Shaw S Hunter
Established Member
A Ural Airlines A321 has crash landed shortly after takeoff near Moscow. There are YouTube videos avaliable in links here https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1429277 of take off and landing taken from the plane.
Appears to hit a flock of seagulls at rotation and loses power in the left engine a few seconds later and then loses power in the right engine. By the time it reached the end of the runway (in the air) it had already lost climb and started a glide descent. Fortunately cornfields are beyond the runway threshold and therefore the crew managed to ditch it into a cornfield with no fatalities. Fortunate as well no fire developed and evacuation was succesful.
The link to airliners Forum contains a wealth of information which i have tried to summarise briefly here.
Good outcome to something that was potentially catastrophic at many other airports!
By all accounts this was an even better example of fine piloting under pressure than the "Miracle on the Hudson": this flight had barely a third of the altitude and less speed giving the flightcrew much less time to make their decisions. Yet their forced landing on ground was pretty much by the book, ie all fuel systems shut down, landing gear left up and a well executed tail-down landing. Given the generally rather poor safety record of Russian aviation I think it's worth highlighting this particular display of professionalism.
Delta Airlines are returning to London Gatwick from 22nd May 2020.
They will launch a new route to Boston operated by a 165 seater Boeing 757 on a daily basis.
Virgin Atlantic will also be launching a New York Service from Gatwick on 21st May 2020. This flight will also be daily, and will use an Airbus A330-200 with 266 seats.
Cheers
Ben
Similar move at MAN next year: Delta is taking over the MAN-BOS route from Virgin replacing the 3x weekly A330 with a daily 757, though summer only as now. Suggestions elsewhere that Delta is generally beefing up their operation at BOS to defend against a likely increase in Jet Blue services there with TATL being a distinct possibility.
Also much speculation as to whether Virgin might be interested in replacing Jet A/w on MAN-BOM, a route for which there has long been a demand but needs someone to get the numbers right.