A routine Frankfurt-to-Los Angeles flight turned dramatic on October 10, when a Lufthansa Boeing 747-8 pitched up sharply during touchdown and came within inches of dragging its tail along runway 24R at LAX. The crew abandoned the landing, climbed away, circled, and brought the jumbo down safely 15 minutes later on a second attempt.

The flight, LH456, is Lufthansa's daily service between Frankfurt and Los Angeles, scheduled to depart at 10:40 AM and land at 1:10 PM local time after roughly 11 and a half hours in the air. On the day it left Frankfurt 38 minutes late but was still on course for a punctual arrival, initially touching down at 1:18 PM. That's when the sharp pitch-up forced the go-around, an event caught by a planespotting livestream at the airport. Lufthansa confirmed the crew performed a go-around and landed normally on the second attempt, calling it a standard, well-rehearsed procedure.

The aircraft involved, registered D-ABYK, is a 13-year-old 747-8 delivered to Lufthansa in 2013, configured with eight first class, 80 business, 32 premium economy and 244 economy seats. Because the tail never actually made contact with the runway, no damage occurred and the jet didn't need to be pulled from service. Its return leg to Frankfurt, LH457, nevertheless left almost an hour late at 4:00 PM, but a fast transatlantic crossing made up the time and it landed in Germany at 10:50 AM the next morning, ten minutes ahead of schedule. The aircraft's next assignment was the LH402 service to Newark the following day.

For Lufthansa's 747-8s, it's a case of déjà vu at LAX. In April 2024, another aircraft on the same route, D-ABYP, slammed down so hard while being flown by a training pilot that the landing gear bottomed out, bounced twice, then went around. The planespotting channel streaming the arrival called it the roughest landing it had ever recorded, and Lufthansa said at the time the jet would need a cockpit crew assessment before flying home.

Why does this matter to travellers? Go-arounds sound alarming but are among the safest manoeuvres in aviation — pilots would far rather abandon a shaky approach than force a landing. If you're on a long-haul flight that comes in for a second attempt, expect a modest delay and possibly a tight connection on arrival, but nothing more. LAX's long runways handle the world's largest aircraft daily, and incidents like this are notable precisely because they're rare. If anything, the story is a reminder of how much can go wrong in the last few seconds of a flight and how rarely it does.

Credit: Simple Flying