All Engines-out Landing Due to Fuel Exhaustion - Air Transat, 24 August2001

"Calif Bill"
rthlink.net:


"Bertie the Bunyip" XZXZ@XZXZ.,XZXZX wrote in message
00.144...
"Colin W Kingsbury"
thlink.net:


"No Spam" wrote in message newsgsZd.4290

All pilots train to make such "dead stick" landings as
a routine part of training, in any type of airplane.


Perhaps now they do. If you read the detailed accounts of the
"Gimli Glider" episode when an Air Canada 767 lost both engines to
fuel starvation, the pilot clearly states that their training did
*not* account for the possibility.

Well I had done deadstick landings in the sim looong before that
happened. And that wasn't the first deadstick jet either.



Bertie

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I think all the commercial passenger jets have a better glide angle
than the normal glide slope of landing. DC-10 lost all engines off
Florida a few years ago, and landed safely. Mechanic had left the
o-rings off the oil plugs for all the engines.


They had restrated one engine. They'd done a precautinary shutdown on one
engine when they lost pressure onit and restarted it when the other two
failed. It was a TriStar, BTW. They wouldn't have made it back gliding.
and the glide is about 17/1 with engines windmilling on a modern high
bypass fan aircraft.


Bertie

Bertie

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Mike
:

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 04:08:51 GMT, "Colin W Kingsbury"
wrote:


"No Spam" wrote in message newsgsZd.4290

All pilots train to make such "dead stick" landings as
a routine part of training, in any type of airplane.


Perhaps now they do. If you read the detailed accounts of the "Gimli
Glider" episode when an Air Canada 767 lost both engines to fuel
starvation, the pilot clearly states that their training did *not*
account for the possibility. Understandably so- MTBF on those engines
is in the 100s of thousands of hours and airline procedures make fuel
exhaustion unimaginable. And unsinkable ships can't hit icebergs
either.

I'm beginning to wonder a little about Air Transat. I just read about
one of their A310 rudders snapping off. The plane landed back in
Varadero ok. So it seems their pilots are trained OK but perhaps their
maintenance & ops departments need some work.

-cwk.

Isn't it the A310 that also lost a tail and crashed in New York City a
month or 2 after 9/11. IIRC, there is a particular airplane that the
manufacturer says "don't use the rudder too hard" because if you do,
the tail could break off.

Actually, that's all of them. They didn't "use the rudder too hard" they
banged it back and forth fairly violently. There's no jet transport flying
designed to take that. It's outside certification requirements and until
materials with a considerably higher strength-weight ratio can be developed
it will remain that way.



Bertie

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"Dave Butler" wrote in message
news:1110897377.464227@sj-nntpcache-5...
Mike wrote:

Isn't it the A310 that also lost a tail and crashed in New York City a
month or 2 after 9/11. IIRC, there is a particular airplane that the
manufacturer says "don't use the rudder too hard" because if you do,
the tail could break off. Imagine if you were test driving a car and
the salesperson said "don't turn too hard or the car will break in
half".

Doesn't your airplane have any structural limitations? Just offhand, I can
think of max gear extension speed and never exceed speed as a couple of
limitations on mine. Unless you have a full authority fly-by-wire computer
limiting what you can do, you can break an airplane if you maneuver it
outside its design limitations.

It was an airbus A-300 that crashed and since that isnt a
FBW aircraft the pilot had full control authority. The NTSB
report cited pilot error in applying excessive rudder for
the aircraft speed

Oh and many cars will respond very badly to excessive
steering inputs. SUV rollovers are a major source
of fatal accidents, thats why they put warning stickers
in rental company SUV's

Keith



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Corky Scott
:

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 11:23:11 GMT, James Robinson
wrote:

It was an Eastern Airlines L-1011, and it landed with one engine
operating. (It had been shut down earlier as a precaution, but
restarted.) The o-rings were left off the engine's chip detectors.

http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/1984/AAR8404.htm

That isn't how my uncle, who was an Eastern Airlines check pilot
described it to me. He could have been mistaken of course, or I could
be remembering what he told me incorrectly.

He told me that the mechanics and the parts people had developed a
kind of non standard in-house procedure when it came to changing the
oil. Normally when the oil was changed in the engines, the procedure
required that the plug and O-ring be replaced, and this is what the
mechanics did routinely. But the parts counter guy was being helpful
and had gotten into the habit of pre-installing the O-rings for the
mechanics so that they did not have to bother.

On the day of the incident, or the day before, the aircraft was
serviced and the oil changed in all three engines. Per the routine,
the plugs were replaced. But this time when the mechanic walked to
the parts counter, there were no plugs ready for pickup. So the parts
guy had to walk back and get the plugs for the mechanic out of a bin.
This broke the routine and he forgot to get the O-rings as well. The
mechanic, used to them already being on, forgot to check for their
presence or ask for them. He had not had to ask for them for a long
time.

So the plugs went in without the O-rings installed.

The way the flight was described to me by my uncle, the airplane
climbed out routinely and at the altitude described in the above url,
one of the engines showed low oil pressure. So they shut it down and
I think they continued on as the destination was almost equally close
as Miami. A few seconds later however a second engine showed low oil
pressure and they shut that one down too and immediately turned back
towards Miami.

Feeling that whatever had happened to the first two engines could
affect the third one, they shut the last one down as a precaution and
glided towards the airport. Their intent was to save it for use when
they arrived at Miami.

As they approached Miami, they successfully restarted the engine that
had been running last and landed under power. Some of the passengers
immediately boarded another airplane to continue their flight, others
were more skittish and did not.

That's how it was described to me. My uncle's name was John Warner,
no longer with us now. He also told me the DC-3 hanging in the
Smithsonian Air and Space Museum was very familiar to him, he'd flown
it thousands of hours.

Fairly accurate except for the bit where hey shut down the second and third
because of low oil pressure. Those both failed and they were frantically
trying to get anything going after that. The one that started for them was
the one they had shut down first.


Bertie

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"Keith W"
:


"Dave Butler" wrote in message
news:1110897377.464227@sj-nntpcache-5...
Mike wrote:

Isn't it the A310 that also lost a tail and crashed in New York City
a month or 2 after 9/11. IIRC, there is a particular airplane that
the manufacturer says "don't use the rudder too hard" because if you
do, the tail could break off. Imagine if you were test driving a
car and the salesperson said "don't turn too hard or the car will
break in half".

Doesn't your airplane have any structural limitations? Just offhand,
I can think of max gear extension speed and never exceed speed as a
couple of limitations on mine. Unless you have a full authority
fly-by-wire computer limiting what you can do, you can break an
airplane if you maneuver it outside its design limitations.

It was an airbus A-300 that crashed and since that isnt a
FBW aircraft the pilot had full control authority.

Well, even the FBW busses still have their rudders linked to the pedals..

Bertie

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In most planes your entire let down is done with engines at idle. Some
planes (like the MD-80) automatically increase their idle thrust after
the gear is down (to allow for quicker go arounds). That extra thrust
makes it even more difficult to manage the energy created from the let
down. Slowing down is always the hard part. Gliding shouldn't be.

-Robert

"Robert M. Gary"
groups.com:

In most planes your entire let down is done with engines at idle. Some
planes (like the MD-80) automatically increase their idle thrust after
the gear is down (to allow for quicker go arounds). That extra thrust
makes it even more difficult to manage the energy created from the let
down. Slowing down is always the hard part. Gliding shouldn't be.


Big difference between idle and a windmilling engine, though. And actually,
the incresed idle speed is mainly for the engine's own sake (preventing
flameouts) and on the CF6 it's because the thrust bearings don't like being
pushed !


Bertie

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The training might not include the 767, but the Gimli Glider's captain
execute many similiar manouvers with his Cessna (or something like
that), that's why he managed to land the 767 quite safely.

Really, any pilot would like to fly the aircraft without any engine at
all, either for the sake of curiousity or wanting to prepare incase one
did happen.



As for rotary wing aircrafts (helicopters, Osprey, and so on).

Well... They do landing like a gyroplane incase they lost their
engine(s).



As for Air Transat.

Well... What if their maintenance and ops departments did a very good
job?

What else?

Blame the pilots?

Blame the aircraft manufacturers?

What if they already done their jobs quite good and it's their fault?

What if someone clipped the horizontal stabilizer during the flight?
Will the N.T.S.B. said that, or will they blame it on the pilot? Or the
maintenance? Or the aircraft manufacturer?

wrote:

The training might not include the 767, but the Gimli Glider's captain
execute many similiar manouvers with his Cessna (or something like
that), that's why he managed to land the 767 quite safely.

Both the Gimli and the Transat reports make mention that the pilots
didn't have formal training on gliding that particular aircraft, but
that experience outside of their commercial pilots training cam in
handy. (the Gimli pilot had flow gliders).

Obviously, the pilots would have received instruction on engine-out
operations, and the Transat pilots knew the high speed range for landing
gear, knew the low speed limiot for the RAT, knoew what systems worked
what didn't, knew that brakes would have a limited number of
applications, which is why after the second landing, he applied the
brakes big time because he freared that he would no longer had a 3rd
change (and the investigators found the pilot acted properly, even if it
meant that the tires/wheels/runway would be damaged).

But receiving instruction != training in simulator for such situation.

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 at 12:59:51 in message
, Mike
wrote:

Isn't it the A310 that also lost a tail and crashed in New York City a
month or 2 after 9/11. IIRC, there is a particular airplane that the
manufacturer says "don't use the rudder too hard" because if you do,
the tail could break off. Imagine if you were test driving a car and
the salesperson said "don't turn too hard or the car will break in
half".

When this subject is discussed it seems to me some very important points
are often omitted, that is does the airframe meet the design cases?
Surely there are design requirements for aircraft which are researched
and defined by the aviation authority?

So did the airframe meet design requirements for gust loading, yaw
deflections and angles, control movements, negative and positive 'g'
etc? If it did not, then why not? Are the design requirements wrong or
did the airframe fail to meet them? Another factor is to what extent are
safeguards against excessively loads built in to airliners and to their
requirements?


--
David CL Francis