The drama starts about 3:30. Pretty good outcome. Touched down about 10 knots above book speed and bounced forever. Luckily didn’t porpoise the nose into the ground.
Unfortunately upon closer examination it appears there might be more damage than initially hoped for – a follow-up post on Mooneyspace with pictures and some commentary.
Damaged rather than “took out” 
This sort of thing is possible with the Socata TB also although I don’t think anybody has actually done it. A departing door could take off the vertical stabiliser.
Well handled.
Hats off to the good humoured attitude of the passenger. What a cool lady.
Peter wrote:
Damaged rather than “took out”
If I understood what he said in Mooneyspace, he had limited elevator control and had to fight a pitch down tendency by triming the elevator up. That worked as with Mooneys the whole empenage moves with elevator trim.
Damage is quite extensive by the sound of it, may well mean a replacement of the whole tail or worse. Also steering rods appear to be damaged. Looks like a massive repair job will be upcoming… depending on how they are insured it may well be a write off.
Glad they manage it, and they did pretty well keeping on top of it both PIC & PAX
Also, feel sorry for G-OSUS, been U/S many times since as far as I know her !
I think the structural damage is more than we see on pictures (fuselage & spares & ribs), that door opened at +160kts cruise way higher than VFE and would lead to serious structural failures, Mooneys are rock solid (look at VNE & elevator/wing stress limits), other aircraft do get torn apart if you do that for gear/flaps above Vfe/Vge let alone opening a bag door orthogonal to the airflow and stick it to the elevator
zuutroy wrote:
Touched down about 10 knots above book speed and bounced forever. Luckily didn’t porpoise the nose into the ground.
With that damage on the elevator, I would expect aircraft to be uncontrollable at slow speeds and really out of trim
I think that extra speed was healthy for controllability and those steep bank angles while in the air
Also not sure if the landing was into wind? tailwind? or no wind?
Ibra wrote:
With that damage on the elevator, I would expect aircraft to be uncontrollable at slow speeds and really out of trim
I think that extra speed was healthy for controllability and those steep bank angles while in the airAlso not sure if the landing was into wind? tailwind? or no wind?
Not debating any of that, just an observation! I’ve noticed before the nosewheel makes an awful thud if you put it down any way heavy handed. Heard about 7 of those familiar thuds on the video Probably attributable to the stiffness of the whole frame.
No idea under what conditions those front gear oscillations happens to the Mooneys and how to “save them”? some magic mix of rough ground, heavy nose, donuts stiffness and touchdown speed/pitch, for sure they never happen when landing with no flaps dead on speed and flatfish touchdown on smooth tarmac and they appear when someone try soft field landing technique on hard rough tarmac (not sure why?), obviously, if the gear oscillation blow up on the second bounce, go-around
I just looked at the video again it looks about 10kts-15kts tailwind from 8 o’clock according to the windsock, that would make an interesting increase in GS and a non-intuitive landing, if one wants to theorise: one does gain indicated airspeed as they descend trough tailwind gradient and flare in tailgusts, as aircraft slows down ailerons need to go right with tail crosswind and flares just near neutral, once 3 wheels are on the ground at slow speeds and low RPM with that tailwind, the yoke is pushed right and forward neutral to prevent the the tail from sinking and nose wheel from lifting each time the nose of the aircraft bounces on and also to keep the fuselage pointing the “runway” rather than rotating into wind…
Ibra wrote:
Also, feel sorry for G-OSUS, been U/S many times since as far as I know her !
I agree, I almost bought G-OSUS 6 years ago when it was for sale via AT Aviation. Went as having a price agreed that the seller then changed his mind on.
The Monday morning quarterbacking on the Reddit thread on /r/flying on this was terrible. It’s like half the posters didn’t notice that this had resulted in an uncommanded pitch down strong enough to float the checklist off the panel, and then quite severe restriction to the elevator movement, and thought that the baggage door basically impaled on the elevator balance horn wasn’t worthy of an emergency landing.
