I was a passenger on this flight, seat 2C. Yes I felt the strike, it was a loud bang as if we blew a tire, followed by intense vibrations which shook all the luggage in the overhead compartments . Seemed like we used all the runway with only the nose off the ground until finally we lifted off and the vibrations stopped. There was only one communication from the pilot (in Portuguese) telling us there was a problem and we would be dumping fuel and returning immediately. We landed safely about 90 mins later greeted by a couple dozen emergency vehicles, police and stunned looking ground crew. We didn’t receive any further communication from the flight crew except being counted a few times before exiting via air stairs. When we finally got on the bus I could see a nice hole in the underside of the tail. Fortunately everyone was calm throughout and we all walked away without any issues.
Thank you very much for your Eyewitness-Report! - PT-MUG performed a Ferry Flight on July 14th, 2024, to Sao Paulo and is in storage there since then (August 04th, 2024).
The rotation point [fulcrum] normally changes from MLG at liftoff to the aircraft Centre of Gravity. Over rotation after liftoff can therefore cause a tailstrike as the tail moves downwards. In this case, the rotation fulcrum transitioned to the tail - for a loooong time.
Hi Juan, as a turnaround coordinator who works in LIMC/MXP, from what i can ghater from the video, i would say that the tail strike began at the height of the intersection DA/DE of RWY 35L and ended at the height of the intersection EM/ EW, it would indicate that the tail strike lasted for 600m and the main landing gear lifted off a few instants after they passed EM/EW, which means that the airplane was effectively airborne at a distance of 650/700m form the RWY 17R threshold. To verify my theory, we can take into account the typical average Vr of a 777-3 (130-160Kt) and how long the tail strike lasted (~8/10").. it seems that math is matching my theory. Even though the tail drag was incredibly long, the damage that the aircraft reported was not serious, only the tail skid system was “ripped off”. As a matter of fact, the aircraft departed today from LIMC following a non major technical inspection. If you are interested to see photos and videos of the aircraft shortly after it landed back in LIMC, do not hesitate to reach me out. Take care Juan
Oh, so LATAM mechanics are just as incompetent as their pilots. That aircraft requires at least $10 million in repair work. And it ain't safe to fly until then.
If you scrape the tail for a couple hundred feet, that's a tail strike. If you drag the tail two thousand feet with your mains off the ground, that's gotta have a different name.
I have been watching your channel for quite some time now, but this is the first time you have put me on the floor out of my desk chair nearly dying of laughter. Slim Pickens would have done the same thing. I am willing to believe he came out of his grave just for a moment to laugh himself before going back to his long rest in appreciation for your well timed and very well chosen remark about this aviation...whatever this was. Thank you for the ab workout! I needed it!
I don't often comment on posts from anyone, but THIS is worthy! Juan's straight-faced dry humour - WOW! Beautiful. Anyway, I have years of maintenance and decades of ramp services experience and my immediate thought on this was the aft cargo load was unsecured and rolled back on acceleration for the takeoff roll. I'll be surprised if the back end crew didn't hear the thumping of the containers under their feet when they moved.
Been on a couple of commercial flights where the the take-off angle was so steep and so fast, you can feel the G-force ramming you into your seat. Jesus! What were the pilots thinking??
Move those wings forward a bit, get that landing gear count down a bit, and operate it just like that, just those three points will be enough for an extraordinary resemblance to an extra-large DC-3.
Pilots- where our wt&bal? .... dispatch - our system has been down for 6 months for cost control, just use the 777 manual charts, you'll be fine, what could go wrong? .... Pilots - well we're fired if we don't go "red flight" ... and fired if we can't get it off the ground...we'll give it a try i guess, we got the DO's "vaca sagrada" with us, we'll be fine right?..see ya!😉
Only time seeing someing like this was in Boeing's certification testing when it was done intentionally. Looks like a sevearly overly aft loaded aircraft when the nose shot up abruptly during the initially normal pull. I always beleived that a tail strike was the pilots fault until it happened to me. Heavy 767-300 international departurre. On rotation the nose shot up and the FDR showed I countered with forward pressure however we gently scraped the tailskid (no A/C tail damage other than some scratches on the tailskid pad). FA's in the back reported and we felt a slight vibration in the cockpit. Book called to not pressurize and to return for landing at nearest suitable airport and due to concern for structual condition we chose not to dump but to return and land. Made overweight landing (767 will be overweight for landing even when you dump all dumpable fuel on an international heavy departure). Filed ASAP report and went to the hearing. Board found us totally not responsible and cleared to return to line flying. Although the off load report showed the A/C loaded correctly, I questioned the validity of that report and other than being cleared of repsonsibility never got an answer as to why this happened.
Thank you for sharing your experience, Mike, of how it can happen when things are done right, even when taking immediate corrective action (Bagram NA 747). Good that you got your example out there to ward off the Boeing and foreign carrier crucifixes coming out.
Perhaps the load wasn’t secured, but it happened so quickly that perhaps it was loaded out of balance. Or extra cargo that the captain wasn’t aware of ?
We've all been there. Once you feel the thump in the controls, your seat, the entire airframe, and then you start hearing all the crashing noises of screeching metal and passengers screaming, the tendency is to want to rotate to about 50 degrees nose high to get off the ground and make it all stop.
If you have been there then I have to ask, what is the civilian equivalent of: Interview without coffee. Interview with tea but no biscuits. Interview with no tea and no biscuits? I'm gauging that this is definitely at the Interview with no tea and no biscuits (cookies) level of transgression?
@@pi-sx3mb Well I'm still ignorant as I'd never seen any of them, but having just viewed a clip I think I have a high chance of being amused by watching others. If you had to use ARRSEpedia to look up my reference, both that and Jackspeak are wonderful reference sources.
This unfortunately reminds me of a chartered TIA DC-8 that I saw crash at JFK in Sept of 1971. We were landing on the parallel when an aircraft took off almost vertically to about 300 ft and rolled and came down on the runway. NTSB said that asphalt pebbles from a newly paved taxiway that the aircraft taxied on jammed the elevator nose up. The pilots, both with a ton of time on the aircraft didn’t understand why there was early rotation and also didn’t realize the tail was dragging on takeoff. Instead of just stopping they decided to keep going and lift off sealing their fate. I’m glad this flight returned safely.
Tail strike incident reminds me of the root cause of Japan Air Lines Flight 123 disaster. On August 12, 1985, the Boeing 747 suffered a severe structural failure and decompression 12 minutes into the flight. Ultimately determined to be a failed bulkhead repair failure from an earlier tail strike.
Indeed! If this A/C is repaired rather than being written off I hope Boeing does a better repair job this time! With Boeing's current problems I would not be taking any bets on that...
But, as detailed in the Air Disasters/Mayday program, the aft bulkhead repair was supposed to last 10,000 hours and JAL had put 12,000 hours on the plane since the repair. Failures on all sides, except the crew, of course. They flew the plane for 30 minutes with no vertical stabilizer
@@cindysavage265 Hi Cindy; I think you may have a bit of a misunderstanding about the repair of the B747 that became flight JAL123. After the June 2nd 1978 tail strike the aircraft was inspected by Boeing and Boeing engineers designed a repair procedure that would have returned the airframe to a condition of "as manufactured" strength and fatigue resistance. In this case routine checks (mostly C and D checks) would be sufficient to ensure airframe integrity. Unfortunately the Boeing airframe repair people did NOT properly implement the repair designed by the engineers. The way in which the repair was done had 1 line of rivets taking the full load when there was supposed to be 2 lines of rivets. Nobody caught the error during the repair or afterwards. Since this was a fatigue failure the number of flight hours is not as important as the number of pressurization cycles. After the accident engineers calculated that the incorrectly done repair would fail at about 11,000 pressurization cycles. The aircraft actually underwent 12,318 cycles from the tail strike until the fatigue failure that caused the crash. It was not so much the loss of the vertical stabilizer that caused the crash but the fact that when the stabilizer departed the aircraft it ruptured all 4 hydraulic systems leaving the flight crew with no flight control other than differential engine thrust. If they had just 1 hydraulic system left they would have had a much better chance of landing the aircraft. See Pan Am flight 845 as an example.
@@cindysavage265 Hi Cindy; I think you may have a bit of a misunderstanding about the repair of the B747 that became flight JAL123. After the June 2nd 1978 tail strike the aircraft was inspected by Boeing and Boeing engineers designed a repair procedure that would have returned the airframe to a condition of "as manufactured" strength and fatigue resistance. In this case routine checks (mostly C and D checks) would be sufficient to ensure airframe integrity. Unfortunately the Boeing airframe repair people did NOT properly implement the repair designed by the engineers. The way in which the repair was done had 1 line of rivets taking the full load when there was supposed to be 2 lines of rivets. Nobody caught the error during the repair or afterwards. Since this was a fatigue failure the number of flight hours is not as important as the number of pressurization cycles. After the accident engineers calculated that the incorrectly done repair would fail at about 11,000 pressurization cycles. The aircraft actually underwent 12,318 cycles from the tail strike until the fatigue failure that caused the crash. It was not so much the loss of the vertical stabilizer that caused the crash but the fact that when the stabilizer departed the aircraft it ruptured all 4 hydraulic systems leaving the flight crew with no flight control other than differential engine thrust. If they had just 1 hydraulic system left they would have had a much better chance of landing the aircraft. See Pan Am flight 845 as an example.
I've seen one that's lasted this long. It was on a documentary on the 777 from like 30 years ago when Boeing was testing tail strikes. They had a block of oak strapped to the bottom of the fuselage just below the tail and dragged it all the way down the runway.
The mains actually came off before the tail. It was like one of those Boeing test flights where they strap railroad ties to the tail for an unstick test.
OUCH!! Gotta hear the pilots' story on that one... The MD80 is a long airplane that has a tail strike hazard at 11 degrees nose up, IIRC. Rotating at 2-3 degrees a second provides a normal liftoff, and we taught pilots to check whether the airplane was off the runway at 9 degrees nose up, and to pause there if the mains were still on the ground, increasing to the normal pitch attitude when the airplane was airborne.
I knew the NTSB inspector that led the team in Japan when 747 bulkhead broke. Rode same train in North VA when I was stationed in Pentagon; NTSB was at next stop (L’enfant).
I did this exact same thing, many years ago, in Flight Simulator. I had the trim set incorrectly, and the plane rotated itself, and rotated the tail into the runway. So my vote is on improperly set trim.
Unlikely as the TPS should prevent a tail strike unless the pilot overrides it. My vote is incorrect numbers used in the takeoff performance calculation resulting in early rotation or wrong flap set.
For Pete's sake! He held the tail down for 9 seconds. Once tailstrike is apparent, wouldn't you release some back pressure and get the tail up off the runway? What was the other pilot doing? Juan, you didn't discuss that.
I was on a 747 flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles and upon rotation the plane pitched up steeply and there was a very loud BANG sound and everybody felt the jolt of it from our seats. I thought for sure that they were going to go out and dump fuel and return but they pressed on with the flight and not a single word was mentioned about it over the speakers.
@@mikeh2520 I knew a pilot of a DC10 that aborted a take-off because of a compressor stall, he thought a bomb had taken the tail off the plane! One of our pilots had a bleed air valve stuck on a PT 6 and swore he had a catastrophic disc failure but it was only a compressor stall, so each situation is different and interpreted differently.
@@mikeh2520 I'm not saying it wasn't a tail strike, but loud bangs during the takeoff roll and rotation are at least equally likely to represent one of the following: blown tire, compressor stall, PACK blowout, bird strike, or a sudden shift of poorly-secured cargo. It would be pretty irresponsible of a crew to strike the tail so hard the whole plane knew it happened and then proceed to climb to altitude under pressurization.
Might be a weight and balance problem to made to over rotation worse. I flew the 767/300 and 767/400, taught to take your time rotating these big airplanes
CERTAINLY... The Aeromexico 767 at Madrid Barajas had to be scrapped. It was caused by a wrong W&B calculation done in Mexico City headquarters and sent to Madrid... In that unfortunate case, the flight crew assured they "felt nothing wrong", and it was the aircraft failing to pressurize and the oxygen masks dropping what made them to return...
And what about elevator Trim? Is that a possibility on the 777? Ive seen documentaries on aircraft, that the nose raised before Pilot input, or is that always a CG thing?
@@NicolaW72 Well, that Aeromexico 767 had a much shorter tail drag, so that both pilots said they felt noghing, but the stewardesses certainly felt it. It is one of the deficient aspects of todays cabin attendants training, that gives them so little training at recognizing abnormal conditions, and call the pilots to report those. The 767 was old and tge damage was localized but serious, so that the insurance company decided to write it off instead of repairing it. The skin was so eroded in a small area, that the pressurization could not be achieved at all.
Had a Capt drag the tail on a 727 one day (I was FO) Didn't break the hard landing safety wire on the tail skid No harm No foul Just cleaned the tail shoe luckily . Same Capt 2 days later had a hard landing that dropped 6 ceiling panels down on the pax. Don't knew what ever happened to him later in his career.
The landing gear on the 777-3-- has actuators to pivot the LG trucks to help prevent this from occurring, because the fuselage is so long it's easy to hit the tail. The system won't save you from such an aggressive rotation, however. The nose was pitched up what looks like 20-25 degrees, which is insane. The repair will be immense on that fuselage and pressure bulkhead.
The image that immediately came to mind was exactly that; dog dragging his butt across the floor. Think that pilot was thinking that he was flying a tail dragger.
I recall my days in testing, and that take-off is a required portion of aircraft certification. Of course when they do those tests, there is a sacrificial wood skid attached. The actual test is called “unstick” to ensure the plane CAN takeoff even in this anomalous condition, and I don’t know about the PIC, but the airplane did its part.
I pulled up Milan Malpensa in google earth. Based on the camera angle, it looks like the rotation happened near taxiway DE, just 1200 meters from the numbers at the end of 35L.
Not only am i aware, i choose to not care. I'm not a real pilot and don't want to be. I love knowing how airliners work. I would never want responsibility for people in that way.
One thing that maybe was a complicating factor is heat. It looked like a really hot day and perhaps he was too heavy and not airborne by the expected v1 position and tried to force it
"Epic" is the only word I can find. Glad that the return was handled professionally, now we await the FDR and CVR analysis. Something was clearly out of step here.
Geez.... I can't even imagine what that must have sounded like to the passengers. I wonder how many pairs of clean underwear the airline had to issue to those poor people.
Depending on the age of the a/c, number of pressure cycles and the decision of the insurance company, that incident could "total" that plane. To repair that plane could cost Millions $$$, many millions. Too bad...
I don´t know the pressure cycles and of course not insurance issues but this Aircraft was delivered in October 2012 to TAM, the predecessor of Latam in Brasil. It had btw suffered another incident back in December 2018, when it suffered a major electrical failure, resulting in an emergency landing.
The tale strikes I have seen usually still show the main landing gear at least still touching the runway at liftoff. This one seems to show the main gear being several feet above the runway at liftoff. The load on the tail section must have been far more because the main gear was carrying none of the aircraft weight. I would be surprised if it didn't wrinkle the fuselage as well. Big bucks to fix this one.
main gear was lifted of the ground, the wings having lifted the mains off the runway, for that matter most of the planes weight. however I'm sure the loads placed on the tail were complex and in exceedance regardless.
I was thinking that. At minimum, a check and or clean-up for objects liable to damage tyres. As you don't have military close take-offs, I suppose objects liable to cause FOD isn't an issue?
@@COIcultist FOD is always an issue. Debris from the tail strike could get sucked into engines during following takeoffs, could damage propellers, could get thrown around by thrust reversers.. that runway would have to be thoroughly swept and inspected (and likely repaired) before it could be used again.
@@stephenp448 Is it? I'm aware of the concept of FOD, but I always thought that part of the problem within the military was that aircraft were in close lines on the taxiways and could be taking off with multiple planes on the runway at the same time. FOD didn't just enter the engine because of suction, but because it was given momentum from the preceding aircraft. The sort of military instructional video they couldn't make now, *Dr FOD And The Wayward Body.* Some might call it sexist, but it's my bet no one fell asleep during that instructional video. It's on UA-cam.
@@COIcultist That could definitely happen, but debris lying on the ground can also be ingested.. jet engines generate an awful lot of suction on the front end (that's why ground handlers never walk in front of a running engine). Take pretty much any bad scenario you can imagine, and that's why FOD checks are done regularly on any runway - military or civilian.
@@stephenp448 Ground handlers are higher up than what is on the runway. There is for want of a better term a cone of vulnerability from the centre of the font of the engine. That is why a preceding aircraft that lifts material off the runway is so dangerous. I would have thought a check or sweeping for stuff that might cause tyre damage is enough. Tyre damage, what supposedly downed the Concorde. Well, tyre and debris flicked up to let fuel out. I don't know enough to say small stones or pieces of concrete wouldn't be a risk. So really I'm just wondering without being able to know.
Hi Juan, former C-141 Crew Chief here. (I know you use to be a driver) Back in the Heady Days of Norton AFB I was involved in the repair of '141 with a tail strike. Took all the skin off the bottom of the cargo ramp. bent frames and completely filed away the ramp bumper. The ramp bumper pad was to protect the ramp during ground loading ops and was never designed for that! All this from a minor tail strike, which this video certainly is not. Keep flying and keep safe!
Jokes aside (very good indeed haha), this is the same 773 (PTMUG) that suffered almost total electrical failure in 2018 (RAT deployed and only backup analogs instruments working until landing). If I'm not mistaken, a short in a single connector made the main and backup electrical distribution system shut down, even with power being generated normally (Final report IG - 190/CENIPA/2018)
Passengers be like: Fingernails on a chalkboard for like 30 seconds.... Pilots be like: "Do you hear something? Oh yeah, you still have 30 kts till Vr... Oh, I thought we were at Vr already, might as well maintain this attitude.."
Wikipedia..."Japan's Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission (AAIC),[2]: 129 assisted by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board,[3] concluded that the structural failure was caused by a faulty repair by Boeing technicians following a tailstrike incident seven years earlier. When the faulty repair eventually failed, it resulted in a rapid decompression that ripped off a large portion of the tail and caused the loss of all on-board hydraulic systems, disabling the aircraft's flight controls."
I was a passenger on this flight, seat 2C. Yes I felt the strike, it was a loud bang as if we blew a tire, followed by intense vibrations which shook all the luggage in the overhead compartments . Seemed like we used all the runway with only the nose off the ground until finally we lifted off and the vibrations stopped. There was only one communication from the pilot (in Portuguese) telling us there was a problem and we would be dumping fuel and returning immediately. We landed safely about 90 mins later greeted by a couple dozen emergency vehicles, police and stunned looking ground crew. We didn’t receive any further communication from the flight crew except being counted a few times before exiting via air stairs. When we finally got on the bus I could see a nice hole in the underside of the tail. Fortunately everyone was calm throughout and we all walked away without any issues.
Wow..
But the important thing is they got Blackrock ESG money for their DEI initiatives
Glad you're safe. Thanks for posting the update here!
Thank you very much for your Eyewitness-Report! - PT-MUG performed a Ferry Flight on July 14th, 2024, to Sao Paulo and is in storage there since then (August 04th, 2024).
That's not a tail strike. That's a tail drag.
plane wheelie*
My exact first thought. Word for word.
@@thegreenlake1115 So that's what that endorsement means. 🤔
Yeah he plowed a better furrow than the farmer next door!!!
Boeing 777 Decathlonliner
Impressive how the crew managed to keep the tail on the ground even after all the wheels had left the concrete.
Only professionals can do that 😅
@@kcoppa1500 hours in a Carbon Cub before going pro.
commitment to the takeoff attempt
Must have been a reduced pwr t.off., limited pwr
The rotation point [fulcrum] normally changes from MLG at liftoff to the aircraft Centre of Gravity. Over rotation after liftoff can therefore cause a tailstrike as the tail moves downwards. In this case, the rotation fulcrum transitioned to the tail - for a loooong time.
Hi Juan, as a turnaround coordinator who works in LIMC/MXP, from what i can ghater from the video, i would say that the tail strike began at the height of the intersection DA/DE of RWY 35L and ended at the height of the intersection EM/ EW, it would indicate that the tail strike lasted for 600m and the main landing gear lifted off a few instants after they passed EM/EW, which means that the airplane was effectively airborne at a distance of 650/700m form the RWY 17R threshold.
To verify my theory, we can take into account the typical average Vr of a 777-3
(130-160Kt) and how long the tail strike lasted (~8/10").. it seems that math is matching my theory.
Even though the tail drag was incredibly long, the damage that the aircraft reported was not serious, only the tail skid system was “ripped off”.
As a matter of fact, the aircraft departed today from LIMC following a non major technical inspection.
If you are interested to see photos and videos of the aircraft shortly after it landed back in LIMC, do not hesitate to reach me out.
Take care Juan
Oh, so LATAM mechanics are just as incompetent as their pilots. That aircraft requires at least $10 million in repair work. And it ain't safe to fly until then.
If you scrape the tail for a couple hundred feet, that's a tail strike. If you drag the tail two thousand feet with your mains off the ground, that's gotta have a different name.
a wheeelie
tail drag.
tail strike is momentary and generally on landing. this was a tail drag.
I’m hearing Bill Pullman in Independence Day “Let’s plow the road!”
It's a *dragster!*
Amazing to see the main gear lift off, while still digging a trench with the tail.
Incompetence and panic seems to be happening at the same time here.
Stanley Steamer “Toby’s new trick” comment and pic had me rolling Juan 😂😂😂
Same here - Actually burst out laughing.
Me too 😂
They can’t make commercials like that anymore!😂
@@robertwolcott215 If there is a brown streak on that runway, it's from the passengers.
@@vimmentors6747 😆
That pilot just got himself a new nickname “ skid marks”
Ex-pilot……
Yeah ... No need for a nickname
"cancha rayada" in their lingo lmao
Welcome to micky-d's
That pilot must be looking for a new job surely
I have been watching your channel for quite some time now, but this is the first time you have put me on the floor out of my desk chair nearly dying of laughter. Slim Pickens would have done the same thing. I am willing to believe he came out of his grave just for a moment to laugh himself before going back to his long rest in appreciation for your well timed and very well chosen remark about this aviation...whatever this was. Thank you for the ab workout! I needed it!
"Hard on the airplane and scares the passengers."
😂😂😂
Doing it this enthusiastically is also hard on the runway.
Going to have to start putting a tail wheel on the 777.. lol
And will negatively affect your career as an airline pilot!
true
“What in the wide, wide world of sports is a goin’ on’. LOL One of the best lines from Blazing Saddles.
If the surveyors told the flight crew about the quicksand on the runway, this wouldn't have happened.
Can't be more than 113'.
I prefer "You use your tongue purtier than a $20 whore." But yours is more applicable to this video. LOL
"Its a er"
The crew ate too much lasagna.
"Don't do this. It's hard on the airplane and scares the passengers." Thats great!
I don't often comment on posts from anyone, but THIS is worthy! Juan's straight-faced dry humour - WOW! Beautiful. Anyway, I have years of maintenance and decades of ramp services experience and my immediate thought on this was the aft cargo load was unsecured and rolled back on acceleration for the takeoff roll. I'll be surprised if the back end crew didn't hear the thumping of the containers under their feet when they moved.
Surprised not to see luggage exiting from the back. Remarkable.
Surprised not to see the APU guts spread on the runway
Or a few spare passengers.
There was big puff of black just before she lifted off. I wonder what that was?
Been on a couple of commercial flights where the the take-off angle was so steep and so fast, you can feel the G-force ramming you into your seat. Jesus! What were the pilots thinking??
Or the rear simply separate from the rest..
Juan doesn't often inject humor into his analysis, but when he does it's great.
Agreed! As soon as everyone is safe on the ground, let the jokes begin.
Give that man a tailwheel endorsement!
Move those wings forward a bit, get that landing gear count down a bit, and operate it just like that, just those three points will be enough for an extraordinary resemblance to an extra-large DC-3.
Latam should put "wheelie bars" on their 777s just like NHRA dragsters. Minimizes damage...
Maybe they forgot to tell the pilot that they took the training wheels 🛞 off 😝
Pilots- where our wt&bal? .... dispatch - our system has been down for 6 months for cost control, just use the 777 manual charts, you'll be fine, what could go wrong? .... Pilots - well we're fired if we don't go "red flight" ... and fired if we can't get it off the ground...we'll give it a try i guess, we got the DO's "vaca sagrada" with us, we'll be fine right?..see ya!😉
Only time seeing someing like this was in Boeing's certification testing when it was done intentionally. Looks like a sevearly overly aft loaded aircraft when the nose shot up abruptly during the initially normal pull. I always beleived that a tail strike was the pilots fault until it happened to me. Heavy 767-300 international departurre. On rotation the nose shot up and the FDR showed I countered with forward pressure however we gently scraped the tailskid (no A/C tail damage other than some scratches on the tailskid pad). FA's in the back reported and we felt a slight vibration in the cockpit. Book called to not pressurize and to return for landing at nearest suitable airport and due to concern for structual condition we chose not to dump but to return and land. Made overweight landing (767 will be overweight for landing even when you dump all dumpable fuel on an international heavy departure). Filed ASAP report and went to the hearing. Board found us totally not responsible and cleared to return to line flying. Although the off load report showed the A/C loaded correctly, I questioned the validity of that report and other than being cleared of repsonsibility never got an answer as to why this happened.
Thank you for sharing your experience, Mike, of how it can happen when things are done right, even when taking immediate corrective action (Bagram NA 747). Good that you got your example out there to ward off the Boeing and foreign carrier crucifixes coming out.
W/B hadn't occurred to me. I was wondering if improper elevator trim setting could cause this.
The answer may be "under the rug"?!
Perhaps the load wasn’t secured, but it happened so quickly that perhaps it was loaded out of balance. Or extra cargo that the captain wasn’t aware of ?
@@briancooney9952The stabilizer trim stetting is derived from weight and balance in larger aircraft.
Does the airport NOTAM now report the runway as 'Grooved?' 😂😂
I don't know much about tail striking a 777 but my dog used to do that on our carpet all the time... Thanks for including the link.
Ugh my cat does this too
@@barbaravyse660Seriously, they might have intestinal parasites. Have them checked out.
Worms makes them itch.
We've all been there.
Once you feel the thump in the controls, your seat, the entire airframe, and then you start hearing all the crashing noises of screeching metal and passengers screaming, the tendency is to want to rotate to about 50 degrees nose high to get off the ground and make it all stop.
Excellent observation! We are all F/A-18E/F Super Hornet ex-pilots!
If you have been there then I have to ask, what is the civilian equivalent of:
Interview without coffee. Interview with tea but no biscuits. Interview with no tea and no biscuits?
I'm gauging that this is definitely at the Interview with no tea and no biscuits (cookies) level of transgression?
@@COIcultist Well, it's along the lines of the "Office Space" interview with the Bobs.
@@pi-sx3mb Well I'm still ignorant as I'd never seen any of them, but having just viewed a clip I think I have a high chance of being amused by watching others.
If you had to use ARRSEpedia to look up my reference, both that and Jackspeak are wonderful reference sources.
That's an extremely normal takeoff for me in MSFS 😂
Do you also dump your fuel ? 😊
I’ve surly bumped the tail in MSFS, but never dragged like that…? Maybe if someone mods the PMDG 777 to become a taildragger…😅
AirForceproud 95 would agree with you
@@acurafillfilip9868 No need, after shaving off a bit extra weight he has a much lower fuel burn :D
@@Weightlossjourney24lmaoo
Gives a new meaning to the term Tail Dragger...
150 ton tail dragger
Cant wait to hear the Pilot recordings
its pretty hard to get a real tail dragger to do that on takeoff though
This unfortunately reminds me of a chartered TIA DC-8 that I saw crash at JFK in Sept of 1971. We were landing on the parallel when an aircraft took off almost vertically to about 300 ft and rolled and came down on the runway. NTSB said that asphalt pebbles from a newly paved taxiway that the aircraft taxied on jammed the elevator nose up. The pilots, both with a ton of time on the aircraft didn’t understand why there was early rotation and also didn’t realize the tail was dragging on takeoff. Instead of just stopping they decided to keep going and lift off sealing their fate. I’m glad this flight returned safely.
Tail strike incident reminds me of the root cause of Japan Air Lines Flight 123 disaster. On August 12, 1985, the Boeing 747 suffered a severe structural failure and decompression 12 minutes into the flight. Ultimately determined to be a failed bulkhead repair failure from an earlier tail strike.
Indeed! If this A/C is repaired rather than being written off I hope Boeing does a better repair job this time! With Boeing's current problems I would not be taking any bets on that...
Yes, indeed. The damaged aircraft had been (improperly) repaired at a Boeing repair facility in America, and not in Japan...
But, as detailed in the Air Disasters/Mayday program, the aft bulkhead repair was supposed to last 10,000 hours and JAL had put 12,000 hours on the plane since the repair. Failures on all sides, except the crew, of course. They flew the plane for 30 minutes with no vertical stabilizer
@@cindysavage265 Hi Cindy; I think you may have a bit of a misunderstanding about the repair of the B747 that became flight JAL123. After the June 2nd 1978 tail strike the aircraft was inspected by Boeing and Boeing engineers designed a repair procedure that would have returned the airframe to a condition of "as manufactured" strength and fatigue resistance. In this case routine checks (mostly C and D checks) would be sufficient to ensure airframe integrity. Unfortunately the Boeing airframe repair people did NOT properly implement the repair designed by the engineers. The way in which the repair was done had 1 line of rivets taking the full load when there was supposed to be 2 lines of rivets. Nobody caught the error during the repair or afterwards. Since this was a fatigue failure the number of flight hours is not as important as the number of pressurization cycles. After the accident engineers calculated that the incorrectly done repair would fail at about 11,000 pressurization cycles. The aircraft actually underwent 12,318 cycles from the tail strike until the fatigue failure that caused the crash. It was not so much the loss of the vertical stabilizer that caused the crash but the fact that when the stabilizer departed the aircraft it ruptured all 4 hydraulic systems leaving the flight crew with no flight control other than differential engine thrust. If they had just 1 hydraulic system left they would have had a much better chance of landing the aircraft. See Pan Am flight 845 as an example.
@@cindysavage265 Hi Cindy; I think you may have a bit of a misunderstanding about the repair of the B747 that became flight JAL123. After the June 2nd 1978 tail strike the aircraft was inspected by Boeing and Boeing engineers designed a repair procedure that would have returned the airframe to a condition of "as manufactured" strength and fatigue resistance. In this case routine checks (mostly C and D checks) would be sufficient to ensure airframe integrity. Unfortunately the Boeing airframe repair people did NOT properly implement the repair designed by the engineers. The way in which the repair was done had 1 line of rivets taking the full load when there was supposed to be 2 lines of rivets. Nobody caught the error during the repair or afterwards. Since this was a fatigue failure the number of flight hours is not as important as the number of pressurization cycles. After the accident engineers calculated that the incorrectly done repair would fail at about 11,000 pressurization cycles. The aircraft actually underwent 12,318 cycles from the tail strike until the fatigue failure that caused the crash. It was not so much the loss of the vertical stabilizer that caused the crash but the fact that when the stabilizer departed the aircraft it ruptured all 4 hydraulic systems leaving the flight crew with no flight control other than differential engine thrust. If they had just 1 hydraulic system left they would have had a much better chance of landing the aircraft. See Pan Am flight 845 as an example.
I've seen one that's lasted this long. It was on a documentary on the 777 from like 30 years ago when Boeing was testing tail strikes. They had a block of oak strapped to the bottom of the fuselage just below the tail and dragged it all the way down the runway.
That is a standard certification test for minimum unstick speed. FAA requirement.
Shows are tough these planes are.
But these pilots definitely pushed the envelope.
The investigation will be terrifying to read.
Still skidding the tail with the mains lifted off.
( I did this way back in a C-150 'practicing' a short field TO without the instructor 😲)
At this point they could’ve retracted the gear
It must have been a really bad itch…
@@tonamg53At least the aircraft didn't sit down and try to lick its backside.
The mains actually came off before the tail. It was like one of those Boeing test flights where they strap railroad ties to the tail for an unstick test.
@OfficialBlancoliriorr Sure Juan.
OUCH!! Gotta hear the pilots' story on that one...
The MD80 is a long airplane that has a tail strike hazard at 11 degrees nose up, IIRC. Rotating at 2-3 degrees a second provides a normal liftoff, and we taught pilots to check whether the airplane was off the runway at 9 degrees nose up, and to pause there if the mains were still on the ground, increasing to the normal pitch attitude when the airplane was airborne.
So they're supposed to hang out there at 9° until it finally lifts off, not drop the nose a little bit and try again?
Opinion here. I think the MD-80 is one of the most badass commercial jets ever made. And I fly 747’s all over the world. Always wanted to fly the -80.
Aft bulkhead damage brings down aircraft, number of bulkhead fasteners compromised is critical. Thanks Juan for your report.
I knew the NTSB inspector that led the team in Japan when 747 bulkhead broke. Rode same train in North VA when I was stationed in Pentagon; NTSB was at next stop (L’enfant).
1/3 aft bulkhead ground away.
@@alanholck7995 Was also thinking of the same JAL crash resulting from a damaged bulkhead due to poor maintenance.
I did this exact same thing, many years ago, in Flight Simulator. I had the trim set incorrectly, and the plane rotated itself, and rotated the tail into the runway. So my vote is on improperly set trim.
Unlikely as the TPS should prevent a tail strike unless the pilot overrides it. My vote is incorrect numbers used in the takeoff performance calculation resulting in early rotation or wrong flap set.
@@meofnz2320 I am in agreement with you, after watching countless Flight Channel videos documenting these situations!
Or perhaps a weight and balance issue with the loading?
"Ma this air o planes bath room looks like the out house back home"
"It's windy in there too"
"Ma?"
Looking forward to seeing the after pictures.
For Pete's sake! He held the tail down for 9 seconds. Once tailstrike is apparent, wouldn't you release some back pressure and get the tail up off the runway? What was the other pilot doing? Juan, you didn't discuss that.
I think that's why he brought up the possibility that the pilot thought the plane was too close to the end of the runway to reduce AoA.
Looks like a VMU test flight
My thoughts exactly!
Pretty sure when they complete the final report we'll get a good update from Juan.
The truth is out there...
It is great video with your knowledge of the 777. Looks like a kid doing a wheelie....
Man. 75 minutes in air just to come back where you started. I am sure the passengers were none too happy
I wonder how many frequent flyer miles they got out of that flight.
@@StreakinBill Many, Surely.
@@NicolaW72
Don’t call me Shirley.
@OfficialBlancoliriorr imposter account?
Omg. That old commercial you brought up took me back in time! I was laughing my butt off! I always enjoy your channel!
I was on a 747 flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles and upon rotation the plane pitched up steeply and there was a very loud BANG sound and everybody felt the jolt of it from our seats. I thought for sure that they were going to go out and dump fuel and return but they pressed on with the flight and not a single word was mentioned about it over the speakers.
Yikes!!!
Probably a compressor stall
@@waynemanning3262 No, it was a tail strike. A compressor stall results in a series of blasts that one doesn't feel at the seat.
@@mikeh2520 I knew a pilot of a DC10 that aborted a take-off because of a compressor stall, he thought a bomb had taken the tail off the plane! One of our pilots had a bleed air valve stuck on a PT 6 and swore he had a catastrophic disc failure but it was only a compressor stall, so each situation is different and interpreted differently.
@@mikeh2520 I'm not saying it wasn't a tail strike, but loud bangs during the takeoff roll and rotation are at least equally likely to represent one of the following: blown tire, compressor stall, PACK blowout, bird strike, or a sudden shift of poorly-secured cargo. It would be pretty irresponsible of a crew to strike the tail so hard the whole plane knew it happened and then proceed to climb to altitude under pressurization.
Might be a weight and balance problem to made to over rotation worse. I flew the 767/300 and 767/400, taught to take your time rotating these big airplanes
CERTAINLY... The Aeromexico 767 at Madrid Barajas had to be scrapped. It was caused by a wrong W&B calculation done in Mexico City headquarters and sent to Madrid... In that unfortunate case, the flight crew assured they "felt nothing wrong", and it was the aircraft failing to pressurize and the oxygen masks dropping what made them to return...
@@alfredomarquez9777 At least these Latam Pilots felt something and climbed never higher than 6000 feet.
And what about elevator Trim? Is that a possibility on the 777? Ive seen documentaries on aircraft, that the nose raised before Pilot input, or is that always a CG thing?
@@NicolaW72 Well, that Aeromexico 767 had a much shorter tail drag, so that both pilots said they felt noghing, but the stewardesses certainly felt it. It is one of the deficient aspects of todays cabin attendants training, that gives them so little training at recognizing abnormal conditions, and call the pilots to report those. The 767 was old and tge damage was localized but serious, so that the insurance company decided to write it off instead of repairing it. The skin was so eroded in a small area, that the pressurization could not be achieved at all.
@@bradnutter41 too much nose up trim could definitely cause over rotation and a tail strike
That might be a record of the most expensive take off.
The dog wiping its arse on the carpet is just the chef's kiss. 😄
Had a Capt drag the tail on a 727 one day (I was FO) Didn't break the hard landing safety wire on the tail skid
No harm No foul Just cleaned the tail shoe luckily . Same Capt 2 days later had a hard landing that dropped 6 ceiling panels down on the pax. Don't knew what ever happened to him later in his career.
This story sounds familiar… you’re not talking about Ron Rogers (retired UA) are you?
Back when Braniff was flying 727s out of Nashville, we thought that striking the tail was SOP for that bird. That and airshow ascent to altitude.
He probably went to work for Ryanair and got promoted. 😜
No A different name attached to this event Was a wild 3 day trip with someone who should have never been upgraded
That Stanley commercial bit was hilarious 🤣🤣
The landing gear on the 777-3-- has actuators to pivot the LG trucks to help prevent this from occurring, because the fuselage is so long it's easy to hit the tail. The system won't save you from such an aggressive rotation, however. The nose was pitched up what looks like 20-25 degrees, which is insane. The repair will be immense on that fuselage and pressure bulkhead.
Sweet fancy Moses! That looks like a VMU test
The image that immediately came to mind was exactly that; dog dragging his butt across the floor. Think that pilot was thinking that he was flying a tail dragger.
I was thinking that plane has worms.
Yeah, and the tail wagging the dog!
What an unbelievable Vmu demonstration. I wonder where the stab trim was set.
I recall my days in testing, and that take-off is a required portion of aircraft certification. Of course when they do those tests, there is a sacrificial wood skid attached. The actual test is called “unstick” to ensure the plane CAN takeoff even in this anomalous condition, and I don’t know about the PIC, but the airplane did its part.
The reference to Toby's trick is a blast !!
I pulled up Milan Malpensa in google earth. Based on the camera angle, it looks like the rotation happened near taxiway DE, just 1200 meters from the numbers at the end of 35L.
Thanks to modern flight sims, I tail strike 777-300 all the time. Good thing I'm just a digital pilot!
why? Is the Sim so poorly made or are you not aware of the rate and max angle of rotation?
Not only am i aware, i choose to not care. I'm not a real pilot and don't want to be. I love knowing how airliners work. I would never want responsibility for people in that way.
Man that's like the Unstick test. Reminds me of what happened JAL 123.
Loved the Stanley Steemer commercial reference 😂 I remember that
I would like to see photos of the aftermath.....both plane and runway surface. Imagine what that sounded like inside as a passenger - yikes!
😂 love the Stanley Steam reference/joke JB. Classic!!! My word that is just a brutal tailstrike. Unbelievable.
Juan, the Stanley Steamer reference, left me in need of oxygen.
Love the correlation with the Stanley Steamer ad...
Zk
Well, that 777 HAD a tail-strike indicator...
Would be interesting to follow this plane through the rest of its flying career to see if any other issues arise from this tail strike.
'Shirley, not ANOTHER captain's power-seat malfunction . . !? : )
…and don’t call me Shirley, Roger.
Who’s Shirley ?
One thing that maybe was a complicating factor is heat. It looked like a really hot day and perhaps he was too heavy and not airborne by the expected v1 position and tried to force it
Am I correct seeing the main gear off the runway and the tail still dragging? (at approximately 15 second mark)
Yes, they were clear!
A strike is a momentary thing. That was a tail drag.
The tail strike detector probably crawled up into the galley to report it.
Not the most desirable job on the plane.
@@user-sm3xq5ob5d haha except for the crash detector in the nose 😂
What a wild ride THAT must have been for the tail dwelling passengers and crew!
It’s hard on your career prospects too
The FOD cleanup probably took 2 hours
"Epic" is the only word I can find.
Glad that the return was handled professionally, now we await the FDR and CVR analysis.
Something was clearly out of step here.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Oh man, you killed me with that "Toby" reference!
That was one of my favorite commercials of all time. Thx for bringing that back. 🤣
I wonder what that was like for the passage gets in the rear seats.
probably sounded something like this... thump, crunch,BANG SCRAAAAAAAAAAPE
Looks like the mains left the runway BEFOR the tail did .
He was dragging even after the wheels were up.
Indeed.
Dude watched too many old school drag racing videos on his days off.
Geez.... I can't even imagine what that must have sounded like to the passengers. I wonder how many pairs of clean underwear the airline had to issue to those poor people.
lotta seats to be cleaned, too
Major skid marks on more than just the runway?
@@markcampanelli I wonder if the carpet cleaner will finally earn its pay?
I bet it messed up their spines.
The spares were in the cargo compartment
I'd be surprised if they COULD pressurize the cabin after that!!
Limited to VFR below 10,000 MSL only. LOL 😂
He didn´t. He flew never higher than 6000 feet after this tail drag, so there was no need to pressurize the aircraft.
Well, we’ve all heard the old aphorism, “If you’re going to do something, do it right.” He made a real show of it.
Depending on the age of the a/c, number of pressure cycles and the decision of the insurance company, that incident could "total" that plane. To repair that plane could cost Millions $$$, many millions. Too bad...
I don´t know the pressure cycles and of course not insurance issues but this Aircraft was delivered in October 2012 to TAM, the predecessor of Latam in Brasil. It had btw suffered another incident back in December 2018, when it suffered a major electrical failure, resulting in an emergency landing.
It's definitely a write-off. Once you damage the pressure bulkhead, it's done.
The tail strike indicator is the sound of shearing sheet metal.
Love the "blazing saddles" reference that humor goes all the way to 11.
The tale strikes I have seen usually still show the main landing gear at least still touching the runway at liftoff. This one seems to show the main gear being several feet above the runway at liftoff. The load on the tail section must have been far more because the main gear was carrying none of the aircraft weight. I would be surprised if it didn't wrinkle the fuselage as well. Big bucks to fix this one.
Oh, I'm sure there will be fuselage wrinkles.
main gear was lifted of the ground, the wings having lifted the mains off the runway, for that matter most of the planes weight. however I'm sure the loads placed on the tail were complex and in exceedance regardless.
@@nooneno12 Yea, I hadn't thought of the fact that something had to be lifting the gear. Didn't think it through properly.
I'm guessing that runway was closed for awhile. 😂
I was thinking that. At minimum, a check and or clean-up for objects liable to damage tyres. As you don't have military close take-offs, I suppose objects liable to cause FOD isn't an issue?
@@COIcultist FOD is always an issue. Debris from the tail strike could get sucked into engines during following takeoffs, could damage propellers, could get thrown around by thrust reversers.. that runway would have to be thoroughly swept and inspected (and likely repaired) before it could be used again.
@@stephenp448 Is it? I'm aware of the concept of FOD, but I always thought that part of the problem within the military was that aircraft were in close lines on the taxiways and could be taking off with multiple planes on the runway at the same time. FOD didn't just enter the engine because of suction, but because it was given momentum from the preceding aircraft. The sort of military instructional video they couldn't make now, *Dr FOD And The Wayward Body.* Some might call it sexist, but it's my bet no one fell asleep during that instructional video. It's on UA-cam.
@@COIcultist That could definitely happen, but debris lying on the ground can also be ingested.. jet engines generate an awful lot of suction on the front end (that's why ground handlers never walk in front of a running engine). Take pretty much any bad scenario you can imagine, and that's why FOD checks are done regularly on any runway - military or civilian.
@@stephenp448 Ground handlers are higher up than what is on the runway. There is for want of a better term a cone of vulnerability from the centre of the font of the engine. That is why a preceding aircraft that lifts material off the runway is so dangerous. I would have thought a check or sweeping for stuff that might cause tyre damage is enough. Tyre damage, what supposedly downed the Concorde. Well, tyre and debris flicked up to let fuel out. I don't know enough to say small stones or pieces of concrete wouldn't be a risk. So really I'm just wondering without being able to know.
Hi Juan, former C-141 Crew Chief here. (I know you use to be a driver) Back in the Heady Days of Norton AFB I was involved in the repair of '141 with a tail strike. Took all the skin off the bottom of the cargo ramp. bent frames and completely filed away the ramp bumper. The ramp bumper pad was to protect the ramp during ground loading ops and was never designed for that! All this from a minor tail strike, which this video certainly is not. Keep flying and keep safe!
They are going to look at EVERYTHING, from type rating, number of hours, hours in type, sim time, stage checks. The microscope comes out!
They’re also going to check the mechanic’s logs for the last deworming.
Well...99% of the aircraft was flying, but the tail said Not Yet !!
Pilot gets notice: You have just extended your contract by 40 years and pay will be docked 50% to cover repairs.
Not gonna cover a write-off lol
Jokes aside (very good indeed haha), this is the same 773 (PTMUG) that suffered almost total electrical failure in 2018 (RAT deployed and only backup analogs instruments working until landing). If I'm not mistaken, a short in a single connector made the main and backup electrical distribution system shut down, even with power being generated normally (Final report IG - 190/CENIPA/2018)
Passengers be like: Fingernails on a chalkboard for like 30 seconds.... Pilots be like: "Do you hear something? Oh yeah, you still have 30 kts till Vr... Oh, I thought we were at Vr already, might as well maintain this attitude.."
Amazing . Thanks a lot - your channel is absolutely the best.
I would love to see the damage this tail... drag did to this 777. Has to be huge!
I'll take "Improper takeoff trim set" for $100 Juan.
Fascinating... thanks again.
It looked like the mains left the ground while the tail skid was still plowing the concrete 😮
Yes.
If anyone is familiar with drag racing, that reminded me of the wheelstanders that pop a wheelie down the length of the track.
That Stanley Steamer ad is hillarious.. remeber the Pittsburg Platter ad, too?
Honestly, impressed with the structure of the 777 to handle such a destructive drag and fly still.
There's a Smithsonian Channel episode of Air Disasters where an improperly repaired aft bulkhead of a 747 imploded at altitude and brought it down.
Wikipedia..."Japan's Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission (AAIC),[2]: 129 assisted by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board,[3] concluded that the structural failure was caused by a faulty repair by Boeing technicians following a tailstrike incident seven years earlier. When the faulty repair eventually failed, it resulted in a rapid decompression that ripped off a large portion of the tail and caused the loss of all on-board hydraulic systems, disabling the aircraft's flight controls."
I hope someone was recording the takeoff in the cabin - I'm curious what that would have sounded like 😮
Awesome report Mr Browne. Thanks a million 👍👍👍👍🛩️🛩️🛩️
It looks to me like the mains are in the air, and the tail is still dragging. 😮
Holy cow! Glad everyone got down safely. Love the commercial reference!
It's hard on the plane you say?! It's hard on the RUNWAY!! 😆😆