Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by reisse 532 days ago
No amount of ample room will help if the plane touches down overshooting more than half of the runway.

Furthermore (this is pure speculation at the moment) I think chances are the crew were kind of cosplaying PIA PK-8303 - forgot about landing gears in a stress from bird strike, attempted go-around after realising it, but had not enough power from engines due to bird strike or ground hit. It's plausible final investigation report will conclude absence of localizer antennas wouldn't save them.

3 comments

History says otherwise.

Most runway overruns occur with no or few fatalities:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42606790>

I looked into all of those and of the ones that had speeds available, they were half or less than half the speed at the time of overrun
Yes, because the speed was lower. Kinetic energy increases with speed squared. Uncontrolled 300 km/h on the ground kills you in any vehicle.
That's a fair argument, and I've noted the kinetic energy aspect elsewhere in this discussion.

That said, based on my observations of the terrain past the runway / airport threshold, it seems to me that absent the Muan Murder Wall, survivability would have been far higher in this case. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42607464>

I've yet to find a source that does a better job of organising incidents by landing speed / profile in a way which might better provide for more direct comparisons.

People keep saying "half the runway", "more than half the runway" in this thread. The linked article has a large graphic saying the plane touched down about a third of the way down the runway.
So survival chance of hitting a concrete wall and open field would be same?

I don't think so.