It’s not exactly the same thing, but I’m reminded of that American MD-82 that crashed in Little Rock, AR a while back (AAL1420, I think). Bad judgement by the pilot attempting to land in a thunderstorm with the winds going 30 knots gusting to 45 and poor visibility, and he couldn’t keep it on the runway when he finally wrestled it on the ground.
I don’t know what the maximum allowable crosswind is on an A320, but he had to be close to it even before the gust. You could tell by the grass and the sound on the video that the wind was really howling.
It’s easy for us here to sit back and say “oh, he shouldn’t have landed, he should’ve diverted”, but think about the situation he’s in. If the tower tells him the wind, and they’re manageable for the aircraft (supposedly), is he going to risk his career diverting the aircraft from Hamburg to an alternate, disrupt 130+ passengers’ itineraries and Lufthansa’s schedules, and in general stick his neck out? Maybe he should’ve, but that’s an awful lot of pressure to buck, especially when everybody else has been getting into Hamburg on that runway just fine before him.
}:-)4
>>>>especially when everybody else has been getting into Hamburg on that runway just fine before him.
Eastern parked a 727 about 800 feet short of the threshold of 22L at Kennedy for that very same reason.
At Little Rock the Captain was the Ace of the Base, and senior AA captain at O’Hare. The copilot was a brand new hire.
The old guy was going to show the kid how real pilots did it, and the kid was too scared to push the throttles forward.
RIP