Aircraft tail strikes happen every now and again, though this is one of the more unusual ones that I’ve seen caught on camera…
DHL A300 has dramatic tail strike at London Heathrow
BIG JET TV does an amazing job capturing video footage of aircraft taking off and landing at some of the world’s busiest airports. They were recording today (Sunday, October 12, 2025) at London Heathrow Airport, and goodness, did they catch quite a landing.
A 34-year-old DHL Airbus A300 with the registration code D-AEAG was performing flight QY2212 from Leipzig (LEJ) to London (LHR), scheduled to arrive a little after 5PM.
In video footage posted online, the plane can be seen attempting to land on runway 9L. It seemed to be a little windy, but nothing out of the ordinary. The plane’s left main gear touched down before the right main gear touched down, and there was a bit of side-to-side bouncing. However, it didn’t look like there was anything too alarming… until the plane was pitched up drastically.
It was pitched up so far that the plane suffered a tail strike… only for the pilots to then perform a go around.
The plane was then sequenced in for another approach, and landed on runway 9R without incident around 20 minutes later, at 5:33PM.
What on earth went wrong with this approach?
First of all, it’ll be interesting to see for how long this plane is grounded. It could be that just an inspection needs to be performed and that everything is more or less fine (aside from some missing paint). Or it could be that there’s structural damage, and that the plane will be out of service for months.
At least visually, this doesn’t appear to be one of the harder tail strikes I’ve seen, so perhaps this won’t be that big of a deal. That being said, visuals don’t always tell the full story.
This whole situation is a bit odd. Based on watching the video, it would appear the pilots just couldn’t get the wheels down in a stable way. Yet they deployed the reverse thrust and speed brakes, only to then perform a go around, with elevator inputs sending the nose up.
The A300 looks rather “pudgy,” so it looks like a plane where it would almost be difficult to have a tail strike (unlike an A340-600, for example). It’s pretty incredible to see the angle of attack at the time of the tail strike — that nose was way up there!
Bottom line
A DHL Airbus A300 suffered a tail strike while attempting to land at London Heathrow today. Tail strikes happen once in a while, but the entire attempt was strange. The pilots deployed the reverse thrusters and speed brakes, only to then pitch the nose way up and go around.
Hopefully the plane isn’t damaged too badly, though something tells me that a pilot or two may be headed for some extra simulator hours…
What do you make of this strange DHL attempted landing?