Posted on 01/15/2009 12:47:38 PM PST by Red Steel
Aha! That's the miracle. The pilot was used to flying bricks. The Airbus probably felt to him like a glider. ;-)
LOL...that was my first thought when I read that!
I'm hoping that the investigation is clear that both engines had bird impacts and not that an engine was inadvertently shut down or something.
And then we have the "if we didn't have global warming, then the migrating birds would have gone south before now" cry that should start anytime now.
Give it a little more time. Last I saw Geraldo adding in his two cents (last night I think), he was saying the plane was 100-something feet above the bridge, lol. Heck, soon we'll learn that the pilot flew under the bridge. :-)
Video: See heroic landing of US Airways flight 1549 in the Hudson River
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2166268/posts
I mostly flew 135’s... military version of the Boeing 707, essentially. Lots of hours.
Addendum...
So merely shutting down one engine, when there were no other complications was an “emergency” as far as ATC and standard practice was concerned, but it was not an “EMERGENCY~!!!”
Comment:
Seems this pilot was a former F-4 pilot.
Your reply:
Aha! That’s the miracle. The pilot was used to flying bricks. The Airbus probably felt to him like a glider. ;-)
My reply:
LOL! You know your tugboats!
135’s- tankers?
Thank you for your many years (flight hours) of service, and for your time overhead.
One summer, I did some ANG duty, that involved using a mock refueling boom ‘coupler,’ to function check the ‘receivers’ of our squadron's F-16s.
You said:
So merely shutting down one engine, when there were no other complications was an “emergency” as far as ATC and standard practice was concerned, but it was not an “EMERGENCY~!!!”
Please explain... I’m not sure what you’re referring to? Thanks.
I was kidding, and poking fun at the guy who wanted to pick up the plane with helicopters and cables.
I had four flights that I had one engine fail for one reason or another. None of them were “catastrophic” failures that destroyed the engine, resulted in a big fire, or other complications. Merely wound down and wouldn’t start, or were shut down for one reason or other.
There are “technical” emergencies, and honest emergencies. Technically, having to shut down an engine because the oil pressure was reading zero was an emergency: we were required(by regs, etc) to “declare an emergency” and thus obtain traffic priority, end a training mission, etc. Frankly, though, with three other good engines, and the quite likely cause being a bad gauge or sensor, no one gets their panties in a wad over that kind of thing. If you lose another engine, you may even try to start that engine up if you need it - you shut it down to save the bearings, and possible further damage, but in fact the oil pressure is quite likely to be just fine. The 135/707 will fly just fine on two engines at any but very heavy loads. So, simply losing an engine wasn’t, to me and many pilots, very troublesome. We would typically go back to our home base. I can tell you for sure, that during wartime operations, it would be a total non-event except right after takeoff.
IF, however, an engine wound down rapidly, and at the same time I start losing pressure in one of my hydraulic systems (which assist turning, climbing, and putting gear down, as well as several other important things), I would suspect that in addition to the engine catastrophically failing, that it caused a leak in one of the hydraulic systems. Though I could choose to “crossover” the other engines to handle that hydraulic system in a pinch, it is likely I’d be pumping fluid out into the air through a leak, and that could make my problem worse. I may have to be putting down the gear manually (winding them down with a crank) and I may be getting tired quickly since I may not have my “power steering” assisting me with the controls, so the pilots will tire more quickly, as well as being at least somewhat stressed by the situation. The autopilot may not be able to handle the plane for the mundane tasks I’d usually let it do to give me a break. Now we’re in a situation that I would be getting concerned, and if I lose certain other capability of the plane, it may jeopardize my ability to safely handle and land the plane. That would be a “Real Emergency” for me. I would declare the emergency, and let ATC (Air Traffic Control) handle things normally, and we would get to work to see just how bad things are, and probably land at the nearest reasonable field since there is no sense tempting Mr Murphy more than you have to in a situation like that.
Suppose now, after the above, I lost an engine on the other side of the airplane, and my other hydraulic system. Though I can still fly and land on the remaining two engines, we definitely have the handling problems and manual gear, and in addition we may be getting short of electrical power since we’ve lost two generators. Our landing speed and landing roll is going to be higher because I can’t extend flaps. We have many fewer options of emergency landing areas. Any kind of bad weather approach at all is going to be extremely difficult, and even a good weather approach is going to be hard. I’ve got my hands full now... and I want to tell ATC that the air is MINE, that they need to clear everyone else out of the way, that the field I’m going to land at is MINE, and that I don’t want them to say a single word to me unless they HAVE to or unless I ask. This is an EMERGENCY!!! - I’m not sure I’ll be able to get everything done safely, and if I have any other problem at all, it is likely we won’t have a happy conclusion.
For example - suppose one of those engine failures had somehow caused damage (electrical or mechanical) of my remaining electrical system, and after twenty minutes of hanging together, my electrical system fails... and with it most of my instruments and lights. This is NOT good - and a good outcome is going to require that you prove that you (and your copilot) are good and that you make your instructors proud of you, as well as being at near the top of your game that day. I won’t say that it will take a miracle to get out of this safely, but this is a true challenge. In fact the above scenario is something I had tossed at me in a simulator. If I recall correctly, I managed to live:-)
Does the Airbus have APUs capable of providing hydraulic power, otherwise how did the pilot control the doomed aircraft?
Great perspective from the flight deck on emergencies in flight. Thanks for the details.
In your previous post to me, you were making the same point as above (in an abbreviated form) to what? My post had a link to an article in the WAPO, which was submitted more for the inside link, leading to the cockpit simulation video of flight 1549. I noticed that the WAPO article appears to change periodically, and the inside link is no longer a direct link to the simulation video.
It’s not a big deal. I didn’t grasp what you were addressing your comment to, in my post. Perhaps, it was a comment within the linked to article, that you were addressing? Clear as mud?
So you know that the student was paying attention, I grasp that there can be situations where you declare an emergency, and then there are situations that are EMERGENCIES!
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