A380-800 Landing at KSFO Cockpit Video

[petermcleland]

A fabulous and extremely well produced video...Thanks for posting it, and I really enjoyed it

[Chris Trott]

That was fun. I like how the captain gets exasperated when ATC first gives them the visual before correcting himself and giving them the "proper" ILS. You European pilots need to remember we're a bit more relaxed over here. When it's a beautiful day like that, most pilots, no matter what size plane, prefer visual approaches and ATC prefers to give them as much as possible because it lets them focus on collisions more than turn points. It takes ATC some getting used to when they start handling the European "Heavy Iron" which is used to almost exclusively flying ILS approaches no matter what the weather. I know several pilots over here that still have a hard time understanding why they're always getting ILS approaches when flying into European airports because of this and they've been flying across the Pond for more than a few years. I' never got used to having an "Engineer" who's not the Flight Engineer on the ground with me when I was fueling Lufthansa and British Airways and (in the case of Lufty) insisting on setting the fuel panel even though I'd passed all their training and proven that I knew how to fuel the thing.

I used to have fun with the Lufty station engineer though. He was a very good spirited fellow and could take a prank every now and again. Watched him nearly jump out of his shoes one afternoon when I hard stopped the fuel flow while he was putting oil in the #3 engine (A340-200). Didn't hurt the plane, but the stop caused the plane to shudder a bit as the fuel hoses flexed when the fuel flow suddenly stopped and the poppet valves on the wing slammed shut.

[airboatr]

Chris,..... Is that wht the boss is paying you to do? Is they? No I think not.

[Chris Trott]

Well, he was paying me to check the various safety systems on the truck while flowing fuel (per Lufthansa's manual), I just had discretion on when and how I did it, so you could get some "interesting" results (not dangerous to the truck or aircraft) when you did.

[airboatr]

how convenient

[grumpyoldb]

Thank you. I enjoyed that.

[Garry Russell]

Interesting what you say about more visuals and more and more relaxed in the US

Is that why you've had so many collisions between airliners and light aircraft compared to the UK??

[NigelC]

Interesting what you say about more visuals and more and more relaxed in the US

Is that why you've had so many collisions between airliners and light aircraft compared to the UK??

Wham! Get in there! No prisoners, no prisoners!

[NigelC]

Thing that gets me about US, and it's led to many near misses, is the use of cross runways. LH454 Super is cleared to land 28R and Redwood 342 is cleared take off 01R ten seconds later. OK, plenty of room on this occasion, but it's a recipe for disaster.

[Tonks]

A lot if companies won't let their crews do that Nigel... the RAF for one. We refuse to accept the "Land and hold short" clearance. I am not sure I would describe the US as being more or less relaxed than anywhere else tbh. I was quite surprised at the lack of SOP calls in the video... most airlines are very hot on them. Also very surprised he took the auto thrust out... I bet there are many that don't LOL.

Driving an Airbus is different, but I have to say it is remarkably good fun... just not the same as driving the 50 year old Queen of the Skies!

Tonks