Posted on 09/01/2006 10:08:19 AM PDT by WmShirerAdmirer
Interesting, but as most shoulder-fired AA missiles are heat-seekers and would take out an engine, how relevant is throttles-only control for anti-terrorist defense?
Sure on a 4-engine plane (like a 747) it would still be
useful--if practiced with pairs of engines, but on a two engine plane wouldn't it be infeasible once one engine is out?
This should have been written as two separate articles.
Nevermind a McDonnell-Douglass which some aircraft have a third engine at the tail assembly. The horror...
for example ...
Of the 285 passengers and 11 crew members aboard, 174 passengers and 10 crew members survived. 111 perished.
Just Google Sioux City DC-10 and you'll get plenty of good hits.
That flight was a remarkable demo of flying skill. Without it no ones gets out alive. Responsibility (good or bad)for a flight rests on the pilot in command. No other agency.
Yep, and the vast majority of the aircraft in airline service are twins. 757,767, various Airbus, ERJs and CRJs, as well as twin turbo props.
747 of course has 4 engines and there are still more than a few MD-11/DC-10s out their with 3. However in the latter case, the center engine isn't much use in steering, so if you lose one of the wing mounted engines, you're in the same boat as a twin.
FWIW, the DC-10 has one engine in the tail section, and one on each wing. The tail section engine failed on the Sioux City United plane and flying pieces severed the THREE redundant hydraulic systems.
Could you fix the title of the article to read:
UPI Intelligence Watch:"Throttles-only airliner pilot training" instead of "Tthrottles-only". Thanks.
IIRC, tests on civilian jetliners show that a typical shoulder-launched SAM will NOT (immediately) bring down a passenger jet due to loss of structural integrity. The crew MUST be able to fly the plane with one engine, but all US jets are single engine certified.
A SAM strike brings a great risk of fire that the on-board systems MIGHT not be able to contain, particularly if the frag cone penetrated wing and fuselage fuel tanks.
Secondarily the SAM strike would likely also damage control systems.
There's nothing good about SAMs and civilian jets in the same sentence. But a SAM strike is NOT necessarily a death sentence.
Good catch on important details and your investigative blogging, will note to look for your research and link. Thanks.
again, IIRC, no one has since been able to duplicate the feat in a cockpit sim.
176 souls alive because of their luck, intellect and skill.
'But a SAM strike is NOT necessarily a death sentence.'
Clarify with MANPAD and I agree.
I meant to type in the case of a warhead striking that particular engine. The tail assembly would blow up sending the plane down... I don't even want to think about that. I like aviation and myself safety and sanity too much to mull over that.
I remember there being a movie about a pilot flying a plane that ran out of fuel, something about him having the nose up about 2 degrees or something.
I recall NASA doing some testing after the Souix City accident, and successfully landed a DC-10 at Edwards.
With modern digital control systems, using engine thrust for emergency flight control to supplement or replace failed aircraft normal flight controls has become a practical consideration. The NASA Dryden Flight Research Center has developed a propulsion-controlled aircraft (PCA) system in which computer-controlled engine thrust provides emergency flight control. An F-15 and an MD-11 airplane have been landed without using any flight control surfaces. Preliminary studies have also been conducted that show that engines on only one wing can provide some flight control capability if the lateral center of gravity can be shifted toward the side of the airplane that has the operating engine(s). Simulator tests of several airplanes with no flight control surfaces operating and all engines out on the left wing have all shown positive control capability within the available range of lateral center-of-gravity offset. Propulsion-controlled aircraft systems that can operate without modifications to engine control systems, thus allowing PCA technology to be installed on less capable airplanes or at low cost, are also desirable. Further studies have examined simplified “PCA Lite” and “PCA Ultralite” concepts in which thrust control is provided by existing systems such as autothrottles or a combination of existing systems and manual pilot control.
But wasn't that WITH the assistance of 'new' NASA software? I thought no one had flown a 'vanilla' DC-10 to a safe landing sans hydraulics.
Even so, a great feat.
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