Video: Gut Rumpus-Inducing Airbus A330 Aborted Landing

I am captivated and horrified by aircraft in the first place, so this video of Lufthansa Flight LH44 from Munich landing in Hamburg—full, I’m told, of technology folk going to the big CeBIT gadget convention—is the sort of thing that will be running on a loop in my mind as I take a flight this weekend to Austin.

After they abort—and there’s a wing touching the ground at one point, I believe—they came around to Hamburg’s other runway which is perpendicular to the first and touched down safely.

John Biggs of Crunchgear is at CeBIT and told me that he met one guy who had been on that flight sitting in a booth on the busy show floor, sort of quietly watching the crowds go by, too sullen to interact.

YouTube commenters are the dregs of internet feedback, but there are some quotes from some folks in the video’s comments that seem at least possibly true:

He should never had tried to land in those conditions!!
Very dangerous guy .I am an airbus( a330) pilot myself :the go around should have been done much earlier: luckily the main gear did not touch the runway otherwise Speedbrakes would have extend automatically and go around would have been deadly. Very bad approach very late wind correction:xxxtremely dangerous!!

For all those with comments like “good save”, and “excellent job by the pilot”, save it. They were lucky to have extracted themselves from a precarious situation which they alone are responsible for getting into. Also, a 30 knot crosswind and no rudder? WTF?

Klar, dass er die Situation trotzdem noch gerettet hat zeigt, dass die Piloten der Lufthansa über hervorragende Fähigkeiten verfügen – keine Frage. Ich finde nur, dass man den Landeversuch schon viel früher hätte abbrechen müssen. Gott sei Dank ging alles gut.

(I don’t actually speak German so I just cut-and-pasted that one in because I thought it looked pretty.)