Something I've learned from YouTube this morning:
At first I thought all aircraft landings require the nose of the plane directly facing the runway. Turns out, its not the case all the time. Pardon my limited understanding of Physics but from what I learned, wind direction plays an important role in landing an aircraft. Not only does air pockets produce turbulence, gustiness can actually veer the craft off the runway as it lands.
The path towards enlightenment began when I tried searching for the most extreme airports in the world. My curiousity led me to a plane-spotter's amateur video of an airplane trying to land at Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong. What's unusual about the craft is that its fuselage was slanted sideways instead of the normal nose up, body properly aligned to the runway. The jet-plane drifts as it tries to realign itself towards the runway. A few meters before touchdown, the large aircraft swerved again as its landing gear makes contact with the solid surface.
I have seen extreme videos where crosswind maneuver resulted in a plane's wing strike. Some clips, which I won't share here reveals some breathtaking seconds where pilots make a mad dash to abort the landing and avoid the plane from crashing.
Some of you may ask, what relevance does this entry have? Well aside from being a filler, (and a nudge to my old friend, GripenManila) consider this an introduction to the very geek side of Mugen. For some reasons, the urge to share this information has something to do with a little secret.
Enjoy the video for now and be amazed at how big the Airbus A380 is.