Qantas Q400 emergency landing Mildura 21/7/25

[red750]

A Qantas Q400 took off from Mildura today, and suffered failure of hydraulics in its flaps shortly after. It circled the area for some time to reduce fuel before making an emergency landing without flaps.

[facthunter]

"Without Flaps" would be dramatically fast (over tire limit speed)  with very FLAT approach. There is usually an alternate method of flap extension..  Nev

[red750]

I'll take your expert advice on that, but there certainly didn't look to be any, and the field was surrouinded with emergency vehicles.

 

 

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[facthunter]

I presumed it was a Jet. There's a Massive speed difference with them , flapless.  Nev

[Hwansey]

For those who are interested, the B747s operated by Qantas never had a NNC (non normal checklist) for an all flaps up landing and the configuration was not required to be demonstrated for certification of either aircraft or flight crew.  
The non normal checklist stated that the target airspeed for flap or slat non normal operations was to be Vref30 + 25.  (Vref30 at max landing weight 285 tons was 153 knots, giving the targeted airspeed as 178 knots.  Most line landings were in the region of 230 tons where Vref30 was around 140 knots). 

A normal 3 degree approach path was to be flown.

 

The B767 however had more detail in the Flight Crew Training Manual for such a configuration.  The target speed was Vref30 + 50.  I don't have the manuals anymore, but Vref30 at training weights was 130 knots, making the approach speed around 180 knots.

Again, a 3 degree approach path was to be flown.

This was especially difficult in the PW powered 767-200 because of the relatively high flight idle RPM.

A very strict 15 degree bank angle limit was also applied to non normal flap or slat operations at speeds below Vref30 + 80 (around 210 knots).  This meant that lots and lots (and lots!) of airspace was needed to manouvre the aircraft in any configuration that imposed this limit.

The Flight Crew Training Manual also stated: "Fly the aeroplane onto the runway at the recommended touchdown point.  Flare only enough to achieve acceptable reduction in the rate of descent".  In the simulator, motion was usually switched off for this exercise as the touchdown was required to be on the money and as such, hard enough to trip the system and require a lengthy reboot should the motion be on.

[facthunter]

What's the safe manouvering speed, clean? All these planes have alternate means of extending the flaps for a good reason.  Also the  nose high approach attitude would easily Produce a tail ground strike. Dog knows what runway length would be required and you'd certainly have brake fires likely as even from an abort at V1 at max wt that is a  likely outcome.  You'd have about double the energy to dissipate. Nev