MD-11F, a freighter by McDonnel Douglas, crashes in Tokyo while landing. MD-11 was launched on December 30, 1986 as a passenger aircraft. It is a tri-jet aircraft with two engines mounted on underwing pylons and a third engine at the base of the vertical stabilizer. Fedex bought 19 of these aircrafts from American airlines in 1996.
FedEx has lost 3 of its MD-11 fleet aircrafts in crash accidents. First at New Jersey, Second at Subic bay, Phillipine and third, on march 23rd 2009, at Tokyo.
As seen in the video, the aircraft bounced at touch-down and then it flipped on to its left side, killing the pilot and the co-pilot. It is 7th MD-11 crash since its launch.
During landing operation aircraft is slowed down and descended to the touchdown point. As the aircraft approaches the touchdown point, the pilot executes a flare to perform a smooth landing. During landing, aircraft is kept in a nose-up position and speed is reduced by introducing more drag, using windbrakes. A derivative of DC-10, MD-11 is the extended range version. To achieve the desired range and speed of the aircraft, its tail size was reduced that caused its horizontal stabilizers to become very small. These horizontal stabilizers provide the required pitch for aircraft. When the pitch authority is reduced the aircraft’s control is affected really badly. Do observe in this video that the aircraft pitches up, just after touching down.The wind conditions and the low pitch authority caused the aircraft to pith up and thus bounce and flip, resulting in a disasterous crash.
Posted by okmirza 
