(also check out this older post: Video Proof: Boeing 777 Is Built Ford Tough!)
Watching this video captured earlier today of an All Nippon Airways Boeing 767 making a hard landing at Tokyo Narita Airport seems kinda funny at first... it looks a lot like of those wacky landing videos that you've probably seen before on youtube on some night when you couldn't sleep. But, while it appears no one was hurt in this incident, the airplane is damaged pretty severely in this landing.
In the video you'll see views from both the right and left side of the aircraft once parked at the gate that show substantial fuselage skin wrinkling. And I would guess if there's that much visible damage, then there's probably a lot more that isn't easily seen. Wow, that's gonna be a really expensive repair, and then there's always the possibility that the basic airframe is damaged bad enough to end up being scrapped. Either way it's not a good day for the crew. Even if the investigation shows that it wasn't pilot error, no one wants to be be sitting up front when an airplane is damaged bad enough to require scrapping.
Image may be NSFW.
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Video screenshot: ANA 767 with visible skin wrinkles after hard landing early today
We seem to see so much more of these kind of hard landings these days (with or without damage), but it's very important to remember that easy-to-shoot video is everywhere in this modern life. It wasn't all that long ago that the vast majority of airliner landings were made with absolutely no visual record of them. Tho I will say that it would sure be interesting to see some data on the number of landings that result in airframe damage today compared to 40 years ago.
It'll be interesting to see what the outcome is for this particular airframe, hopefully that info will be easy to find when it's finally determined what the full the extent of the damage is. Ultimately tho, I'd sure like us to get to the point where airframes that are expected to operate for thousands and thousands of cycles never have to endure the stress that these hard landings impart into them.
