VIDEO: Strong gust of wind forces plane to abort landing at Malaga Airport
A Norwegian Airlines pilot showed some skilful flying at Malaga Airport yesterday afternoon after the plane was thrown sideways as it was about to touch down and the landing had to be aborted for the safety of the passengers onboard.
The incident took place at 3:30pm when a sudden change in the direction of the wind with strong gusts, forced the plane from Trondheim (Norway) to abort its landing at the last minute, just as the aircraft was skimming the runway.
The pilot powered up the engines and the aircraft took to the sky again avoiding a nasty landing, or possibly something worse. Although this manoeuvre can be needed quite frequently, on this occasion it has gone viral thanks to a video shared on social media by the meteorological website meteo365.
Ufff - Difficult wind conditions - #Norwegian Air Flight from #Trondheim to #Malaga with go-around - Great reaction from the pilot - Live Weather Cams - https://t.co/YUklIhKJ8u pic.twitter.com/rUQsa6oZIt
— meteo365.es (@meteo365_es) August 2, 2023
“We were operating with a light easterly breeze that allowed us to use runway 12/30 (the second runway) where planes come over the mountain and land towards the sea,” explained air traffic controllers. Usually, winds in Malaga are quite predictable, and controllers change the runway configuration in advance, but yesterday's situation was unusual.
So much so that there was “a sudden change of wind, which completely changed in direction in just a few minutes”. The plane started to be affected by a strong tailwind during the landing and had to take off again when it was already skimming the tarmac.
Airport sources explain that Boeing 737 aircraft, like this one can land in up to ten knots of tailwind (although ideally with a headwind), but the strong gust destabilised the manoeuvre at the critical moment. On the second attempt, it landed without any major problems.
About 15 minutes after the incident, the control tower changed the configuration of the runway and all aircraft began to land on runway 13/31 (the main runway), from the sea towards the mountains, due to the persistence of the warm westerly Terral wind, which yesterday again left very high temperatures along the Costa del Sol and in Malaga.
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