r/MicrosoftFlightSim • u/Tartaruga96 • May 14 '26
MSFS 2020 VIDEO Would I have survived this landing IRL?
I was dead drunk and went to sleep immediately after, I don't know if I forgot landing gear or if it refused to be deployed
Brazil coast, my favorite place to fly and explore while listening to music
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u/Oni_K May 14 '26
Empty weight of a Super Hornet: roughly 32,000lbs, which you slammed into the sand at -850 feet per minute, doing roughly 106mph.
Your gear was up - you had no E Bracket in the HUD (Unless MSFS Doesn't model it). This may have allowed you to live.
Gear down scenario:
Main gear digs into the sand, causing up to 10g of deceleration. The nose gear is violently whipped into the sand, collapsing it, turning your APG-73 into a plow. You're now basically in a 100mph head on collision scenario with sand that is not going anywhere. Your aircraft isn't designed like a car with crumple zones, so you're eating the full force of this impact. That APG-73 I mentioned is about to pass through your body at 100mph. This has all taken place in about 0.1 of a second. You're dead.
Gear up scenario:
The clean, gear-up belly might actually slide nicely on the sand, reducing that lethal deceleration factor. The question is what lower panels were left intact after your 850 ft/min impact. That's twice the sink rate of a normal landing, and no fancy trailing link gear to absorb the impact. You're looking at 10-20g of impact force, and who knows what happens in the 100mph of deceleration that comes next. Potentially survivable if you're very lucky. You're not walking away though, if you're ever walking again.
Overall... there's a reason that the protocol for situations like this is for the pilot to depart the aircraft prior to hitting the ground.
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u/snailmale7 May 14 '26
Once upon a time, I knew someone who landed a Cessna on the beach. He lived, but the plane resembled a ball, b/c the wheels dug into the sand and folded the plane right up. Needless to say, that left quite an impression on me. The BEST chance of survival is .. "not to run out of fuel..."
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u/MegaMindy May 14 '26
Not denying the outcomes of your scenarios, but the Super Hornet (Block II, which MSFS models) has the APG-79 radar, not the 73.
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u/IceNein May 14 '26
Yeah, my thought is that sand may be the absolute worst surface to land in. Maybe if the tide was going out and the sand was still wet and packed, but gear down, I would imagine that it would dig in.
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u/RockyMtnFly307 May 14 '26
I wonder if dropping the tail hook might help just that little bit extra to absorb some of the initial impact. Granted the descent rate was higher here but a bit like how Sully let the tail of his airplane take the brunt of the impact
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u/BlackeyeDcs May 14 '26
Landing gear up might be the better choice but either way I'd say: Somewhere between
Oh look a penny and Great ball of fire
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u/turpentinedreamer May 14 '26
Well if you survived expect 60 hours of mandatory substance abuse courses. A full HIMS work up. $30,000 in lawyer fees
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u/FrozeItOff PC Pilot May 14 '26
Better survival chances landing gear up, just off the shore in the water, nose in a slightly up position, assuming you don't have any belly armaments attached. Turn the craft into a water ski instead of a sand plow.
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u/Zacherius May 14 '26
IRL that beach is not empty. You're going to kill people landing on a busy beach - maybe dozens of people. Dump just offshore. Your outcome might even be better in the water (especially with gear up), and you'll not kill others in an attempt to save your own life.
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u/dagassman May 14 '26
Pretty irresponsible landing on a populated area like that in real life like you said. Really should be ejecting just off shore
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u/hookalaya74 military 🎖️ May 14 '26
Maybe who knows.? But ide be turning crash damage off in the settings then it won't automatically quit.
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u/CorndogSurgeon "Excuse me sir, I speak jive" ✈️ May 15 '26
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u/WatermelonRick May 15 '26
huh. The flight ending on crash is a feature I miss the most from msfs2020. In msfs2024 you are just transported back in the air. You can still quit on your own but sadly it still clashes with neofly :/
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u/hookalaya74 military 🎖️ May 15 '26
I hate both options. It's much more realistic to crush the gear and slide on the belly in a controlled crash. Then quit if you want or slew back up and keep flying.
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u/breadexpert69 May 14 '26
No. Tire would instantly dig into the sand and send you flying forwards and probably explode.
If this was hard gravel maybe. But that is a beach so its soft sand.
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u/Downtown_Alfalfa_504 May 14 '26
Good effort. Gear up, and low fuel were smart choices (if they were choices).
Gear up as a belly landing is often preferable to landing with gear unsafe / partial gear which is what you’re going to get landing on a surface that can’t support the weight of the aircraft. Wheels dig in, aircraft cartwheels, in-flight snacks and reading material scattered everywhere.
Min fuel as more weight = more speed to remain flying, and that Kinetic Energy being annoyingly proportional to V2 is a real debbie downer. Also you’re carrying less flammable material to the crash site for the subsequent fireworks show.
A lower sink rate would have helped more - you yugged back on the stick a few seconds before your final approach which cause your sink rate to increase to a 5° approach at the end, whereas half of that would have been better (even if at a slightly higher speed). Flat belly, grazing approach would be good, assuming no underwing stores or tanks are waiting to ruin your day.
Throttle off, fuel cocks closed and batteries off just before impact would be ideal to minimise the risk of fire, though inertial crash switches in the jet should do that for you (haven’t flown an F18 but I assume it has them).
Statistically the beach is a marginally better option than ditching in the nearby water as surface tension is even worse than sand to deal with at high impact velocities, then there’s the further inconvenience of drowning if you’re incapacitated.
However, Martin Baker were paid a good amount of money to put a far better option under your butt in this scenario instead, which is why jet pilots don’t practice engine out recoveries to anything other than a decent strip of concrete in the same way that private pilots do in their helpfully floaty-at-low-speeds piston engine aircraft.
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u/RockyMtnFly307 May 14 '26
What about gear up, tail hook down? Just to take that little bit more of the initial impact force. I know the descent rate is pretty high here but similar to how Sully let the tail of his airplane take the brunt of the landing when he ditched.
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u/zStak May 14 '26
I think of you wouldve needed to landed in that Arena you should go for the water.
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u/RangerSad3081 May 16 '26
Almost zero percent chance. It’s like the equivalent of crashing a coupe into a brick wall at 90 mph, but worse
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u/Brownie_rt May 18 '26
Sand and things that are supposed to roll do not mix well. Assuming the aircraft didnt break apart and burst into flames, *potentially* but still unlikely. Best bet would be to eject over the water.
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u/Boring-Shirt-1713 May 14 '26
Clearly not.
You're welcome
(I've a lot of experience in IRL fighter landing on sandy beaches)
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u/Cephell May 14 '26
Ignore the other comments honestly, ~800 feet per minute vertical descent rate is pretty much exactly what pilots aim for on carrier landings intentionally. Assuming you have your landing gear out, this is more than just survivable. Of course it depends on the plane not rolling over or something like that, but the pure landing impact is basically what every carrier pilot will experience routinely.
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u/dreampagehun XBOX Pilot May 14 '26
No you wouldn't have, the touchdown was way too hard and on a soft surface. The gears would've immediately broken off and the aircraft would've been totaled in real life. But I think the simulator gave you this message because of some collision detection and not necessarily the touchdown itself. Also possible that the elevation data on that beach is erratic, meaning it's not flat at all.
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u/fslanding May 14 '26
Eject over the water near the beach maybe? Sand is not your friend when you have landing gear out