Of all times to completely lose visibility out your front windshield, you don't want it to be while you're flying a plane, 50 feet above the runway, as you're coming in to land.
Normally, when the view out a jumbo jet's front window is nothing but rain, a bevy of advanced instruments help pilots navigate. In a video recently uploaded to YouTube, however, even those don't seem to be sufficient, as a sudden downpour forces the pilot to abort the landing at the last minute and circle until the storm clears.
The video opens with the plane's descent through light showers to a well-lit runway on the horizon. A computerized voice in the cockpit announces the altitude, "500." As the crew continues to guide in past "decision height," (the point at which a pilot can safely abort a landing), everything appears to go smoothly.
In a period of 5 seconds however, just as the nose of the aircraft crosses the start of the runway, everything disappears. Heavy rain obscures the view out the window, save for a windshield wiper swiping furiously yet futilely back and forth.
Per the YouTube description, the video was filmed by someone in the plane's jump seat who spotted the rain ahead of time. The pilots ultimately initiated a "go-around procedure," an aerial maneuver where the aircraft rapidly climbs back into a holding pattern to attempt landing at a later time.
"Ultimately, we had plenty of fuel on board and we where [sic] given radar vectors back for another approach," writes Douglesso, the uploader, on YouTube. "In just 15 minutes the rain had passed and the sun was coming out."
WATCH the video, above.
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