Heroic Chinese pilot who saved 439 lives in near-miss drama by steering his plane out of danger is awarded £360k... as video shows just how close the incident was

People...when you drive, do you punch the accelerator to the floor every time you enter the highway? Neither do aircraft. Altitude, temperature, runway length and other less critical variables determine TO thrust.

lucky the pilot was'nt on his mobile '''

Thank god it wasn't a BA pilot

If he was at of near V1,(decision speed) Then he would most likely have cleared the obstructing aircraft (as he indeed did). To do otherwise would have been disaster.

God bless him

The right stuff.

KLM PANAM reprise...almost.

This seems rather weird to me. 36L @ Honqiao is a nice long 11,155 feet. An A320 shouldn't need that entire runway for a takeoff roll and should have been airborne well ahead of that intersection. I never flew anything larger than a twin-engine prop and we always use full-throttle when taking off. Maybe it's different with jets, but I would have assumed that he would have already been at full throttle and wouldn't have been able to increase power anymore. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they pulled the throttle out and started braking when they saw the incursion, and then quickly reapplied power when they realized that they couldn't stop the plane in time.

This seems rather weird to me. 36L @ Honqiao is a nice long 11,155 feet. An A320 shouldn't need that entire runway for a takeoff roll and should have been airborne well ahead of that intersection. I never flew anything larger than a twin-engine prop and we always use full-throttle when taking off. Maybe it's different with jets, but I would have assumed that he would have already been at full throttle and wouldn't have been able to increase power anymore. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they pulled the throttle out and started braking when they saw the incursion, and then quickly reapplied power when they realized that they couldn't stop the plane in time.

Balls of STEEL ... well done !

Never hesitate in a plane or car. It can kill you.

Well done to the Pilot Flying, although presumably he was at 'Go' speed at that stage (also called V1, where takeoff can no longer be rejected) and was in the process of rotating anyway, possibly a little more sharply than expected.

Tenerife

Civil airliners can fly even more severley than that, they just don't so as not to upset the passengers.

i can still remember the BBC newsflash when that Tenerife crash happened....

My understanding of the term "head on" seem at odds with the side-on simulation... but we'll done Mr Pilot!

Quite ironic as the new series of Air Crash Investigation started off with the KLM Pan Am crash on Tenerife.

phew !

I suspect the Mr He had very little option here - he was probably already past V1 (so could stop before the end on the runway) so his only option was to apply max/emergency power and get of the ground asapThankfully, modern jet engines respond to power changes quickly, unlike early version that take a week to spool up!

Similar to the Tenerife disaster in the 70s , lucky escape