Question About Mid-Air Collisions

Hello everyone. I'm preparing a mock press conference for one of my college classes. In my particular scenario, I am the public relations head of a top international airliner.

Three hours into the flight, one of our planes was involved in a mid-air collision (whether it was with another aircraft or another object, I am not sure). The plane is still airborne but is only able to fly higher and to the right. All attempts to make a left turn or decrease altitude have failed.

I need some expert knowledge on what would happen in this situation. Judging by the damage, is it possible to land the plane safely? Is an emergency landing feasible? If so, what would the steps necessary be to execute it and how long (roughly) would that take?

Thank you for your help!

On Sep 15, 2:46*pm, jason219
wrote:
Hello everyone. *I'm preparing a mock press conference for one of my
college classes. In my particular scenario, I am the public relations
head of a top international airliner.

Three hours into the flight, one of our planes was involved in a mid-air
collision (whether it was with another aircraft or another object, I am
not sure). The plane is still airborne but is only able to fly higher
and to the right. All attempts to make a left turn or decrease altitude
have failed.

I need some expert knowledge on what would happen in this situation.
Judging by the damage, is it possible to land the plane safely? *Is an
emergency landing feasible? If so, what would the steps necessary be to
execute it and how long (roughly) would that take?

Thank you for your help!

--
jason219

Although the airfoil surfaces are stuck in a
position to induce lift, the plane would be induced to decrease
elevation by throttle reduction or fuel mixture. If you can only
turn left you won't make it.

---
Mark

jason219 wrote:

Hello everyone. I'm preparing a mock press conference for one of my
college classes. In my particular scenario, I am the public relations
head of a top international airliner.

Three hours into the flight, one of our planes was involved in a mid-air
collision (whether it was with another aircraft or another object, I am
not sure). The plane is still airborne but is only able to fly higher
and to the right. All attempts to make a left turn or decrease altitude
have failed.

This can not happen.

If you reduce or eliminate engine power, the airplane will come down.

Also, eventually an airplane will stop climbing.

I need some expert knowledge on what would happen in this situation.
Judging by the damage, is it possible to land the plane safely? Is an
emergency landing feasible? If so, what would the steps necessary be to
execute it and how long (roughly) would that take?

Thank you for your help!

The situation just isn't realistic.

While it is remotely possible that the controls could get damaged to the
extent that the airplane can only be turned in one direction, there is
still the use of unbalanced thrust from the engines to control direction,
and this has actually been done in airliners and military aircraft.

If nothing can control the aircraft heading, about all you can do is reduce
power, spiral down, and hope where the airplane touches the ground is
open and flat.


--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

Mark wrote:
On Sep 15, 2:46Â*pm, jason219
wrote:
Hello everyone. Â*I'm preparing a mock press conference for one of my
college classes. In my particular scenario, I am the public relations
head of a top international airliner.

Three hours into the flight, one of our planes was involved in a mid-air
collision (whether it was with another aircraft or another object, I am
not sure). The plane is still airborne but is only able to fly higher
and to the right. All attempts to make a left turn or decrease altitude
have failed.

I need some expert knowledge on what would happen in this situation.
Judging by the damage, is it possible to land the plane safely? Â*Is an
emergency landing feasible? If so, what would the steps necessary be to
execute it and how long (roughly) would that take?

Thank you for your help!

--
jason219

Although the airfoil surfaces are stuck in a
position to induce lift, the plane would be induced to decrease
elevation by throttle reduction or fuel mixture. If you can only
turn left you won't make it.

Airliners don't have mixture controls.


--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

Edward A. Falk wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
jason219 wrote:

[hypothetical scenario:]

The plane is still airborne but is only able to fly higher
and to the right. All attempts to make a left turn or decrease altitude
have failed.

Look to the Sioux City crash of 1989. Circumstances were very similar.
Pilot could only control altitude and direction by playing with the
throttles. It was a miracle he could bring it to the runway at all,
and nobody's ever been able to repeat it in a simulator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232


This can not happen.

If you reduce or eliminate engine power, the airplane will come down.

Never say never. Although I agree that it's extremely unlikely, I
can imagine an aft-of-cg situation where reducing power would cause
an unrecoverable stall. With a combination of aft-of-cg situation
and loss of elevator control, I could imagine that the only stable
configuration would be a climb.

Yeah, but no matter what there has never been an airplane that got stuck
in the air, they all have to come down sometime.

I need some expert knowledge on what would happen in this situation.
Judging by the damage, is it possible to land the plane safely? Is an
emergency landing feasible? If so, what would the steps necessary be to
execute it and how long (roughly) would that take?

If the plane can only climb, then that's all she wrote.

As in the elevator is stuck up, and stuck up enough, yep.

If it can only turn to the right, your best bet would probably be ditching
in the ocean or a large lake, but I wouldn't give good odds on surviving
either of those scenarios without full control of the plane.

If the lane can turn right *or* go straight, then you might have a chance.

Anyway, read up on the Sioux City crash, I think your scenario is based
on it, and you can see what actual experts did.

If nothing can control the aircraft heading, about all you can do is reduce
power, spiral down, and hope where the airplane touches the ground is
open and flat.

Agreed.


--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

jason219 writes:

Three hours into the flight, one of our planes was involved in a mid-air
collision (whether it was with another aircraft or another object, I am
not sure). The plane is still airborne but is only able to fly higher
and to the right. All attempts to make a left turn or decrease altitude
have failed.

I need some expert knowledge on what would happen in this situation.
Judging by the damage, is it possible to land the plane safely? Is an
emergency landing feasible? If so, what would the steps necessary be to
execute it and how long (roughly) would that take?

First, it's never impossible to decrease altitude. All you have to do is
reduce power, and you descend. If for some reason you cannot adjust the
control surfaces at all, and cannot control the engines at all, you'll still
descend once you run out of fuel. So that part isn't very realistic.

As for being able to turn right but not left, that would require an extremely
unusual set of circumstances, since the same control surfaces are used for
turns in both directions. And since a turn begins by rolling the aircraft, an
inability to roll it in the opposite direction would make it impossible to end
the turn in most cases, and ultimately bad things would happen.

But let's assume that both types of damage are possible. In that case, the
airplane can never land, since it cannot descend. Let's suppose that it finds
a way to descend, then. If it still only only turn right, it might be able to
find its way down to an airport. It could work its way down with just right
turns, but the final approach would be extremely difficult, since only
corrections to the right would be possible, and any circumstance that might
require turning left (such as maintaining alignment with the runway) would
require starting over with the approach. This does not bode well for a safe
landing, unless the aircraft has expert pilots and unlimited fuel aboard.

It might be better to select a different type of damage. The loss of all
controls except engines has already happened, for example. See United Airlines
Flight 232 (most of the people aboard survived) and JAL Flight 123 (all but
four of the 524 people aboard the aircraft died).

jason219 wrote:

Hello everyone.

Hello! Welcome to this happy place.

I'm preparing a mock press conference for one of my
college classes. In my particular scenario, I am the public relations
head of a top international airliner.

Don't forget to name it "Trans American Airlines".

Three hours into the flight, one of our planes was involved in a mid-air
collision (whether it was with another aircraft or another object, I am
not sure). The plane is still airborne but is only able to fly higher
and to the right. All attempts to make a left turn or decrease altitude
have failed.

When a mock reporter asks what is being done, answer with this:

"We're routing him into Lake Michigan, at least we'll avoid killing
innocent people!"

I need some expert knowledge

You came to the right place!

on what would happen in this situation.
Judging by the damage, is it possible to land the plane safely?

No - they're all already dead and just don't know it.

Is an emergency landing feasible?

No - as you said, all attempts to decrease altitude have failed. They're
stuck up there forever.

If so, what would the steps necessary be to
execute it and how long (roughly) would that take?

"Execute" is an insensitive word to use in such a grave scenario.

Death is normally permanent and of infinite duration, so it would take at
least a week.

Thank you for your help!

You're welcome! Shirley you'll do well when your mock conference is graded.
Don't forget to serve some mock turtle soup afterword.

On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 01:59:15 -0000, wrote:

Mark wrote:
On Sep 15, 2:46*pm, jason219
wrote:
Hello everyone. *I'm preparing a mock press conference for one of my
college classes. In my particular scenario, I am the public relations
head of a top international airliner.

Three hours into the flight, one of our planes was involved in a mid-air
collision (whether it was with another aircraft or another object, I am
not sure). The plane is still airborne but is only able to fly higher
and to the right. All attempts to make a left turn or decrease altitude
have failed.

I need some expert knowledge on what would happen in this situation.
Judging by the damage, is it possible to land the plane safely? *Is an
emergency landing feasible? If so, what would the steps necessary be to
execute it and how long (roughly) would that take?

Thank you for your help!

--
jason219

Although the airfoil surfaces are stuck in a
position to induce lift, the plane would be induced to decrease
elevation by throttle reduction or fuel mixture. If you can only
turn left you won't make it.

Airliners don't have mixture controls.

*lol*
--
A fireside chat not with Ari!
http://tr.im/holj
Motto: Live To Spooge It!

On Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:21:21 -0700 (PDT), Mark wrote:

Although the airfoil surfaces are stuck in a
position to induce lift, the plane would be induced to decrease
elevation by throttle reduction or fuel mixture. If you can only
turn left you won't make it.

---
Mark

Assclown post.

Beware.
--
http://tinyurl.com/5gt7

On Sep 16, 5:27*am, wrote:
jason219 wrote:

This can not happen.

If you reduce or eliminate engine power,


By the OP's "all attempts to decrease altitude have failed" statement,
I take it that moving the throttle has for some reason stopped ceased
to have an effect on N1.

The aircraft would fly right up to its ceiling altitude before it kind
of levels out until the A-1 exhausts. If the oxygen masks don't drop
for whatever reason, there'll at least be mercifully painless deaths
to the pax.

Ramapriya