bobbo says:

How many good folks here can keep in mind the difference between “safe” and “right on the edge?”

As a passenger, do you want to land “right on the edge” risking your life, or do you want the airline to go to the alternate landing site or circle for awhile if they have the gas?

Safety DEMANDS that the decision to go around be made at altitude.

BTW–no airline pilot lands “on the edge” very often so such landings are always dangerous. An act of cowardice rather than skill.

Rich says:

I’ve seen a dozen videos like this with planes struggling with crosswinds on landing. They are all recent videos. Could it be global warming? Hmmmm.

Miguel Correia says:

It was no ex-USN pilot. At the very most, it could have been an ex-FAP pilot (Força Aérea Portuguesa), as the plane belongs to SATA – Air Azores, the Portuguese Airline based at the Azores islands. This was most probably in the islands, as the accent of the people overheard sounds like from that place.

It was not necessarily a training flight as there is no such a thing as “crosswind limit” for aircraft. What manufacturers publish is a “crosswind maximum *demonstrated*”. It just means their test pilots didn’t get to test in higher crosswinds than the published ones, but it does not forbid landing with higher ones.

The pilot did not push the envelop. The technique is to crab until just before touchdown and then line the plane with runway and land. Small plane pilots even go further to land with cross-controls (plane rolled to the side of the wind, so it doesn’t drift to the other side of the runway, and rudder to the opposite side, so it keeps parallel to the runway). He went around at a perfectly safe time to do so.