Originally Posted by
washoutt
Thanks for the info, Megan. An alltogether different design philosophy from civil aircraft. I wonder how Boeing went about this in the '70's when designing their SST.
Megan - yes if the wings are not moved forward and proper air speed is not maintained a stall or a descent will occur. The news article states there was a low cloud deck and some snow. If the crew was conducting low level TFR in the Highland Restricted Area (HRA) as I had done - it would be a very quick transition to a traffic pattern at Leuchars. The HRA was directly to the NW and exits near Leuchars. In TFR flying wings were typically set at 54 degrees. I could imagine the crew was scrambling to transition to a slower speed radar traffic pattern (changing frequencies - talking to the controller - changing transponder code - getting the radar approach book open - ect) doing it in bad weather only makes it more difficult.