PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - A Sukhoi superjet 100 is missing
View Single Post
Old 26th Jun 2012, 21:33
  #619 (permalink)  
chuks
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Germany
Age: 76
Posts: 1,561
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Part of the problem, perhaps?

Oh, I had my DC-3 checkout from one of the old school, who told me he wanted to see a full-breaking stall, none of this namby-pamby 'release of back pressure at the first burble.' Well, next thing you knew, there we were, nothing on the clock but the maker's name, headed earthwards at an angle of bank approximating 90º! No stall breaker strips on the Greasy Three, are there? Never mind, never mind... nowadays we do that sort of thing in the sim, don't we?

My point here, I suppose, is that sometimes even test pilots get carried away trying to sell airplanes, when they think showing how it can be turned inside-out is cool and sexy. Any fule can figure out, given a moment of quiet thought, that it must be deeply optimistic to do an abort and then go again from less than the full length with red-hot brakes. Or perhaps, to do some sort of cloud-break with the TAWS shouting at you, what seems to have happened here... could that not have been foreseen as likely to have ended in tears?

Once we read and understand the crash report we may well be reminded of something some of us tend to forget, that we are only as good as our last flight! I certainly have found myself in situations where I really needed to have remembered that before I got myself into said situation! I may have done something just as stupid (with much less raw flying ability) than this unfortunate crash pilot, when it was just dumb luck, blind fate or whatever that spared me to learn from my own mistake. Now we need to learn from his, yes?
chuks is offline