Continental Boeing B737 dive-in landing

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Today I witnessed the craziest lading I could ever imagine; Juan Santamaria Intl Airport in Costa Rica is a tricky airport, especially in bad weather conditions. RWY 25 has no ILS and can only be used for visual approaches.
Today RWY 25 was the active runway, all the traffic was coming in visual with good weather conditions, until it started to rain moments before the Continental B737 (Flight CO 1446)landing.

The aircraft came in too high (see the attached photos, the DELTA photos, are just to illustrate how a normal approach and landing should look like. The photos were taken in the same spot) and made a dive in approach (very similar to the Twin Otters approaches) and landed with barely 2500feet of runway left (under wet runway conditions).

I couldn’t believe the crew didn’t made a go around, I know you should never judge a pilot by its landings, but this time I consider it was a very risky decision.

Wind was at 15kts, and as I understand is the tailwind limit of the 737.

[Crunk415balla]

More of a correction than you usually see, but looks like he got down okay. Thanks for sharing.

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They did got down ok, but I don't think safe enough with not enough runway in case any failure (brakes, reverse...). Afther landing they had to taxi very slow, took them almost 10 minutes to get to the gate, guess they were cooling down the brakes.

[atcvector]

Not really that bad a landing. Maybe a bit of a correction for wind gusts but they were level and looked to be at the proper attitude coming over the numbers and at touchdown. Calling this a "dive in landing" is a bit sensationalistic . Maybe you could be an aviation reporter for CNN.

[Foxtrot]

Re:

^If he's usually at that airport and knows how planes land normally, the CO jet probably did come at a steep dive in angle, one thing I've learnt is it's very hard for other people to know what happened just by looking at photos. Case in point, the UPS DC 8 video where it almost got knocked down just before flaring, I initially saw some photos of it before I saw the video, the video really showed how lose the plane was to a wing strike, the photos didn't even come close to the real thing.

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Not really that bad a landing. Maybe a bit of a correction for wind gusts but they were level and looked to be at the proper attitude coming over the numbers and at touchdown. Calling this a "dive in landing" is a bit sensationalistic . Maybe you could be an aviation reporter for CNN.

ATC Vector, have you ever been to MROC?

Not being sensationalistic about it, as Foxtrot says, the photos don't give you an impression of the actual attitude of the aircraft. In an usual approach, you should be able to see the ground in all the photos, but the 737 was way too high, when I saw it I thought he was going for a go around, since he added thrust to the engines.

My point is that it is not safe to land in the last 1/4 of runway left in wet conditions. Maybe you don't remember the TACA's 767 accident when it skidded off the runway.

As a private pilot, I have been thought to land at the first third of the runway, and fly a controlled approach, a good approach is essential for a good landing.

[tomas_cubero]

Here is the airport diagram you promised us:



I've seen similar landings and even some later ones but remember, a good landing is one you can walk away from.

Tomas.

[AJ]

Deep landings are an real issue in aviation, as overruns can have catastophic results.

We have specific touchdown zones for each aircraft type. A Quick Access Recorder will advise the company any time the aircraft lands long, and will trigger a hard alert if it is more that 2,500' down the runway. This is the result of an overrun of a company 747 in Bangkok.

Overruns can vary between embarrassing and fatal. If the Garuda 737 had wound up sitting in a golf course it would be embarrassing, the fact that there was an embankment made it fatal. F-GLZQ might still be flying today if it wasn't for the gully at Pearson.

I can't pass any judgement on the CO 737 as I wasn't on the flightdeck.

[JSchraub]

Deep landings are an real issue in aviation, as overruns can have catastophic results.

We have specific touchdown zones for each aircraft type. A Quick Access Recorder will advise the company any time the aircraft lands long, and will trigger a hard alert if it is more that 2,500' down the runway. This is the result of an overrun of a company 747 in Bangkok.

Overruns can vary between embarrassing and fatal. If the Garuda 737 had wound up sitting in a golf course it would be embarrassing, the fact that there was an embankment made it fatal. F-GLZQ might still be flying today if it wasn't for the gully at Pearson.

I can't pass any judgement on the CO 737 as I wasn't on the flightdeck.

That is very interesting about the recorder.. Does it report other things such as bank angle and such?

[AJ]

It records many, many parameters throughout the flight. Rotation rate, liftoff pitch, liftoff speed, climb speed, flap retraction/extension, landing flap selection altitude, approach speed, company speed restrictions (250 knots below 5,000', 210 knots below 3000'), short touchdowns, long touchdowns and so on.

Results are deidentified for analysis.

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AJ,

I'm not judging the CO 737 crew, but it was very impressive to see a landing like that.

A TACA F/O (Tirso Canales) was with me at that time and he was also impressed by the rate of descent of the aircraft. What happened was that the aircraft made an ILS approach to rwy 07 and circled to land on rwy 25 but made the left base turn too early to avoid the clouds, resulting in an inappropriate approach attitude.

There are some facts of the 737 that I’m not aware of, and would like to learn about them. What I can’t really understand is why to land an aircraft in those conditions if you have the option to perform a go-around.

Referring to the airport diagram, the aircraft landed near the Charlie intersection.

[Bok269]

Deep landings are an real issue in aviation, as overruns can have catastophic results.

We have specific touchdown zones for each aircraft type. A Quick Access Recorder will advise the company any time the aircraft lands long, and will trigger a hard alert if it is more that 2,500' down the runway. This is the result of an overrun of a company 747 in Bangkok.

it returned to service, correct?

[tsv]

it returned to service, correct?

Yes it returned to service after a fairly lengthy period of repairs.