That's a Crosswind Landing

Now, that was an EXCELLENT (but, equally fool-hardy) pilot, whomever he or she was.

It looks kind of crazy, but it's one of the ways of landing in a crosswind, crabbing down the runway so the plane is travelling in the right direction but heading into the relative wind (which the airplane wants to do), and then kicking it around with the rudder at the last moment before touchdown.

The alternative is to slip into the wind with the upwind wing down, but you wouldn't want the wing to hit the ground.

Most large airports have at least 3 runways set about 60 degrees apart so you can avoid high crosswinds by using the runway closest to upwind.

Anybody ever been onboard for one of these?

The sphincter factor goes up to about 12.6 on a scale of one to ten. I happened to be in one of these landings and was on the downwind side of the aircraft so I had a really clear view of the majority of the airfield and a beautiful approach, I found the experience interesting from a pilots perspective, but from a passengers point of view it should have been a wave off.

Tensions and emotions were anxiety was running very high in the cabin and I'm sure many of the armrests had finger prints permanently embedded in them.

The thing I remember after disembarking the aircraft was how many people went straight to the nearest bar for some nerve tonic.

Kudos to the landing gear builder during these touchdowns as the lateral load on these things has got to be through the roof.

Fun to watch but not much of a problem fro the aircraft. Each aircraft design has a number that it has been tested to where it is considered safe for cross winds. It is call the cross wind component. A small Cessna 172 for example might be 22 Kts, a Piper PA-28 might be set at 16 Kts. Just depends what it was designed to handle. There are plotters that are used to calculate the various speed and degrees for 90 using the wind speed etc. Some of the newer Flight computers have this feature built in as well.

Again these videos are a great conversation piece, but not an unsafe practice.

Once flew into and out off Watertown, NY, on a very windy and gusty day. Plane was a STOL (Short Take Off and Landing) small commercial plane whose normal operation is to take off and land at extreme angles. Don't remember the airline or model # of plane but it was able to handle extreme cross winds. As we landed I was looking out the side window clearly at the center of the runway and moving forward at an extreme angle. Needless to say the pucker factor was so high that it left "O" rings on the seat as I got up. Combine the extreme descent angle, wind gusts, high winds, and the crazy cross wind it was probably the most interesting flight I every took. It was even weirder than once when an engine gave out on a 737 and I slept through most of that!

Good Luck, Old Salt

The old Cessna 150s and 172s that I used to fly had tires that didn't seem very impressive. I would worry about peeling them off the rim if I tried to use them on a 30 degree angle.

I actually didn't have to worry too much about cross winds unless I went cross country. I learned at a farmer's field. The runway was 18' wide and cut through the trees. We would be over corn when we dropped below the tree tops. Hitting the runway was normally done with trees on both sides. A headwind was possible but cross winds were normally blocked.

A bit of Cold War history:

USN pilots flew Lockheed EC-121 "Warning Star" airborne early warning radar aircraft, routinely made such takeoffs and landings from airfields at Adak, Alaska; Argentia, Newfoundland; and Keflavik, Iceland when the USN patrolled the Pacific and Atlantic seaward-extensions of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line.

Of course, those were 4-engined propellor-driven planes--not jets--but the piloting "skills" were just as astounding.

I was an aircrewman in those planes and "sat" through MANY such cross-wind takeoffs and landings.

Astounding piloting skills? Routine for US Navy, you're flying with the best !