Cool airplane video

[ctaylor738]

To commemerate VE day, 38 WW II airplanes flew over the National Mall.  One plane had "issues" and had to make an emergency landing at Reagan National.  Here is the cockpit video.

https://youtu.be/HkvcwXqBJDQ

Fortunately everything turned out OK.

CT

[49er]

Great Video and a great pilot. My cousin flew an Avenger in WW2 and now I can only imagine what it must have been like for him to fly one all those years ago. Thanks for posting.

John

[Flyair]

Amazing video and perfect landing. The pilot looks very calm, which has certainly contributed to the good execution of all manoeuvres.
Bit surprised he did not shut down the engin on approach and put the prop in right position, but maybe the video does not show it properly.

   

[Rolf-Dieter ✝︎]

Great video coverages! Thanks for sharing this Chuck, I will send it to my brother in law he delivered planes to England from Canada and had to once jump out of one due to a cockpit fire. The plane then crushed and made such a large impact hole that folks assumed he had parishes during the crash. Once he arrived in London with his parashut he read his own obituary in the paper. He will relate to this video, only in his case the cockpit was filled with smoke.

[GGR]

There is very little time between the appearance of smoke and the decision to divert to Reagan Airport. I guess this is thanks to responsible behavior and training. Also, there does not seem to be any communication with the Airport tower asking for emergency landing and clear traffic, or did I miss it? The airport must have been on stand by with normal traffic interrupted during the event. This is quite a busy airport and these veteran planes were indeed crossing the landing path of civil traffic, may be not at the same altitude though.

[Flyair]

GGR
there is an exchange between the pilot and the controller about the fire. What we do not know is if the pilot declared it on the local tower frequency or for ex. on the emergency frequency 123,45. In such a case automatically the procedures are put in place and everybody gets alerted:  and the airport cleans up the traffic etc etc

In any case the guy was lucky that an airport with all emergency equipment came handy. One remark: the evacuation (exit) from the cabine seems pretty long, but this is only an impression from my comfortable chair...

[stickandrudderman]

Very interesting.
I'll watch it again later when I can turn the sound up but to me it looks like he could have held off with the flaps and gear to preserve some height until he was sure he had the runway made. The approach looks very shallow and left little room for error but of course I only have the video with which to assess the situation.
I have suffered an EFATO (Engine Failure After Take Off) and can attest that the human brain is capable of very clear thought under duress!

[GGR]

I thought the radio exchange was with the other planes, not the tower.

Reagan airport is very busy. It is very close to DC (basically one crosses the bridge on the Potomac and ends up right on the Mole, with the White House and Congress right there) and civil airliners land and take off one after the other. I'm pretty sure civil traffic had been put on hold during the duration of the event. The pilot just directed the plane towards the runway and landed there, it all happened in a couple of minutes. I don't think the pilot would have done that if he didn't know in advance the runway was free for him to land. I beleive that in normal circumstances, after receiving the request for emergency landing, the tower informs the pilot that his/her way is clear and instructs him/her on which runway to land on. I didn't hear that happening here, or did I miss it?

[ctaylor738]

My understanding is that Reagan was closed for two hours during the flyover.  Here's my favorite picture - Fifi, the only flying B-29 left, in front of the Washington monument.