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For a Boeing 777 cargo jet pilot we spoke with, the viral video of a 777 making a freakishly low pass and sharp bank over a Texas airfield was a “shocking” sight to see.

“Shocking, yes,” exclaimed Steve Jones, a former Navy MH-53E Sea Dragon pilot who now flies 777s for Atlas Air. “‘Jesus Christ!’ or ‘holy shit!’ come to mind, but shocking will do.”

Jones was reacting to a 37-second video clip of the jet – painted in Qatar Airways Cargo livery – flying over the runway at the Horseshoe Bay Private Jet Center in Horseshoe Bay, Texas. At about the 12-second mark, the jet makes a sharp bank to the right, placing the right wing tip just above the ground before gaining altitude and flying off.

Jones estimated the jet was flying about 50 feet off the ground during the ‘flat’ part of its flyby and traveling at between 210 and 220 knots.

“It looks like the flaps and slats are up,” Jones noted.

The exact altitude and speed are unknown.

“Two things came to mind,” Jones said after watching the video. “The pilot is probably very good, or lucky, because he was extremely low, and you can see that the right wing tip got pretty close to the ground. You can’t even see the wings from inside the cockpit. You’re looking at somewhere like a 212-foot wingspan.”

Inside the cockpit, “there’s a lot of warnings the crew has to either disable or ignore,” the 777 pilot said. “For example, there’s a ground proximity warning. There’s a configuration warning – not only the ‘whoop whoop’ sounds, but also there will be audible signals saying that, ‘you’re close to the ground, pull up, pull up.’ The sink rate alarms would be going off.All those things are going on. There are some things that you can disable that will prevent those things, but not all of them all at once.”

“That’s a pretty great video,” Jones proffered, “but not a smart thing to do.”

The reason, he said, was that “the plane is not designed” to fly like that. “A wind gust in the wrong direction, or a judgment on his actual altitude and height could have been off. It’s a lot of airplane that close to the ground going at those speeds.”

Asked how difficult it could have been for the pilot to pull off such a maneuver, Jones told us that the aircraft is very forgiving.

“The Triple Seven is a very easy airplane to fly… It’s very gentle on the controls. It’s a well-designed airplane to be able to fly at altitudes and take off and landings, but not to fly extended periods low-level over the ground. You’ve got engine pods hanging down, long wingspans.”

“I’ve never flown that aircraft in that particular configuration that low, but I imagine that it is not necessarily difficult to fly. It comes down to ‘just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.’”

Jones, who has about 850 hours in a 777, said that he would not want to be on a flight like the one seen on the video.

“If I was the co-pilot or first officer flying that situation, I wouldn’t have been comfortable, and I would have said ‘I’m not comfortable with this,’ and try to put a stop to it, but again, I don’t know the circumstances around it, so I can’t speculate, but with two brains, sometimes three or four brains in the cockpit, usually the voice of reason will come up between other folks.”

Things would not go well for him if he were captured on video flying like this, Jones acknowledged.

“I would lose my job,” Jones said with a laugh. “I don’t even know if they would ask why I would do it. I would just probably lose my job.”

There are other factors to consider when it comes to official reactions to this flight, Jones said.

“What I don’t know is if that particular pilot had authorization to do so,” he stated. “So it could have been authorization from the tower, authorization from the company, or whatever, in order to create something like that. But knowing how the industry is, if there were no prior permissions or authorization, that pilot and that crew will probably lose their jobs.”

FAA records show the jet, N-705DN, is registered to Jetran LLC, an aircraft leasing and service company with an address at Horseshoe Bay. We have reached out to them for more details about the status of the aircraft and why it was flying so low. However, the company reportedly released a statement saying that the low pass flight “does not reflect operational standards” and the aircraft was going through a “a pre-delivery test flight” before being turned over to Qatar Airways.

Jetran was also quick to point out that “the pilots on board were not Qatar Airways pilots.”

Qatar Airways Cargo “has an agreement with Jetran for five aircraft. DHL and Ethiopian Airlines are also due to take delivery of the aircraft in the future,” according to Aerospace Global News.

“As the launch customer for the 777-200LRMF, this milestone marks an important moment for both Mammoth Freighters and Jetran,” Jordan Jaffe, CEO, Jetran, told the publication in April. “From the outset, we have had strong confidence in the Mammoth engineering team and their vision for the program.”

The aircraft is a former Delta Air Lines 777-200LR that was converted to freighter configuration by Mammoth Freighters, according to FlightRadar24.

“Mammoth Freighters has been made aware of a video circulating on social media showing a low-pass flight of a Mammoth-converted 777 freighter aircraft in Qatar Airways livery,” the company said in a statement to FlightRadar24. “Mammoth is not the owner of the aircraft and Mammoth was not in control of the aircraft at the time of the maneuver. The current owner (which is not Qatar Airways) was in control of the aircraft at the time of the maneuver. The aircraft is in its final stages of preparation prior to delivery to Qatar Airways.”

“While the aircraft is painted in Qatar Airways livery, it was not owned or operated by Qatar Airways, did not carry a Qatar Airways registration, and the pilots on board were not Qatar Airways pilots.”

The FAA told us “it is aware of reports about this event and is looking into it.” We have also reached out to Qatar Airways and Horseshoe Bay Private Jet Center.

As to why anyone would authorize a flight like that, Jones shrugged.

“This is a cargo aircraft. It has a job to move cargo from Point A to Point B, not to create videos for Instagram,” Jones scoffed. “From a company standpoint, I don’t know their policies, but I can imagine a company with a $300 million aircraft and the insurance that goes along with those aircraft would not allow such a flight to happen unless they authorized it.”

What reason that would be is unclear.

“Sometimes you see manufacturers like Boeing or Airbus do a demonstration at the Paris Air Show, where you’ll see a steep takeoff or a climb or a low pass,” Jones said. “I’ve never seen one that low before, even at an air show.”

Speaking to us at a layover in Luxembourg, Jones said that so far, he hasn’t heard much buzz from the 777 pilot community about this video, but expects that to change.

“Give it a few hours or a couple of days and I probably will,” he said.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

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