A380 Hard Landing at Oshkosh

I was standing right at the rope of the spectator line about 2500 feet down the runway, which was a bit closer to the plane than this camera was.

It didn't look nearly this hard in person! (cue the: that's what she said)

On this video I see a much harder landing than I saw in person. I think that the telephoto compression makes the crab angle look much greater than it really was. I was looking at it through a 200mm lens but the film camera for this video was much greater than that.

It sure did kick up a lot of dust though.

And as someone posted above, if they couldn't get it stopped by the taxiway they did, I think it was going to have to be towed backwards down the runway. Apparently it can't do a 180 on 36/18 so when it leaves Oshkosh it will be pushed back down the length of the runway and go from there.

One more thing. It only flew about a 2 mile final from a dog-leg base turn. So for a test pilot who may not have flown the thing much recently (I have no idea about that part though), and 10-20 knots of gusty wind from a 90 degree crosswind, there wasn't a whole lot of time to get it lined up.
 
Few widebodies could do a 180 on a runway that narrow. It is even tight on a 60 meter runway.
 
That's about what I saw as well.

Kind of like when greasing it on means you're screwing up in Orange County.

Last spring I was in the back of the MD90 SLC to SNA. The landing was firm but perfectly acceptable. Especially considering it was Orange Cnty. But the guy behind me, obviously an "expert" thought otherwise and mumbled about how hard the landing was. Everytime I landed the Brasilia there I felt little motivation to float and work on a greaser of a landing. Just get it down, on speed, in the touchdown zone and on centerline.

To me the A380 landing looked rough, but not worth all of the commentary. Seriously, you can't tell me the 777 guy had never planted one like that before. We all have firm (but safe) landing days.
 
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