Landing a Cessna at Ohare

http://flightclub.jalopnik.com/these-guys-landed-a-cessna-at-one-of-the-biggest-airpor-1648834890

This is pretty cool.

Air Traffic Controller said: UUhhggg... YOU WANT TO DO THIS AT O'HARE??

Awesome. Sounds like something my brother and his buddy would have done back in their flight school shenanigans.

I'd hate to have to pay his landing fee! I hope it was based on aircraft gross weight.

Yeah, that would a bit of dick move it was any kind of busy. The hole in the traffic pattern you would have to make for a 172 would be HUGE.

considering they land a plane every 60 seconds.. at the speed of a jetliner.. I am not sure a C172 can even reach the stall speed of a 747

mad_machine wrote: considering they land a plane every 60 seconds.. at the speed of a jetliner.. I am not sure a C172 can even reach the stall speed of a 747

It's close, but it can do it. If the itnerwebs are right, the landing speed of a 747 is 121-160 knts. And while the crusing speed of a C172 is only 121kts, it can go up to 163knts as a never go faster.

So in a slight dive, it would be really close.

And fun- I was flying with my uncle and cousin once when they did something similar. Barely.... Port Columbus is both commercial and private planes (at least it was in the early 90's. Of course, the runways are parallell. So we were landing with some jet, and they thought it would be fun to race the jet in.

The airliner pilots did notice that, apparently, and commented that our plane was in a big hurry for some reason.

My aunt was not as pleased, but was ok by it. It was a faster one than a 172... which helped.

Funny.

My first flight as an air charter captain was to O'Hare in a Cessna 310. Under the regulations, in 1995, a pilot had to have a minimum of 1200 hours flying time to be the pilot in command of a revenue producing flight.

I had been working as a copilot for 6 or 7 months flying twin engine Cessnas daily. When I reached 1205 hours in my log book I took the check ride. It went well and while being congratulated by my colleagues we got a call to drop off a small parcel at United Airlines O'Hare base. Company tradition was that the new captain got the next trip after he passed the check ride. So away I went to O'Hare. I was more nervous about this flight than my check ride, as this was the first time that I had flown a twin engine airplane by myself and I will be mixing it up with the big boys. The flying part was easy, taxiing around that huge airport was difficult. It all went well and was a big confidence booster.

From looking at the video, the 172 had what looked like a full "glass cockpit" so it probably had better avionics than some of the smaller jets landing there. Also listening to the pilot talk it sounds like he could be a commercial pilot rather than the average private plane pilot.

Not the best idea trying to land a 172 at O'Hare but the plane and pilot seemed very capable.

Cool, there's only a few class B airspaces in the country. Pilot sounded experienced.

I finished ground school two weeks ago. Starting flight training tonight with a 172s with glass cockpit

I flew from Macon, GA to Atlanta on a little 15 passenger prop connector plane once. Never again. He didn't land it, it felt like he flew in into the ground at WFO. We made it 1/2 way down the strip and took a hard right. I thought the pilot was going to flip the thing trying to clear the runway for the plane behind us.

I can't even imagine trying that in a 172.

In reply to Hal:

172 has had Garmin G1000 for a while now.

I'm not a pilot but I would think that, if they had filed a flight plan, this should have all been understood already. I'm not sure why they wouldn't go to Midway or some other gen-av airport nearby.

We've taken off a few times at Hartsfield in a T210. Not really because we wanted to, but because we had to pick people up there. It's not very small plane friendly. We sat in the take off "lane" once for about 45 minutes between two jumbo jets, and you could look up at the people and they seemed a LONG way away.

And then you had to be up and changing course before half way down the runway or you would get in their jet wash and fall out of the sky or something like that, or so the tower controller reminds you of 20 or times as you are taxing up. Oh, and you better be ready to go when its your turn, there's no waiting. The runways do seem very, very long however.

Of course that's a nice slow day compared to landing at Beaver Creek in Indy when we went for the F1 race. You had to have a landing and departure time, and if you were off by 15 minutes, you didn't land or take off. Now, a T210 is not exactly a cheap plane, but we were like the Beverly Hillbillies. There were more Lears and Gulfstreams in one place than I've ever seen. We had one of the only prop planes there. Oh, and we may have been one of the few speaking English!

Leaving was even more interesting as many of the planes decided to leave without filing a flight plan and then try doing that in the air. The controllers were not pleased to say the least. It was chaos really. Not what you want flying over a major metropolitan area.

And I thought I was cool asking bridges to open for a 30 ft sailboat.

Okay, that was pretty cool. I do have a huge question:

As mentioned, typically a jumbo has a stall speed close to the cruise speed of a Cessna 172. From what little I know, a Cessna (as with many planes) is designed to handle landing stresses generated at or near its stall speed. There is some leeway built in but there's a limit to engineering. Last Cessna I flew on had a all speed around 30 knots. That was later hammered home, but that's another tale for another time.

So our Cessna is following a 747 in, high stall speed. There's bound to be another not far behind in the same situation, thus the earlier comment about the 'large hole' for the puddle jumper.

So in the interest of not screwing up the big boys or getting a radome up the poop chute did our intrepid pilot make the decision to land this Cessna at a speed a good bit higher than the plane's design parameters, maybe 100 knots instead of, say, 40? Hard to tell from the vid. Seems a helluva risk to take for basically a little fun.

I would hope he made his approach as fast as possible and did a very flat no flaps landing as close to his taxi way turn off as possible. He still has to slow down to stall speed to land at some point though (you can only speed up the approach, not the actual landing).

I flew out of Sacramento Int with my sister in a C170 a few times. That plane could have easily landed sideways on he runway, and landed on the actual numbers of the runway with some headwind. Its important to fly down the runway as much as possible before landing. They really don't want a tail dragger putting down the runway at 15 mph while a jet approaches (tail draggers are not good for high speed taxing, they are a rear-steer design)

That was really cool. Im sure its pretty simple once you know what's going on but if I were flying a small plane I would be so nervous about taking the wrong taxi way or landing the wrong runway at a new airport.

Pretty cool video. Looks like it was late at night - not much traffic on the roads.

The wide-angle of the on-board camera makes the size differential between the Cessna and the departing jet look less than it is. I landed a 172 with a simultaneously departing United 737 on the crossing runway once; ATC telling me to "hold short of the intersection" was rather unnecessary. Seeing him spool up as I flared over the threshold was unnerving, but not nearly as much so as watching him flash past (and realizing his right engine was considerably bigger than my plane) as I - still braking - made the turn off the runway at the last possible taxiway, which was alarmingly close to his wingtip.

Agree that it was a pretty cool video.

While the plane clearly has some great avionics, you can still see two analog gauges- which look to be air speed and altitude based on the look of them. Center one being air speed, and the one to the right altitude.

For the pilots- is that right?

Anyway, if that is a correct observation, the final he took was not fast- but more right in the normal landing speed. At least how I think I saw that.

Must not have been a lot of traffic, since it was a big gap.

Plus- the talk- they sure seem like pros. How many private pilots would be that cool, and have clear messages, including the repeat commands back.

Very cool.

I asked about this back in 99. It was $800 just to touch the wheels down. That plus the ramp fees at an FBO would be insane in today's money. Do they even have 100LL?

alfadriver wrote: While the plane clearly has some great avionics, you can still see two analog gauges- which look to be air speed and altitude based on the look of them. Center one being air speed, and the one to the right altitude.

As I understand it, there's a certain minimum set of "steam gauges" required as backups for the newer stuff, so that it all keeps working in the event of a total electrical power failure. I dunno what that minimum set is, though. :)

So other than dick swinging bragging rights was there actually a need to do this, or was it just because they could?

The instruments at the bottom are part of the standby flight display. I had thought they had gone to an electronic instrument at this point. Maybe at some point they'll lose that and go to a digital SFD that's common across more of the single engine aircraft. In the business these are called either "Steam gauges" as previously noted along with "whiskey compass" for the heading.

If I'm honest I always liked how mechanical gauges looked over digital. But the digital instruments can be so much more functional and are really rugged.

In reply to codrus:

There's been standby flight displays for a long time now. And these units sometimes needed power and took time to align and all that jazz as well. Most larger aircraft have been using digital standby flight displays for a while now. The nice thing about the whiskey compass like what is used on the 172 is that it's pretty self-contained.

Here I go slightly de-railing a thread based on my actual job. Sort of fun, actually.

In reply to pres589:

So then the final approach based on the video was not fast for the C172, and very slow comapred to the rest of the airliners in the queue. There did have to be a big space beind the plane.

(the analog airspeed wasn't that hard to read in the video- I could not read a thing on the two digital displays- kinda shows how awesome the eye is that they probably had no problems with the displays and seeing out, when the modern camera still has problems seeing both)

I emailed the link to a buddy of mine that's a Navy E-6 pilot and his response was: "I want to punch them."