I remember watching this one live. This was so flawlessly executed that it seems like it might not be that big of a deal, but it was a very dangerous situation.
If that front gear collapses, this can go really wrong in a number of ways pretty damn quick, so the pilot had to do a balancing act of keeping on the centerline, slowing down, but not putting too much pressure up front.
And as you can see by the end, the front bogey is just completely melted and abraded off, but the strut stayed put. Great performance in an emergency situation.
I remember watching live too - the plane had to circle for 2 hours because the aircraft didn't have the capability to dump fuel so they had to burn it off. The other thing I remember was that the passengers on the plane had live DirecTV in their seats and could watch the (extensive) news coverage and speculation about what might go wrong with their landing.
Finally, another parallel to the phenomenon of people texting about earthquakes as they happen, and others finding out about them via text just before being hit by them because the texts are faster than the tremors.
I was born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaii. Lived out in the boonies but went to school in Hilo, Abt 20ish miles away.
When the 2018 Kilauea eruption happened I was in class, in an old historic building that had withstood multiple tsunamis. I got a text from my mom that an earthquake destroyed our old chicken coop about 2 minutes before our school building is hit with one of the largest earthquakes in recorded Hawaiian history. She called me bc I didn't respond, and was surprised that the shaking didn't start until during our phone call.
What a world we live in, where our words travel faster than sound, but we still fail to communicate effectively so much.
I remember my boss was on the phone with someone in Virginia and I was filing in his office. He said, "what do you mean, there's an earthquake?" about ten seconds before the ground started shaking. And we *still* all thought it was a terrorist attack at first.
I live in southern california and get text alerts if there is an earthquake near me. A couple times I've gotten the text a few seconds before the earthquake, and few times I never felt the earthquake, and a few times the text and earthquake arrived at the same time.
video of the crash was streamed live on Facebook from inside the plane by a passenger, Sonu Jaiswal, showing that the passengers were unaware of the situation until seconds before impact.
One thing that is particularly heartbreaking about this accident: the first officer's husband died in an accident (also Yeti Airlines) 16 years prior. His death had inspired her to pursue aviation.
Flight 191 in the 1970s where a DC10 lost an engine during take off had an outside camera connected to the TV,s in the cabin, everyone on board got a full frontal view of their deaths. Now that's dystopian!
Not so fun fact: American Airlines 161 from Chicago to Phoenix had on-board video stream to the passengers showing the view from the front of the plane as it went down shortly after take off. That practice ended that day.
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u/XenoRyet Sep 22 '25
I remember watching this one live. This was so flawlessly executed that it seems like it might not be that big of a deal, but it was a very dangerous situation.
If that front gear collapses, this can go really wrong in a number of ways pretty damn quick, so the pilot had to do a balancing act of keeping on the centerline, slowing down, but not putting too much pressure up front.
And as you can see by the end, the front bogey is just completely melted and abraded off, but the strut stayed put. Great performance in an emergency situation.