Citing more than a dozen hard landings and rollovers of Boeing McDonnell Douglas MD-11s in the past two decades, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is pressing for changes in training to help pilots better handle the airplane during landing.
In two safety recommendations issued in July 2011 to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the NTSB called on the FAA to require Boeing to “revise its MD-11 Flight Crew Operating Manual (FCOM) to re-emphasize high sink rate awareness during landing, the importance of momentarily maintaining landing pitch attitude after touchdown and using proper pitch attitude and power to cushion excess sink rate in the flare, and to go around in the event of a bounced landing.”
After Boeing completes the revision, the NTSB said, all operators of MD-11s should be required to incorporate the company’s recommended procedures for bounce recognition and recovery into their own operating manuals and to teach the procedures during rec…
