JB was gracious enough to not criticise the pilots for miscalculating their approach due to the excess landing weight/speed.
For me that was inexcusable.
I’m not sure how heavy it could actually have been. Surely a Superjet can’t carry all that much fuel in the first place.
Dumping was mentioned, but as best I can tell the Superjet is one of many types that do not have this capability. And in that case you’d expect overweight landings to have been something done in training in the sims.
Miscalculation is the wrong word. Misjudging is more appropriate. Their approach speed is higher, sink rate higher, and there is more inertia to arrest. So, the flare has to be started earlier. It’s not a huge issue if it’s something you’ve practiced, but out of the blue there would be a fair chance of getting it wrong. I recently saw a video of a QF 787 that turned back to London, and apparently did not dump its fuel prior to landing, and that landing was a bit of a shocker. That would have been a totally financial decision, which I do consider foolish.
Anyway there’s a fair chance of thumping it in. But, the inexcusable bit comes immediately afterwards. There is a well known bounce cycle in aviation, in which the aircraft bounces, is forced back on to the ground and hits even harder, and bounces again. It is mostly seen in light aircraft, and invariably ends in an arrival that is so hard that it removes the undercarriage. You’re supposed to take high bounces around, and the failure to do so is the trigger for all of this.
Historically, we did overweight landings in the occasional 767-200 sim. It couldn’t dump, but the -300 could. I don’t recall ever doing one on the 747. In the 380 they were practiced quite a lot. That was because it couldn’t actually dump enough of the fuel to get to max landing weight, but also because it had so much, that even if you could dump, it may take longer than you wanted to be flying. We did let the autopilot do it if possible, but, as it’s a sim, dropping an autopilot stuff up in to the mix was also likely. A QF380 did a manual overweight landing in Sydney a few years ago, after a flap issue on departure. It was beautiful to watch.
