Part V: Team work and battle for living
Narratage: After the accident, Liang Peng, the second captain was seating at the cabin, realizing that the plane was in great trouble. He entered the cockpit at once.
Anchor: How long did you get into the cockpit?
Liang Peng: Now I can't remember it exactly. Bi Nan, the chief purser, gave me a gesture.
Anchor: What is her gestures to you?
Liang Peng: She gave me just to mean that she was so worried. What I thought that she was afraid that in this environment, people were very easy to lose consciousness. I was afraid that the two of them were lost in the inside, and I had to get in.
Anchor: Into the cockpit, what do you see?
Liang Peng: Entering the cockpit, the first thing I saw was that the plane was turning, and the below is full of hills.
Anchor: It's all mountain?
Liang Peng: Yes, we are on the mountains. Then I just sit up right now, fasten the seat belt, and I'll get the oxygen mask out immediately, and give it to the captain. I say you wear it, he says he is okay. I say okay and put it on my face, and then take his out for him. The next is because we fly so high in the particular loss of pressure, we need to find out where we should fly and how high we should go and how much the local height. I took out my electronic flight bag and read out of our special procedure for Lhasa, and I show him that we're going to fly to Chongzhou, and we're going the most is the FL220. He said okay. I made plans for him, which means I did the rest of two parts, navigation and communications thus he could keep his full energy and talent on the first thing, aviate.
Anchor: The state of the captain?
Liang Peng: He was flying very attentively and keeping the state of the plane well. That is our main thing.
Narratage: After the loss of pressure on the cockpit, violent winds blow over the flight components control panel. Many of the data and indication that usually be used as a basis for judgment have been destroyed or become impossible to confirm. The FCUs are destroyed, which is the equivalent of a plane from a smart car to a walking tractor. Autopilot is not possible. It must be done manually. Lucky, this is the domain of Captain Liu with experience of flying his military aircraft. It is not a big deal to him.
Anchor: I saw the information that the panel of the flight control units were blown up.
Liu Chuanjian: Opened.
Anchor: What's the impact after being opened?
Liu Chuanjian: A lot of equipment, but I do not know. It may cause fault information, innumerable fault information, so I will tell later, including configuration change and lower the flaps and landing gears… Every time I do an action, I am very entangled. I was afraid that every operation may change the current attitude because of unknown failures. If we cannot control the attitude, all the previous effects are wasted. Every decision and/or action before making, I am very entangled in the mind. This is why I prefer to manual flying. I gave up every available equipment as long as unnecessary and had to use, because there may be some bad consequences, I have no method to assess timely. My principle is “so far so good”. Now I can control the aircraft, but if I do anything more, plane may become uncontrollable. How do I do it? This is why I intertwined here.
Narratage: Flight data showed that at about 07:07 a.m. in May 14, 2018, the flight 3U8633 began to descend from about 32000 feet.
Anchor: What kind of process should it be?
Liu Chuanjian: Faster at the beginning, because I haven't taken over the plane yet. When the aircraft is my control, the plane is in descent at a little bigger speed. At this time the plane is at the attitude just kept. Therefore, the speed is keeping growth, and the throttle is at the powerful position. The aircraft is losing altitude fast. When taking over, I felt the aircraft could be manipulated. What the first thing to do is let it gradually decreasing. I tried my best to control the plane, because the plane was turning on with a bank and going down fast. I looked at my instrument. I was not sure the readout of the speed was true or false. And the speed was increasing, so my next (guessed) action I did was to pull the throttle back to idle position and then manipulate the flying machine.
Anchor: Is this the only choice to this situation?
Liu Chuanjian: Yes, the only option is to keep the plane from being further damaged. If our plane loses its attitude, it will keep falling in some cases and then deep stall.
Anchor: Stalling?
Liu Chuanjian: If you are in the incorrect attitude, not in the right one.
Anchor: What about that result?
Liu Chuanjian: My plane dropped directly into the mountains.
Narratage: In the case of gale, loud noise, low temperature and anoxia, Liu Chuanjian's every action in the cockpit is extremely difficult.