A Fed Ex MD-11 Freighter burst into flames on the morning of March 23rd 2009 when trying to land at Tokyo Narita International airport. The aircraft had its nose down on short final, bounced once, bounced again and flipped over. It burst into flames after the left wing hit the ground. Gusting winds were reported at the time of the landing but it is most probably a windshear that have caused the crash. Both pilots are confirmed dead. This particular aircraft was previously in service with Delta as a passenger hauler before being converted to freighter and handed over to Fed Ex. It was coming fron Guangzou on a scheduled freight flight.
The MD-11 aircraft, designed in the 1980's as a successor to the trijet DC-10, is also known to be hard to land especially in strong gusting winds, it is designed with an increased fuselage lenght compared to that of the DC-10 but the wing span and area remained the same, except wingtips added, hence more weight for the same lift. Four MD-11 crashed since the type entered service in 1991, including three freigher models. The freighter models that were involved in disasters were a Fed Ex bird which flipped over upon landing in Newark NJ in 1997, an other aircraft in Hong Kong in 1999, and now another Fed Ex bird in Tokyo. The fourth MD-11 disaster was the Swissair bird that crashed on the Atlantic Ocean in 1998, it was the only MD-11 in passenger version involved in a disaster.
Weather in Tokyo was reported clear with gusts of winds. Other aircraft that followed the approach in sequence for landing on RWY 34L, where the doomed Fed Ex MD-11 was cleared to land, were diverted to nearby airports including Haneda. The runway is now closed but should be reopened shortly within the next couple of days or so. Wind shear factor was blamed for quite a few disasters in the United States including EA 66, Eastern 727 landing in New York JFK in 1975, PA 759, a Pan Am 727 taking off out of New Orleans in 1982, and DL 191, a Delta L-1011 landing in Dallas in 1985. Other light aircraft were lost in windshear accidents. Since the above mentioned disasters, a technology advanced deviced called LLWAS (Low Level Windshear Alert System) helps pilot and Air Traffic Controllers detect windshears. A windshear is a sudden change in wind direction near the surface of the airport, making the aircraft loose lift and very difficult, if not impossible, to control. Wind shears occur rarely. It remains unlear whether the pilots of the ill fated Fed Ex flight should have done a missed approach, or not.
