Tuesday, January 5, 2010

A Scenic Flight Ends with Overrun

I was practicing my flying in FlightGear last night and just circling the airport and it was getting late - so, instead of exiting the flightsim I do what any hardcore simhead would do; turn back to the airport, and land.

Land I did. In my hurry to land and go back to sleep, I made multiple mistakes - approaching the airport too high, and as a result I had to basically dive the plane into approach; this came in way too fast to the airport, and made a series of careless turns to align with the runway.

The end result? I went onto the runway with idle engines, but the airspeed still going at 170-180 kias, floated above the runway for a while while the speed bled off, hit the runway unevenly past the midway point, and realizing the brakes were not doing the job I used the parking brakes - and I still went off the runway for quite a distance before I stopped.

Needless to say the CitationX I was flying got stuck in the ground. That was when I exited FlightGear.

If this were real life I would've not only gone off the runway, but hit various obstacles like trees people and buildings. Not good.

Lesson? Don't rush the landings. It would be OK in sims but certainly not OK in real life.