Pilot lands Airbus at Ataturk airport 'blind' after hailstones shatter windscreen

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TacticalHotdog

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A pilot carried out a heart-stopping emergency landing during which he couldn't see – after giant hailstones shattered the windscreen of his severely damaged jet.

Captain Alexander Akopov picked up the Ukrainian Order For Courage in his home country after landing the Airbus A320 at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport on Thursday.

His skills saved the lives of the 121 passengers and six crew members on board, leaving him and his crew members celebrating as if it was a “second birthday”.

A heavy storm over Turkey saw hailstones the size of eggs rain down, which left a gash in Captain Akopov’s plane and disabled the plane's autopilot.
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He said: “I have been flying for 30 years. Well, did you see the plane landing? Was it okay? The passengers are alive. It is normal. This is our professional reliability," he told local media.

“Our locator did not show this weather disaster, this is why it happened. It was hard, but the main thing is that people are alive.”

Hailstones cracked the cockpit window just 10 minutes after take-off on a Turkish airline AtlasGlobal flight to Ercan in northern Cyprus.

He was given permission to attempt to land at Ataturk airport, despite it being closed to other flights because of the bad weather.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/trave...xander-akopov-atlasglobal-erkan-a7868901.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxlA0nKFciQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSFHSRcE_QI
Video of hail from the same day: https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/891007472915369984
Some hailstones were reported to be up to 9cm in diameter
 
1. Holy fucking shit
2. Hoooooly fucking shit that Twitter Video. That looks like straight out of some meteor shower apocalypse movie.
 
This is why these planes are fitted with so many instruments.

Either way, goddamn, that is some seriously professional work right there.
 
His skills saved the lives of the 121 passengers and six crew members on board, leaving him and his crew members celebrating as if it was a “second birthday”.
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That's one weird way to say they celebrated for their survival.

Also holy shit the front of that plane, looks like something out of a disaster movie. Good thing everyone made it out ok.
 
Looked like he came in fast and was banking. Was the weather really bad at landing?

Nevertheless, very impressive and congratulations to him on a job well done.
 
Jesus, I thought the hail cracked the windows which injured his eyes. Not that the cracked windshield made it impossible to see blind.

Still impressive.
 
After this and the terrorist plot stopped in London it seems that the world's conspiring against me to make me as terrified as possible before getting on a plane tomorrow. That's fucking horrific, glad everyone got out OK.
 
Not only is the windscreen shattered, but the radome is damaged and possibly a lot of the radar equipment in it as well, so they'd really be flying blind :P.
 
Plum said:
After this and the terrorist plot stopped in London it seems that the world's conspiring against me to make me as terrified as possible before getting on a plane tomorrow. That's fucking horrific, glad everyone got out OK.
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I get freaked out by landings. The whole thing just seems insane and it happens thousands of times a day with complete success.
 
Good for the pilot. I'm a big fan of air disaster documentaries, and I'm glad he won't end up a statistic.
 
Auto-Pilot: It's not possible!
Pilot: It's professional!
Co-Pilot: What are you doing?
Pilot: Landing.
Auto-Pilot: I will just put on the Interstellar soundtrack.
 
Plum said:
After this and the terrorist plot stopped in London it seems that the world's conspiring against me to make me as terrified as possible before getting on a plane tomorrow. That's fucking horrific, glad everyone got out OK.
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Would it help to tell you that similar incidents with hail has happened lots of times before? ;P

http://io9.gizmodo.com/an-airbus-a330-recently-flew-into-a-hailstorm-and-th-1634051842
http://jalopnik.com/hail-damaged-airbus-takes-a-pounding-1687689061
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/08/us/delta-emergency-landing-hail/index.html
http://www.airlive.net/emergency-delta-airbus-a320-windshield-and-radome-damaged-by-hail/
 
That's insane they were able to do that. Man hail is so damn fascinating, I'd love to see some again but it's scary to think someone could get seriously injured or more.
 
norm9 said:
Good for the pilot. I'm a big fan of air disaster documentaries, and I'm glad he won't end up a statistic.
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Dude

Mayday/ACI is my jam! Aviation is fucking fascinating though i dont revel on the tragic stories but marvel at how the pieces of the puzzle fit and how we learned from them

Looking forward to this one! You know this is going on the documentary list
 
Impressive. They are lucky it was a 30 years + veteran though.

I hope the new generation of pilots are trained to do this if the autopilot (and much else) is damaged.
 
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