibraltarAirport #AbortedLanding #StrongWinds #BA492 pic.twitter.com/Oi8DxwNwQ9
— Rock Radio (@RockRadio) February 25, 2019
(From 05:30 landing was aborted with quite some roll)
Passenger Ramesh Samanti told local newspaper the plane felt like it was “out of control”.
“The plane was swinging from left to right and all you could hear were people shouting and screaming,”
The flight from London to Gibraltar, a British overseas territory, was forced to divert to the Spanish port city of Malaga.
A spokesman for British Airways stated that
“at no point was there a risk to safety”.
“The flight has landed safely and passengers have left the aircraft normally,” the spokesman said in a statement. “Due to strong winds in the Gibraltar area, our pilots decided to land in Malaga as a precaution. The safety of our customers and crew is always our number one priority.”
Passengers were provided with ground transport for the journey to Gibraltar.
Gibraltar airport is known for having strong winds in the area and diverted flights are a common occurrence.
Editor’s comment
Definitely a dramatic approach caught on many cameras! Kudos to BA’s pilot with a safe landing at the end.
Have you encountered some heavy turbulence or wind during your flight? Love to hear from your stories!
Cover Photo by Robert Budde @Airlines.net
I’m no pilot. However I am an aircraft mechanic. This video is misleading click bait.
Why are the ailerons / spoilerons moving in the right direction as the rolling? Almost like the plane was doing what the pilots wanted….. Click bait
If the plane was doing that on purpose, the pilots would have informed the passengers. It also doesn’t add up that British Airways was quick to release a statement on the incident. Ailerons can be moving in the direction in an effort to be counteracting smaller banks, however were overcorrected. Until an investigation is complete, it’s safe to say this is an incident.
Well pretty easy to explain. They got a windshear warning most likely, Windshear Windshear. If no warning but the pilot feels its windshear conditions, one can initiate the procedure as well, dont have to wait for the actual warning on the system. The procedure is call windshear TOGA. Max thrust, fly SRS guidance or if none, about initially 17 degrees nose up or on Airbus aircraft, if required, full stick up if needed, no config change until out of windshear warnings.
Toga is take off go around thrust, max thrust limited to 5 or 10 min if on one engine. SRS guidance is the flight director on the Primary Flight Display. No change as in no gear up and no flap change, its the procedure to avoid lift changes, because a flap change might change the lift needed at that moment in time. A gear change might cause the gear doors to create excessive drag and thus less performance. And a pilot can go to full stick up because the computers will prevent a stall in normal law and give max Angle of attack thus max lift.
The wings rocking, is windshear combined with high angle of attack due to the priority to get away from the ground, its got a few priorities built-in to the SRS guidance. Dont stall, anticipate negative wind shear, gain altitude. And as they correct the bank angle with aileron input, or the autopilot if that is engaged, the spoilers on the one wing deploys, thus slightly losing too much lift at that high AoA, and then goes too far the other way due to the extreme loads on the wings. Max angle of attack means little margin from the lift losing portion of the graph. It wont stall it, it just has too much momentum for the opposite wing to counter at that AoA and lift loss. The situation corrects itself as soon as the AoA is reduced, and that is as soon as the windshear condition has subsided.
Anyone who has been on an airplane in turbulence can take one look at this video and grasp the fact that most people were silently terrified. The others were talking nervously.
You got to laugh at the people complaining about the video being click bait. What a joke. Let’s make sure we get all of our spelling and punctuation right around these kind of chaps…
It’s very interesting yet there is no need to clickbait it with „screams and prayers”, c’mon. There were more laughs than screams…
Martin, we do not clickbait from news article, this is reported as it is. There are screams caught on camera and most important of all, a safe landing by the pilot.
Interesting how the people who left comments with the newspaper claim people were screaming and praying… and yet, the video has none of those sounds in the background. Once again, you can’t believe even eyewitnesses anymore.
Lance, there were quite a few screams on the video link (check 5:50)
Sam, just the usual diatribe and rubbish that I would expect from mainstream journalism, not you
It is definitely an unusual landing, in my opinion it is newsworthy to report.