That angle makes it look much harder than the other. We will see what they come up with. I heard that they had gusting crosswinds. Those are tricky because you don’t want to flare and float while at the same time you might get shear which will cause you to drop. But I understand that you keep the nose lower than you would normally. See this video that came in without flare,b ut maybe not as hard.
Please do not film your evacuation! Jesus people, you want to get off as fast as possible and delays can kill people. Same with carryon.
Several crosswind landings in here…
The CRJ doesn’t have slides, but if it did have them, they would not deploy “normally”. They would deploy, but they would now be above the door. They should extend enough to clear the door, so they wouldn’t block the door.
I think this incident is a great example of why there are so many regulations for fuselage crash tests. People sometimes question why fuselages are crash tested, since that won’t do anything if it is falling from 30k ft. But most crashes are on the ground. The extra structural requirements result in this incident being survivable.
I say all are.
Well, there’s also the sea. And can’t forget about that midair one.
My money is on windshear. It looks like they couldn’t recover power fast enough once the wind direction changed and the aircraft kept sinking.
Glad everyone survived!
is it all possible that the landing gear did not lock into place? The video I was looks like it just collapsed in on touching the ground.
if some of the resident experts could weigh in?
Just from watching the video, it appears that the pilot did little or nothing to reduce the rate of descent as they approached the runway (this slowing of rate of descent maneuver is called ‘the flare’). The landing gear was probably fine, as pilots get a reliable indication well before landing that the landing gear is all down and fully locked–if they did not get that indication, they would have delayed the landing approach and tried to fix it.
The landing gear of passenger jets is not designed to take the full impact of hitting the runway without a landing flare. So, likely, the impact was simply too much and at least one of the main landing gear (possibly both) collapsed as a result of the extreme impact forces. The collapse of one gear first (looks like the right one) then gave the plane the momentum to roll over.
It is also possible that the pilot did try to flare, but wind conditions like wind shear made the aircraft drop severely during the flare. But, to me, this seems unlikely, as wind shear does not typically happen so close to the ground. That said, this is all conjecture based on the video. There is always more the story.
It is truly fantastic that the plane did not fully catch fire and kill everyone on board.
It’s possible, but incredibly unlikely. If the drag braces on the MLG hadn’t locked out, the flight deck wouldn’t have gotten a positive indication once they lowered the gear.
The landing gear on these aircraft can take a beating, but they can’t take that much velocity coming down. The shock struts would stroke out and the gear would simply punch through the top of the wing.
It is possible, what it would mean is two things I can think of:
the main landing gear falsely indicated down and locked. I don’t know the design of the CRJ, but normally you would design it to be very difficult to falsely indicate locked, so it would be bias to indicate not locked or unknown.
it was not locked and indicated not locked, but the pilots did not see it. This is also unlikely, since this is a very basic pilot duty is to verify the gear is down and locked after extension.
Another possibility, in addition to the hard landing, is that the plane landed with the nose pointed far away from the direction of travel (hard to tell, but this does not appear to be the case from the perspective of the video). This is called landing in a “crab” and happens often in cross wind landings.
And most landing gear are designed to take these kind of side loads, but, as with everything, there are limits. If they landed in a severe crab plus they landed super hard, this combined load could also cause the landing gear to collapse.
Amen brother. The video is scary with the plane bursting into flames. This seems like an exceptionally good outcome for that crash.
From what I have seen it doesn’t look like a cross wind issue the flight path was true and no teeter tottering of the wings on touch down. This model of airplane has a very low/under belly placement it looked like it slammed into the runway and something gave, whether landing gear or flex of the wings hitting the run way.
I think you’re right, Brandon.
The aircraft appeared to have a low pitch angle on approach. It looks like the crew attempted to increase the pitch for a flare, but they may have run out of energy before touchdown.
There was a noticeable difference between airspeed and groundspeed on approach, suggesting a strong headwind. This appears much stronger than indicated by the windsock, pointing to possible low-level negative windshear. Some ADS-B data shows a descent rate reaching approximately 1,000 fpm, which would indicate a sudden loss of lift just before ‘landing’.
The aircraft ‘landed’ short of the intended touchdown zone, and footage shows a considerable increase in sink rate when crossing the approach end of the runway. Again, this would be consistent with low level negative windshear.
The crosswind component was roughly around 20 knots. They kicked the nose straight and dipped the right wing to compensate for drift. Not sure on the wing sweep - we can’t drop a wing on my aircraft - but that technique didn’t seem to be the contributor as opposed to the right MLG going backwards - I’m guessing as the right wing spar cracked.
The only other thing that I can think is the runway edges may have been obscured by blowing snow, creating a narrow runway optical effect of greater height, but the callouts should have been sufficient last line of defence and the other data tends to support low level negative windshear.
Everyone is incredibly lucky to get to walk away - and hopefully those in critical condition recover. Testament to the manufacturer, cabin crew and also the passengers themselves for not stampeding.
Does this report change anything about the role of wind shear?
https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/aviation/2025/a25o0021/a25o0021-preliminary.html
For those who have not read it, the report explains that the plane was descending very quickly and landed at a right-ward tilt, so the right-side landing gear broke and then the right wing hit the ground. The report mentions wind shear, and (to my reading) does not expressly comment on pilot performance.
At 1412:30, while the aircraft was descending through 153 feet AGL, its indicated airspeed increased to 154 knots whereas the ground speed did not change appreciably, consistent with a performance-increasing wind gust. The PF pulled back the thrust levers, and as a result, over the following 5 seconds, N1 decreased from 64% to approximately 43%, where it remained until touchdown. The airspeed began to decrease.
At 1412:40 (3.6 seconds before touchdown), when the aircraft was at a height of 50 feet AGL, the indicated airspeed was 145 knots, and the ground speed was 112 knots. The rate of descent had increased to 1114 fpm. The enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS) aural alert “fifty” sounded to indicate the aircraft was at 50 feet AGL, which is a standard callout.
One second later (2.6 seconds before touchdown), the EGPWS alert “sink rate” sounded, indicating a high rate of descent. The aircraft’s indicated airspeed was 136 knots, its ground speed was 111 knots, and the rate of descent had remained at about 1100 fpm. The bank angle increased to a 4.7° right bank. The engine thrust was steady at approximately 43% N1.
The approach speed margin above Vref seems low to me - considering the conditions. I do not fly that aircraft type so don’t know what they use to calculate Vapp, but I would have carried a greater margin to Vref to compensate for the gusts - as they should not have been performance limited on that runway even with the runway surface condition.
The FO could be overwhelmed by the performance increase followed by decrease - evidenced by not reacting with thrust as the headwind dropped off. Had they carried more energy, and reacted to the negative shear at low level, the outcome would have been different however hindsight is 20/20.
There wouldn’t have been a lot the Captain could have done at 50 ft except full power and baulked landing. There just wasn’t enough energy left without commiting to a go around.
I’m just out of the sim having completed my biannual check. We do low level baulked landings in low visibility conditions and you just need to treat every landing as though it will end in a go around until you’re on the ground, airbrakes out and thrust reversers deployed.
I would revise my initial off the cuff analysis to: it was a poorly handled, minor, low-level windshear compounded by poor command decisions to leave the FO as PF.
It isn’t so much the fall as it is hitting the ground as they say