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What A Boeing 767 Landing At Troll Airfield In Antarctica Looks Like From The Cockpit

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Cockpit footage, from an Icelandair Boeing 767, shows views of the plane landing at Troll airfield in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica. (From 2021) (go.apexlink.to) More...

Tom Novak
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CaribooOtter
Dean Noack 0
Any reason that Icelandair is flying all the way to the other side of the world, maybe the pilot was trying to go to the Arctic but put in the wrong coordinates. Boy, I bet those passengers were in for a big surprise upon disembarking.
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ArthurPeach
Arthur Peach 1
The video reminds me of the days long ago when I had a private licence and joyriding around the Lake District of Sudbury, Canada in a rented 172. The challenge in my case was summer landings on "glassy water" where you couldn't see the surface of the water; all you got looking out and down was the mirror image of the sky. The approach was slow and gentle, along a shoreline for some height reference, a bit of power and nose up a bit, until you hit the runway (water) without even seeing it. Thanks for awakening those good memories of mine.
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ncraven
Neill Craven 2
Your experiences around Sudbury remind me of my initial flight training at North Bay. All my training took place on Trout Lake. My first solo was on floats. By the time I took my flight test we were flying from the frozen lake. In both phases of training it was important to deal with lack of vertical references - glassy water and unbroken snow, respectively. Even today, a few decades later, I find I glacé to the side of the landing area for visual clues.
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cbraunsteins
Christian Braunsteins 4
I could't see the runway until the last second!
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OnTheAve
OnTheAve 2
Same here. But, when I replayed the video I could see what appeared to be black squares (runway markers) when the 500 feet altitude was announced. It is amazing how more of them seem to pop up out of nowhere as minimums were approached
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Franky16
Franky16 1
yes - it makes it easier to appreciate how the pilots on the Kiwi flight which crashed in that area quite a few years ago did so. Though from memory, the data input to their onboard flight computer was incorrectly entered by others...
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patpylot
patrick baker 8
depth perception over a white runway sounds like a difficult task the first time attempted
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dvl
Dan Langille 2
Your comment reminds me of the Mount Erebus disaster.

"The Mount Erebus disaster occurred on 28 November 1979 when Air New Zealand Flight 901 (TE-901)[nb 1] flew into Mount Erebus on Ross Island, Antarctica, killing all 237 passengers and 20 crew on board.[1][2] Air New Zealand had been operating scheduled Antarctic sightseeing flights since 1977. This flight was supposed to leave Auckland Airport in the morning and spend a few hours flying over the Antarctic continent, before returning to Auckland in the evening via Christchurch."

The section "Crash into Mount Erebus" mentions how the snow covered mountain could not been seen against the white background of snow and clouds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Erebus_disaster
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OnTheAve
OnTheAve 1
That's quite a story which I was unaware of previously. Thanks for the info!
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