Safe Landing despite Loss of Controls
A Lufthansa City-Line Avroliner RJ85, flight number LH 5386 from Frankfurt/Main to Graz, made an emergency landing yesterday into Graz Thalerhof, Austria, after a total failure of primary controls. The crew steered the airplane purely on engines for the successful emergency landing. All 56 people on board could leave the airplane unhurt.
The crew noticed technical problems with elevator and ailerons while still in cruise and tried 42 minutes to solve the issue before attempting the landing, touching down at 16:57 UTC (planned arrival at 16:15 UTC). Basically all fire engines and ambulances of the city of Graz were awaiting the jet preparing for a crash landing, with all hospitals in the city at high alert as well.
A Lufthansa spokeswoman said, that the crew did a miracle to get the jet safely onto the ground. Passengers of the airplane said in an interview today, that they prepared to meet their maker after the announcement of the crew.
Other jets, loosing their primary controls entirely, certainly were not as lucky: United Flight 232 (DC-10), which crash landed in Sioux City (185 of 285 people surviving) or Japan Airlines 123 (B747), which crashed near Tokyo (only 1 of 509 people on board survived).
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Simon Hradecky