[gmanley]

That example is so well known due to how exceptional it was, especially how the pilots handled it. Robert Pearson, the captain, was a very experienced glider pilot. That's something that not many commercial pilots have.

There were also two factors in the landing, that allowed for this to happen. You're going to be coming in really fast for a landing, when gliding in a commercial jet, and you don't have access to your thrust reversers to slow it down. There was a repurposed runway, that they used to land, that just happened to have been used as a drag racing track and had a guard rail. They were able to slow down by scraping across that. It also just so happened the nose gear didn't deploy fully so scraping the nose of the plane against the ground also helped slow it down.

Needless to say it was a bunch of very fortunate events that allowed it to not end in disaster. In any case I would consider it very risky.

[dreamcompiler]

And even with all that scraping damage they were able to fly the plane out, repair it, and put it back in service. Amazing.

[cibyr]

The "scraping helped slow it down" theory makes no sense to me. What do you think has a higher coefficient of friction - tire rubber on asphalt, metal on asphalt, or metal on metal?

[gmanley]

I would hesitate to chalk it up to just theory, given it was in the NTSB report and they don't really mess around with throwing baseless stuff around. I'd be interested to take another look at it. They likely go into the material science and physics behind this very thing. They're usually filled with gems.

You also have to keep in mind, it wasn't just rubber against asphalt, it was rubber on a wheel that spins. I'm not sure if the front nose gear on a 767 has any brakes but even if it did, I can't imagine it would be sufficient at the speeds they were going.

[smaudet]

Don't forget the surface area of contact...

Rubber likely grips much better than metal, however three wheels have massively lower surface area than the body of the plane, or even a small section of it like the head.

Of course we don't land tireless for other reasons (metal transfers heat exceptionally well unlike rubber, paint doesn't survive high speed impact, and it tends to deform upon impact with anything, making any future flights unsafe), but the fastest way to slow down if you don't care about safety or comfort would probably be to land tireless, if you could introduce some rotational spin, that might be faster (more force directed in multiple directions).

Also, on the note of "coefficient of friction", remember that this number is not just some innate property of a molecule - as the metal scratches the pavement and deforms, its coefficient of friction goes up as micro-deformities accrue.

[anonymars]

You seem to be assuming those are "or" rather than "and"