Originally Posted by
wonkazoo
As I wrote- I tried to use thrust (power) to bump it out of it's spin. When a dynamically unstable airplane is in auto-rotation pitch alone doesn't have the ability to recover the aircraft. It can tighten or loosen the auto-rotation by virtue of decreasing or increasing the AOA (Hmmm, have I read about AOA recently??), but pitch authority alone (of which there was tons in this airplane) cannot overcome the autorotative state as it does not affect yaw, which is the critical factor in a stabilized spin. (Inside wing stalled, outside wing flying...) I did try pro-spin and anti-spin aileron with the power changes. Frankly I genuinely thought I could bump it out of it's stable autorotative state. Which was my pilot-ego speaking louder than my science-pilot self.
"Airline pilot or just aerobatics?" Well that's an interesting question, but I've never flown heavy iron, nor have I suggested I have. But I did somehow survive roughly 4400 hours of PIC time in an immense variety of airplanes and helicopters, each of which obeys the same exact physics as a 737 Max-8.
I cannot tell you how long I spent trying to recover the airplane (as opposed to fighting it). IN round numbers when I realized what had happened I looked at the altimeter, saw something around 4000' MSL and thought "I have some time." Roughly speaking I was on the ground a minute or a minute and a half later.
Cheers, was just some questions based on some posts on this thread.
Far from your experience, I have had a couple of near departed events in my life and thinking rationally at the time is somewhat fuzzy.
I have also witnessed a few fiery actual crashes both fixed wing and a rotary (I expect GF rights played a big part in the rotary one S269 C to D) - very strange how different we react at that time. The pilot that was in a bad way and passed soon after lead us to the problem.
Also involved very closely with a loss of aircraft (RIP) on a private fly away - again very different the way people acted and after recalled the event during personal chats and the ATSB investigation.
Thanks for detailing your account.