The approach in to Toncontin airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras is probably one of the more challenging things in civil aviation. Here’s how it looks from the ground -
And here’s how it looks from the cockpit – be sure to listen up for the dialogue at the end.
And finally, here’s what it looks like when you’re doing it wrong.
Flight 390 operated by El Salvador airline TACA with an Airbus A320 overran the runway upon landing at 9:45 am today at Toncontin Airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Local press reports indicate the aircraft skidded off the runway, veered onto a road and smashed into a car and a building. The aircraft was reportedly broken into three parts and was spewing more than 2,000 gallons of fuel.
Ouch.
I can just hear the chat between pilot and co-pilot. Co-pilot says, “Do you smell something funny?” “Smell it, I’m sitting in it!”
Grumpy
That’s an awful lot of tire smoke on touch-down. Obviously, tires going from 0-150mph in the space of 50 feet are going to burn a little, but it does make me wonder why the aircraft manufacturers don’t add an internal hub with some blades on it to catch the wind? As the gear drops the windstream would start rotating the tires up to somewhere approaching ground speed. At a couple grand a tire, I’m sure it’d pay for itself rather quickly.
Just think, at some point someone thought to themselves, “This looks like a good place to put the airport.”
Wouldn’t the takeoff be harder than even landing?
Those planes had to take off again…much heavier with a full load of fuel. Yikes.
Instrument approach, anyone?
Sporty. It looked like fun to me, but probably not with 150 odd people behind you.
Looks a bit like landing West in Reno (VFR only) or even the approach to land South. (The terrain warning goes off there when on glide slope during a normal instrument approach. Unnerving that; especially when you’re in the goo. )
Then there’s the approach to Medford, Oregon. Challenging, particularly with low vis. or strong, gusty winds.
Or the approach to the mountain-top airport at Baguio in the Philippines. Depth perception is impaired and you’re looking at a thousand foot dropoff if you don’t get stopped.
Memories. I’ve got a few.
Just before that crash there was discussion in our shop (we had a flight enroute) about how TGU was below mins due to viz being impacted by heavy rains from TS Alma, and it might be a good idea to talk to SAP about diverting. It wasn’t 5 minutes later the flight reported that ATC said TGU was closed due to a disabled aircraft.
Re the tire smoke. At high altitude airports like this one, tire rotation speed is a limiting performance factor due to the high ground speeds for a given IAS.
And operations in and out of TGU always take a significant weight penalty. Especially if you have to take off towards the hill. Also, its even worse either way when its wet.
That’s something I’ve never thought about — do jets produce more power when it’s raining or humid, due to the water flashing to steam at 22.4x its volume (plus further expansion as it’s heated above boiling), or does it cool the whole shebang enough to cause a net loss of thrust due to lower exhaust temperatures?
I can’t imagine it would hurt the efficiency of the turbines, though on a piston-engined aircraft I imagine it would cause a significant horsepower loss unless some form of supercharging were employed.
– Max
Duh! I hate it when I’m stupid. It would really depend upon the engine itself, wouldn’t it? Humid air being less dense turbofans, especially high-bypass turbofans, are going to produce less power. A turbojet or ramjet, on the other hand, might see a slight increase in power.
Lex? You flew low-bypass turbofans if I’m not mistaken. What’s your recollection on those?
– Max
I can’t ever recall having seen a performance chart that had humidity on any axis. Temperature and pressure altitude, as far as I can recollect.
If I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll be corrected soon
Thank you Lex — you’ve at least told me my theory is only useful for significant values of calculator-punching and navel-gazing as opposed to anything useful. Which, as an armchair pontificator, is about par for the course.
Helo’s use turbojets, don’t they? I mean, they’re extracting power from the turbine side, the compressor side pretty much serves to provide power to the turbine, any thrust produced is more a by-product than a design goal. Any of you rotary-wing guys remember if engine power was affected by rain or humidity?
Remember, humidity and rain are different. Rain cools the atmosphere leading to denser air, while humidity displaces O2 and N2 with that lightweight H20 stuff, leading to less dense air.
Some day I really ought to study this and try for a private pilot license, just so I can put into practice what I supposedly learned in physics so long ago.
Of course, being wrong in the air would be much more spectacular than it is here… Maybe I ought to give that a pass until the little tricycle motor is off to college herself.
– Max
Applying my years of training in thrust dynamics here… why was it that older KC-135s had a thrust booster that basically consisted of nozzles spraying water vapor into the airflow?
Zane,
The old water wagons, civil and military, relied on increasing the mass of the air being pushed out the back end. More mass equals more thrust. Injecting water into the airflow increases the density(mass) of the air.
Bzzzzzzzzz!
Bill C, Water vapor (humidity) reduces the density of the air mass by displacing N2 or O2 molecules with lighter H2O molecules. Thrust augmentation happens due to volume expansion as the injected liquid vaporizes.
Wet or standing water on the runway, or bad RCR, take a field arrestment! Never seen a Navy jet take a trap except on TV? Got to Oceana or Lee-more after a heavy rain and watck! A requirement especially for the Hornet for reasons best left to Lex. Maybe now that he is retired he can point out some ‘warts’…LOL.
Flying through rainshowers made the M.O. happy I remember. Once less aircraft wash and dangerous wing walking for the troops…. BTW, we do wash engines, while they are running, with a solution that is mostly water.
b2
Just got word that the President of Honduras will be keeping TGU closed to jet aircraft ops UFN, pending a determination if flying jets into there is safe.
It will be interesting to see how much pressure will come to bear from EADS, Boeing, and IATA….
That approach reminds me of landing at Midway Airport (MDW) on the SW side of Chicago, on pretty much all the runways. Reportedly pilots refer to MDW as “the bulls eye” because it’s residential on all four sides right up to the fence line surrounding the airport, you zip in right over the rooftops. It’s especially hair-raising in bad weather.
Scarily though, from the vantage point in the first video it looks awful easy to knock one of those planes down.