The Gun Counter

Pilots of a Delta Airlines flight 1889 had to make an emergency landing - without being able to see out of the windshield - after baseball-sized hailstones wrecked the front of the plane.

The hail also destroyed the GPS navigation system at the front of the aircraft, which was flying from Boston to Salt Lake City on Friday night.

The pilots managed to land in Denver - where the passengers could see the extent of the damage to the Airbus 320's cone.

Many said they were lucky to be alive after relatively normal turbulence became a 'roller coaster' up in the air.

Pics and video at the link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -nose.html

Dipshit that thought seatbelt sign didn't apply to him was rushed to a local hospital.

Yogimus wrote:Dipshit that thought seatbelt sign didn't apply to him was rushed to a local hospital.

Darwinism in action.

Colorado hailstorms are nothing to sneeze at--I've had to replace the roof on my house several times. Years ago an amusement park in Denver lost power due to a thunderstorm, stranding customers up in the air on a bunch of rides. Imagine being stuck on a big Ferris wheel a hundred feet in the air when the hailstorm hits... People were being pummeled by softball size hail. It looked like a battle zone when they cherry picked the customers off the rides.

Good pilot and tower crew. I'll bet that was terrifying for everyone.

The GPS antennas are normally on top of the fuselage over the cockpit. The avionics box for it might have been in the nose. More likely the antennas were destroyed.

If you do a Google image search for American 787 hail, you can see one of our brand new 787's that hit a nasty patch of hail taking off out of Bejing a few weeks ago. I happened to talk to one of the flight attendants that was working the flight, and she said it was really ugly, and they could hear the hail hitting the fuselage. She also said that even though you can't see it in the photos, both front windshields were cracked. They did an emergeny return to Bejing.

Hopefully they use the composite repair manual written by the fired Boeing engineer that didn't cut any corners, instead of Boeing's "composite repair for dummies" that they officially released for the airplane.

skb12172 wrote:Good pilot and tower crew. I'll bet that was terrifying for everyone.

PilotS! Plural!!!!

(Sorry, serious peeve.)

Yogimus wrote:Dipshit that thought seatbelt sign didn't apply to him was rushed to a local hospital.

Key and Peele - Turbulence on youtube

JustinR wrote:

Yogimus wrote:Dipshit that thought seatbelt sign didn't apply to him was rushed to a local hospital.

Key and Peele - Turbulence on youtube

You know instead of showing CNN in the airport lounges they should run "Turbulence."

JustinR wrote:The GPS antennas are normally on top of the fuselage over the cockpit. The avionics box for it might have been in the nose. More likely the antennas were destroyed.

If you do a Google image search for American 787 hail, you can see one of our brand new 787's that hit a nasty patch of hail taking off out of Bejing a few weeks ago. I happened to talk to one of the flight attendants that was working the flight, and she said it was really ugly, and they could hear the hail hitting the fuselage. She also said that even though you can't see it in the photos, both front windshields were cracked. They did an emergeny return to Bejing.

Hopefully they use the composite repair manual written by the fired Boeing engineer that didn't cut any corners, instead of Boeing's "composite repair for dummies" that they officially released for the airplane.

Someone once told me that aircraft windshields are a bit finicky from the onset. Is it true you can't even use ordinary glass cleaner on them?]]