Great discussion, thanks to all. I've always thought Sully did it about right. Not perfect, yet very good. My background is flight control laws (& physics), so I see this as a potential control law problem, not a piloting problem in this case.
Originally Posted by
megan
Originally Posted by
Denti
However, they did change the control laws after that incident, did they after the hudson river landing? I don't think so.
OK, I need to read about that 2001 A320 problem. I guess Airbus and others continue to believe phugoid damping close to the ground near flare is a good idea. I'm still puzzled why the NTSB didn't cite the fly-by-wire control laws keeping the aircraft from achieving 11 or 12 degrees pitch at touchdown, a stronger flare that Sully was trying to get with full aft stick.
I see Sully flew slightly too slow during those last 3 minutes before the Hudson landing. Still, it looks to me like he had enough aero stall margin
when it counted near the water, but was prevented from using it for reasons I don't get.
To clarify, you can't go into a roller coaster phugoid excitation since your altitude apogee is already close to the ground. Enter the edge of stall at 30 feet off the ground while descending, no problem. Ground effect aero lift helps some, mushing it in.
Sully hit the water at 750 ft/min when I think he could have got it to about 600 ft/min if he would have been allowed to use that last remaining 3 degrees of pitch angle. I'd like to fly that water landing WITHOUT the Airbus feedback terms taking some pitch away to find out. I'll try to find out if anybody out there has done this on the sim with the alpha-protect mode feedback damping (interference) removed.