Originally Posted by
Bergerie1
I used to practise deadstick landings in the 747 simulator when there was spare time. Great fun and a good exercise in energy management as a previous poster has said. You could sideslip the sim just like a Tiger Moth to shed excess height. But does anyone on this thread know how much sideslip can be tolerated by the engine pods? And what are the sideslip limits on modern jet transports?
I don't know what the sideslip limits are, but we did a flight test on the 747-8 where the pilot held a 20 degree yaw for 30 seconds, then repeated in for 30 seconds in the opposite yaw. It was pretty obvious the aircraft wasn't happy about it but it did it just fine (and I'm quite sure someone looked at the design limits for yaw before the condition was approved). I was also very, very impressed with the pilot - the first direction he had trouble holding the condition with lots of corrections, but he learned so fast that when we went the other way he held it rock steady with minimal corrections.
Years ago I had a co-worker who thought we should save the cost and weight of the rafts and life jackets as there'd never been a successful ditching of a commercial jetliner. When I first saw the video of the Ethiopian 767 ditching I thought he might have a point - didn't find out until later that the pilot was having to fight off the hijacker while trying to ditch - talk about your bad day at the office.
The problem you'll always run into for simulator training is that it's a finite resource and the regulators don't want to add stuff to the requirements if the probability is less than ~1 per 10 million flights (dead stick landing falls into that category)