On the 28th of March, 2018, the Lufthansa Flight LH542 Frankfurt to Bogota operated by an Airbus A340 -300 with the registration D-AIGN developed a serious problem with its flaps shortly after departure.

After completing a few holds over the Dutch coast to lower the landing weight, the Airbus A340 returned back to Frankfurt and landed safely without flaps at around 15:50 UTC.

High speed no flaps landing on a wet runway… these pilots have nuts!

I’m surprised they didn’t try and shoot for somewhere with a dry runway but I can’t fault them for executing a perfect flapless landing.

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Gary Heron
Gary Heron
1 year ago

Nuts? What genders were the pilots?
They had flap 1 (leading edge) but no trailing edge flaps. You do the ECAM and check the performance. Is there room? If not, go somewhete there is. It was wet, so for a flapless, the perf was pretty much generous. Then, just fly the approach.
Stop trying to make an inconvenience some kind of drama. They were professionals doing a job they have to show their competence at every six months in the simulator. Training paid off. The biggest inconvenience was the roster disruption.

Michael Marlow
Michael Marlow
9 months ago

Excellent comments, Gary. I totally agree.