Originally Posted by
SuperRanger
bungfai,
this is what my copy of B777 FCTM says. i took the liberty of underlining the relevant sentence.
Thank heavens! I thought I was entering the twilight zone.
The funny thing is, that when I was trying to think how I would do it, it was not really clear. It's just sort of automatic, but the page reads just as I would have expected.
I spent some time flying in conditions that often far exceeded the normal limits, there were no civilian passengers and it was certainly out of the CAA's remit, but I had the advantage of first flying with guys that had done it for years.
The point is, that people that have to routinely do this kind of flying seem to be able to do it without the slightest increase in stresses on the aircraft. In fact, compared to the test-flying shots, most of the landings were non events.
I cannot pontificate about FBW, but certainly heavy turbo prop and the early swept wing jet transports were all perfectly controllable way over book limits. It was just a question of being allowed to enter that territory. Clearly you can't fool around with hundreds of $m worth of kit, so you can never get confident about the more extreme conditions. But if you were allowed to, you would do it with ease...after a few interesting moments.
Despite all this, the worst ever single gust I ever experienced was at Leeds. 60kts on the rear quarter -- just as we were touching down. The air-stairs bowled across the pan and the young lady was blown over and had to be replaced by a (this is so non-PC) by a man.