The landing of an Airbus A380 is always a sight to behold. But when the world’s largest passenger jet lands during a windstorm, it makes for must-see video.
That was the scene captured by a planespotter in Dusseldorf, Germany, earlier this week, and it’s since gone viral since it was posted to YouTube.
In the video, an Emirates airline A380 can be seen wobbling in the wind as it approaches the runway. Then the double-decked jetliner makes a hard landing, appearing to make a quick bounce before swerving back and forth as it gains traction on the runway.
The video, posted to YouTube by user “Cargospotter,” has been viewed more than 5.1 million times since Thursday (Oct. 5).
“I have filmed a few thousand crosswind landings at several airports in Europe within the past years, but this Airbus A380 crosswind landing was extremely hard and extraordinary,” Cargospotter wrote in a post accompanying the video.
“At first it looked like a pretty normal crosswind approach but after touchdown the pilots tried to align with the runway which looked pretty incredible. I have never seen such a tremendous reaction of an airplane after a touchdown. You can see that the pilots tried to align with the runway by using the tail rudder and luckily it worked out,” Cargospotter added.
The A380 is the world’s largest passenger jet, capable of seating more than 600 passengers, depending on how it’s seating layout is configured.
Emirates is by far the world’s largest operator of the jet. It has nearly 100 in its fleet, with various configurations seating between 489 and 615 passengers.
