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An emergency landing is a premature landing made by an aircraft in response to an emergency involving an imminent or ongoing threat to the safety and operation of the aircraft, or involving a sudden need for a passenger or crew on board to terminate the flight (such as a medical emergency). It typically involves a forced diversion to the nearest or most suitable airport or airbase, or an off airport landing or ditching if the flight cannot reach an airfield. Flights under air traffic control will be given priority over all other aircraft operations upon the declaration of the emergency.
There are several different types of emergency landings for powered aircraft: planned landing or unplanned landing.
If there is no engine power available during a forced landing, a fixed-wing aircraft glides, while a rotary winged aircraft (helicopter) autorotates to the ground by trading altitude for airspeed to maintain control. Pilots often practice "simulated forced landings", in which an engine failure is simulated and the pilot has to get the aircraft on the ground safely, by selecting a landing area and then gliding the aircraft at its best gliding speed.
If there is a suitable landing spot within the aircraft's gliding or autorotation distance, an unplanned landing will often result in no injuries or significant damage to the aircraft, since powered aircraft generally use little or no power when they are landing. Light aircraft can often land safely on fields, roads, or gravel river banks (or on the water, if they are float-equipped); but medium and heavy aircraft generally require long, prepared runway surfaces because of their heavier weight and higher landing speeds. Glider pilots routinely land away from their base and so most cross-country pilots are in current practice.
Since 2003, research has been conducted on enabling unmanned aerial vehicles to perform a forced landing autonomously. [1]
Large airliners have multiple engines and redundant systems, so forced landings are extremely rare for them, but some notable ones have occurred. A famous example is the Gimli Glider, an Air Canada Boeing 767 that ran out of fuel and glided to a safe landing in Gimli, Manitoba, Canada on July 23, 1983. In June 1982, British Airways Flight 9, a Boeing 747 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Perth flew into a plume of volcanic ash and lost power in all four engines, three of which subsequently recovered, eventually diverting to Jakarta. On April 28, 1988, Aloha Airlines Flight 243 experienced an explosive decompression when approximately 35 square metres (380 sq ft) of aluminium skin separated from the fuselage. The flight was successfully diverted to Kahului Airport with only one casualty, flight attendant Clarabelle "C.B." Lansing who was sucked out when the cabin depressurized. [2]
Less than a month later, another 737, TACA Flight 110, lost both engines due to bad weather but was able to make a successful deadstick landing on a grass levee on the grounds of NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility outside New Orleans, with minor injuries to the passengers and minor damage to the aircraft. Investigations drove the engine manufacturer, CFM International, to modify the engine design to prevent future power loss.
One year later, United Airlines Flight 811, a Boeing 747, suffered a cargo door failure in-flight, separating a section of fuselage with 9 passengers and resulted in cabin depressurization. The plane made a successful emergency landing at Honolulu International Airport. [3] More recently, Air Transat Flight 236, an Airbus A330, ran out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean on August 24, 2001, and made a successful forced landing in the Azores. On November 1, 2011, a Boeing 767 LOT Polish Airlines Flight 016 made a belly landing after a central hydraulic system failure at Warsaw, Poland's Frederic Chopin International Airport, with no injuries. [4]
A less successful crash landing involved Southern Airways Flight 242 on April 4, 1977. The DC-9 lost both of its engines due to hail and heavy rain in a thunderstorm and, unable to glide to an airport, made a forced landing on a highway near New Hope, Georgia, United States. The plane made a hard landing and was still carrying a large amount of fuel, so it burst into flames, killing the majority of the passengers and several people on the ground.
Airliners frequently make emergency landings, and almost all of them are uneventful. However, because of their inherent uncertain nature, they can quickly become crash landings or worse. Some notable instances include United Airlines Flight 232, which broke up while landing at Sioux City, Iowa, United States on July 19, 1989; and Air Canada Flight 797, which burned after landing at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport on June 2, 1983, after a fire started in the cabin.
Shannon Airport in Ireland has a high number of emergency landings from trans-Atlantic flights, as it is the first major airport after the eastbound ocean crossing. [5] [6]
On April 29, 2007, a bird was ingested into the right engine of a Boeing 757 departing Manchester (UK) airport, just as the plane rotated off the runway (flight Thomson 253H). The pilot subsequently made a successful precautionary landing. [7]
Saudia, formerly known as Saudi Arabian Airlines, is the flag carrier of Saudi Arabia, based in Jeddah. The airline's main hub is at King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah and King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh.
Air Canada Flight 143, commonly known as the Gimli Glider, was a Canadian scheduled domestic passenger flight between Montreal and Edmonton that ran out of fuel on Saturday, July 23, 1983, at an altitude of 41,000 feet (12,500 m), midway through the flight. The flight crew successfully glided the Boeing 767 to an emergency landing at a former Royal Canadian Air Force base in Gimli, Manitoba, which had been converted to a racetrack, Gimli Motorsports Park. It resulted in no serious injuries to passengers or persons on the ground, and only minor damage to the aircraft. The aircraft was repaired and remained in service until its retirement in 2008. This unusual aviation incident earned the aircraft the nickname "Gimli Glider."
A deadstick landing, also called a dead-stick landing, is a type of forced landing when an aircraft loses all of its propulsive power and is forced to land. The "stick" does not refer to the flight controls, which in most aircraft are either fully or partially functional without engine power, but to the traditional wooden propeller, which without power would just be a "dead stick". When a pilot makes an emergency landing of an aircraft that has some or all of its propulsive power still available, the procedure is known as a precautionary landing.
British Airways Flight 009, sometimes referred to by its callsign Speedbird 9 or as the Jakarta incident, was a scheduled British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Auckland, with stops in Bombay, Kuala Lumpur, Perth, and Melbourne.
Gimli Industrial Park Airport is a civilian airport and former military field located 2 nautical miles west of Gimli, Manitoba, Canada.
TACA Flight 110 was a scheduled international airline flight operated by TACA International Airlines, traveling from San Salvador to New Orleans, with a stopover in Belize City. On May 24, 1988, the flight encountered severe thunderstorm activity on its final approach to New Orleans International Airport. As a result, the brand new Boeing 737-300 suffered flameout in both engines while descending through a severe thunderstorm, but the pilots made a successful emergency landing on a grass levee adjacent to NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility, with no one aboard sustaining more than a few minor injuries, and with only minor hail damage to the intact aircraft. Following an on-site engine replacement, the jetliner took off from Saturn Boulevard, a road which had previously been an aircraft runway at Michoud. The aircraft was subsequently repaired and returned to service until it finally retired in 2016.
In aviation, a water landing is, in the broadest sense, an aircraft landing on a body of water. Seaplanes, such as floatplanes and flying boats, land on water as a normal operation. Ditching is a controlled emergency landing on the water surface in an aircraft not designed for the purpose, a very rare occurrence. Controlled flight into the surface and uncontrolled flight ending in a body of water are generally not considered water landings or ditching.
Falling from the Sky: Flight 174 is a 1995 Canadian thriller film directed by Jorge Montesi. Based on the events of Air Canada Flight 143, the film stars William Devane, Scott Hylands, Shelley Hack and Mariette Hartley. Set in 1983, the film follows the crew, their families and the passengers of the flight, from the preparations for departure to the emergency landing on an abandoned airfield in Manitoba, and everything in between.
In an internal combustion engine, fuel starvation is the failure of the fuel system to supply sufficient fuel to allow the engine to run properly, for example due to blockage, vapor lock, contamination by water, malfunction of the fuel pump or incorrect operation, leading to loss of power or engine stoppage. There is still fuel in the tank(s), but it is unable to get to the engine(s) in sufficient quantity. By contrast, fuel exhaustion is an occurrence in which the vehicle in question becomes completely devoid of usable fuel, with results similar to those of fuel starvation.
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ALM Antillean Airlines Flight 980 was a flight scheduled to fly from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City to Princess Juliana International Airport in St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles, on May 2, 1970. After several unsuccessful landing attempts, the aircraft's fuel was exhausted, and it made a forced water landing in the Caribbean Sea 48 km off St. Croix, with 23 fatalities and 40 survivors. The accident is one of a small number of intentional water ditchings of jet airliners.
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