Air carrier flight crew reported a loss of control during landing in heavy rain exacerbated by ATC pressuring them to exit the runway expeditiously. Crew regained control; exited the runway and taxied to gate.
Synopsis
Air carrier flight crew reported a loss of control during landing in heavy rain exacerbated by ATC pressuring them to exit the runway expeditiously. Crew regained control; exited the runway and taxied to gate.
Narrative
Leg 3 of 3 on last day of 3. Landing in DEN on 35L; storms with heavy rain in the airport vicinity; preceding aircraft reported gain of 25kts on 3 mi final and low visibility on landing. We configured early at about 4-5mi on final to ensure a stable approach and had visually acquired the RWY around 5-6mi out. We encountered a 20kt speed gain at 3 mi but returned to a stable approach fairly quickly; we could see the rain on the RWY and asked for the lights to be turned up full bright. The first several thousand feet of the RWY was visible for the final approach up until the flare and the approach itself was uneventful. Once in the round out and into the flare at just shy of touching down visibility went to about 3 white lights off our nose. We got the aircraft on the RWY and were slowing up still barely able to see off the nose with the wipers on high. Tower began to tell us to clear the RWY in an urgent voice and rather than telling them to be quiet while we were trying to remain in control of the aircraft I let it get to me and when I saw an exit I initiated a turn. At this point I still had no idea where we were on the RWY. As we got closer I saw that we were at the closed taxiway M6 and began a turn back to the RWY at the same time TWR starts yelling at us to not turn there. Visibility is still next to nothing due to the volume of rain this also caused the aircraft to hydroplane as we turned to get back on the RWY. We hydroplaned to the right then back to the left before finally getting traction enough to actually steer; the whole time tower is yelling" at us to clear the RWY. We reached M7; clear and taxi to our gate."
Second reporter narrative
After touchdown in severe heavy rain that lead to very poor visibility on the runway after touchdown; during rollout; the tower pressured us to vacate the runway 'immediately'. The Captain was pressured to take the first exit available to satisfy the tower pressured demand. After the turn toward the Exit; and due to the very poor visibly due to the extremely heavy rain; the captain then realized that this was the closed exit. The captain then made a sharp turn to turn back to the runway which lead the aircraft to skid for few seconds since the anti-skid system does not operate at such low speed.The captain regained control of the aircraft and taxied back on the runway to take the next open exit.The tower failed to update us on the current weather condition during the flare phase and the runway condition; which neither was available on an outdated ATIS. Instead; all the tower did was adding pressure and stress to an already very challenging situation.
Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.