Boeing 777X Pushes Its Limits

Aerospace giant’s crosswind testing in Lubbock, Texas, literally goes sideways.

Thursday, May 01, 2025 at 06:30 AM ET

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A Boeing 777X at the Dubai Airshow [Credit: AirlineGeeks/William Derrickson]

Key Takeaways:

Crosswind component is a critical aviation metric indicating the wind speed at which an aircraft risks losing rudder authority.
Aircraft manufacturers conduct rigorous testing, combining flight simulators and real-world flights in extreme weather, to determine and verify the maximum demonstrated crosswind capabilities.
Boeing, for instance, performs extensive real-world crosswind testing for its 777X to establish performance parameters and best practices for airline pilots.
Pilots employ specific techniques like crabbing and using rudder/aileron for crosswind landings, with a go-around being the recommended safety procedure if rudder authority is lost.

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There are a lot of performance metrics in aviation, and one of them is crosswind component. In short, it’s the speed of the wind that, when exceeded, means to run out of rudder authority.

In training airplanes such as the Cessna 172, you will find a notation of the “demonstrated crosswind” with the caveat “not a limitation.” To get this information the aircraft manufacturers put their airplanes into crosswind conditions to see that it can handle them.

Meg Godlewski has been an aviation journalist for more than 24 years and a CFI for more than 20 years. If she is not flying or teaching aviation, she is writing about it. Meg is a founding member of the Pilot Proficiency Center at EAA AirVenture and excels at the application of simulation technology to flatten the learning curve. Follow Meg on Twitter @2Lewski.