Originally Posted by
megan
Not the case at all, the (Tu-154) dutch roll caused by an engineer mis-connecting one of the elements of the automatic on-board flight control system to the power supply.
Not quite the full story. I flew with a captain who had 10,000 hours on Tu-154s. Although he liked the tough airframe, it required yaw-dampers, pitch-dampers, and roll-dampers to keep it flying (a by-product of anhedral and other idiosyncratic designs). They had to practice damper off flying in the real aircraft, and he said it was utterly uncontrolable. You might get away with a visual, but could not follow an ILS.
In fact, Tu-154 damper off flying is somewhat reminiscent of that Liveleak video in comment #68. Great video, I have to say. Would hate to think what that looked and felt like, in the cockpit ! Good airmanship to fly it around a bit, and get a feel of the instability, before landing.