ANA Nose dive

[Tsuru]

Can you tell me about any aircraft built in Japan after WWII that wasn't a complete financial disaster?

When it comes to China's aerospace industry Japan is already at least two decades behind... where Japan has been relying on data coming from the US and have been reluctant to venture beyond the basic US designs, the Chinese made the better decision and started doing their own research, and even started designing and making their own airframes and engines. Sure, they started out with outdated Russian and Israeli equipment and made their fair share of mistakes, but things have moved on a bit since the days of Mao.

Unlike Japan, China has a proper homegrown aerospace engineering base to start with, with many young engineers coming back from the US and Europe and with their own universities offering courses in the fine art of making and operating aircraft. Watch this space.

[Greji]

Can you tell me about any aircraft built in Japan after WWII that wasn't a complete financial disaster?

You are of course right, but what is your take on the YS-11? They have flown that for so long its got whiskers on the nose gear and I think it still is in service on puddle jumps. It would seem that they should have gotten their money back on that one for just longivity alone.

[Tsuru]

The YS-11 was in production for a short time and while they are popular on the second-hand market they didn't make the manufacturer a whole lot of money. Certainly not enough to continue making it for longer than they did, or even justify making a successor.
Also, if you compare it to the British BAe 748 you're hard pressed finding any differences.

[Mike Oxlong]

Some commentors are speculating that they came in with the nose too high, scraped the tail, then when pulling up to get back in the air scraped the tail again...

ANA plane has mishap upon landing at Sendai airport

An ANA plane had to abort its landing at Sendai airport on Sunday morning after its fuselage scraped the runway. There were no injuries among the 166 passengers and crew, according to transport ministry officials.

As Flight 731 from Osaka landed shortly after 9 a.m., its fuselage hit the runway, NHK reported. The captain then pulled the nose up and climbed back into the air, but the fuselage bumped the runway again.

The plane circled the airport and successfully made a second landing 20 minutes later.

An inspection of the plane showed that the rear pressure bulkhead was also damaged, transport safety board officials said.

[james]

Some commentors are speculating that they came in with the nose too high, scraped the tail, then when pulling up to get back in the air scraped the tail again...

nothing a little metal polish from the local home centre can't fix

[Coligny]

Wasn't the weather quite fucking bad this week end ?
Down here the wind turbulence were bad enough to make driving in a single lane a bit of a challenge...

Sidenote: ANA should not have removed the training wheels from their [s]bicycles[/s] planes yet... (never really paid attention but do some other plane than the concorde have a rear tail wheel ?)

[Bucky]

Were they flying a DC-3 ?

[Mike Oxlong]

ANA pilots unaware for 17 seconds that plane was almost turning upside down

The pilot and copilot of an All Nippon Airways plane were unaware for 17 seconds that their aircraft almost turned upside down during a flight last year, the Japan Transport Safety Board (JTSB) said Friday in a report on the incident.

The ANA flight, with 117 passengers and crew on board, dived 1,900 meters in 30 seconds in the incident off the southern Shizuoka district on Sept 6, 2011.

The maneuver happened when the co-pilot, in trying to unlock the cockpit door for the captain who was returning from the toilet, mistook a command button for the cockpit door lock switch nearby.

A chronology included in the JTSB’s report showed that the co-pilot only noticed something was wrong 17 seconds after the rudder was operated.

The plane, which took off from Naha in Okinawa in the south, later managed to touch down at Tokyo’s Haneda airport safely.

Two crew members were slightly injured, while four passengers reported health problems following the incident.

Images from the flight recorder on the Boeing 737-700 showed the plane veered to the right and then sharply to the left, before dropping backwards.

The aircraft tipped more than 130 degrees to the left at one point, but the darkness outside meant many of those on board did not realize the craft had almost flipped over.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/nati ... pside-down

[Coligny]

pete and re pete are in a boat...

http://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/flash/JA16AN ... 110928.pdf

[matsuki]

LOL, Japan should stick to bullet trains...