Windshear Hong Kong

[George]

Just saw Glenn's post re you-tube videos, so thought an interesting idea to open an account and upload some videos too.

 

Hong Kong Airport is very susceptible to wind-shear, and is reason for many missed approaches, and has been suspected to be the cause of Chek Lap Koks first crash landing.

 

This video was taken in an Embraer E170 landing into VHHH 07L. We get a wind-shear caution just above 50 feet. A moments hesitation then continue to land. If wind-shear warning, would warrant mandatory missed approach, though at this altitude, one would wonder whether it would be better to try and effect a landing instead.

 

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[George]

While Im here, had an interesting flight into hong kong a few months before this video.

 

Was a wake turbulence encounter.

 

We began the approach into VHHH 07L and were following an African Airlines A340. We saw them go ahead of us, looking hot and high from about 20 nms out. We made lite comment on it as we perceived it to be quite above profile and joked they would be working hard to get it stable on the ILS.

 

We rolled out onto a heading of 040 to intercept the ILS at 3000 feet, and got a dual capture of the ILS. We were now trailing the A340 by 7nms, watching the tcas diamond on the 5/10 nm radar ring on the MFD.

 

Everything was going along nice and smoothly until passing 1500 feet, and the aircraft began a roll to the right, and quickly became a significant roll to the right forcing the autopilot to disconnect. Taking over manual control and rolling wings level, we began to pullback and try to climb over what we suspected was the wake turbulance from the 340.

 

Climbing slightly above the glideslope put us right into the invisible core of the wake turbulence, and immediately induced a very strong roll to the right, overcoming the full aileron and spoiler deflection to the left trying to at the least counter the roll. This was fruitless as the aircraft continued to bank uncommanded in excess of 45 degrees, and was then as a last resort, did we push in full left rudder in an attempt to help counter the roll, and at the same time pushed forward on the yoke to get back below the vortex. This disengaged the aircraft from the strong vortex, and we recovered the aircraft by 1100 feet.

 

The significant vortex flow over the aircraft then caused the many pressure sensor failures, resulting in windshear protection fail, and ias probes 2 and 4 to fail, additionally no stall buffer protection.

 

We bugged the airspeed up 10 KIAS, and flew with fingers guarded with white knuckles on the TOGA buttons incase we again encountered the wake vortex at low level. Got on the ground and reported the incident to ATC, whom confirmed we were never closer than 6 nms behind the heavy, and we are classified a medium weight aircraft.

 

The 340 intercepted the glide slope from above at approximately 1500 feet, and it is thought, that the extra induced drag at this point created a very strong vortex, and in the calm, but slightly downwind breeze, was perfect conditions to keep the vortex up for our passage. FUN!!!!!!