Shock! Horror! Door pops open!

Dylan Smith wrote:
In article mQF7e.8258$ff4.7120@trndny08, George Patterson wrote:

Never seen a Cessna 150?


I've steered Cessna 150s with the doors :-)

I was once flying the club 172 with my buddy MadDog. We'd recently
heard Captain Al Haynes speak about United 232 - the DC-10 that suffered
a total hydraulic failure - and how they controlled the plane with only
power.

So we decided to try it ourselves. While trimmed for cruise we
pretended that we had a total control failure. It was simple to control
altitude with power. We unlatched both doors and pushed one or the
other open for directional control. Turns were very slow but control
was good enough that we flew back to the airport and established a
straight-in approach with an appropriate rate of descent. At about 200
AGL common sense prevailed and I took the controls and went around. I'm
sure we'd have landed OK (on a wide runway) but I wouldn't have wanted
to deal with a crosswind gust on short final.

The only problem with opening the doors was the turbulence inside.
After we secured all the loose charts and checklists that was no problem.

- John Ousterhout -