Sioux City crash

[strafer]

I can understand the concept of using asymmetric thrust to gain some measure of directional control, but how did the flightcrew control the airspeed with no pitch control?

Top geezers btw.

[Notso Fantastic]

Wing engines.... low slung..... increase thrust.......nose comes up......geddit?

[simfly]

and they didn't exactly have a desirable airspeed on impact anyway! :ugh:

[booke23]

They were not realy able to control the airspeed too well.........Pull the power off....airspeed drops.....nose drops, aircraft descends.....airspeed starts increasing again...nose rises.....if is increases too much the nose comes up again by itself....

They had to descend like this the whole way down......I think it's called feugoid motion.

In addition the aircraft sustained damage on the starboard side of the No2 Engine cowl.......which induced drag on that side.....so the aircraft had a tendency to yaw and hance roll to the right.

So engine 3 had, at all times to be at a higher power setting than engine 1 to counteract this tendency.

In addition, there was no hydraulic pressure to deploy any Flaps or slats.....(gear was lowered by emergency system which uses gravity)....although the pitch change induced in doing so would probably have led to loss of control...........So the approach speed was in the region of 220 kts.

If the aircraft did'nt have the yaw/roll tendancy, I suspect the crew would have been able to get the aircraft on the ground in one piece.

All in all it was a supreme feat of airmanship that the crew were even able to manage an approach, let alone actually get the aircraft to a runway.

[DX Wombat]

simfly Words fail me! That really is neither funny nor appropriate.
Booke 23's final comment is much more appropriate.

[Flying Boat]

Last Year doing HPL in my ATPL theory, I saw a grainy video of the Sioux City Crash and a lecture given by the brilliant Captain.

He put alot of their situation to luck.

Bad Luck for the initial incident, good luck as far as the approach, but bad luck just before landing, a surge on one of the engines just as they were about to touch down, causing a wingtip to hit the ground & cause the final accident.

The tape must be available out there, somewhere, for anyone to look at. It is worth it.

FB

[Captain Stable]

IMO much of it can be put down to far more than luck. It was one of the best examples of CRM ever. They used all the resources at their disposal to best effect. The skipper did very little but sit there and manage. The FO flew the aircraft, the FE ran the panel and the deadheading skipper assisted with the power levers. All provided input where appropriate and they saved a lot of lives in an incident which, were methods of operation any different, would probably have killed all on board.

They manufactured all their own good luck.

[quid]

"They manufactured all their own good luck."

Amen.

[simfly]

Wombat, sorry about that, I maybe shouldn't have worded it that way. What I should have said was that it was incredibly hard for them to control airspeed. I was lead to believe that they may not have been able to trim the aircraft, in which case the aircraft would tend to fly at the speed it was trimmed out for when the engine blew. I believe it was a miracle the crew managed to get the aircraft down, sheer brilliance on their part.

[strafer]

Notsofantastic,
......geddit?
Err, obviously not, that's why I asked the question. I've noticed you seem to stalk the threads looking for uppity PPLs (or even worse, pax!) to monster, so keep up the good work. Arrogance is an admirable trait.

To the other posters, thanks for the replies. My query came from watching a reconstruction on the Discovery channel. Because it was aimed at the general public it was a bit low on aviation detail, but did mange to convey the sheer brilliance of the crew in effectively saving the lives of a couple of hundred people.

[DX Wombat]

Simfly thanks for that. It looks much better in your latest version;) :ok:

[Notso Fantastic]

strafer- that was me 'monstering' thee? If I wanted to 'monster' you for asking the question, I wouldn't have bothered taking the trouble answering for you as soon as possible. The 'geddit' was supposed to coincide with the penny dropping. You want 'monstering', I can show you monstering. But I do like saving that for when people who know nothing about the business criticise rather than just ask. But that really was me being Mr. Nice Guy.

[strafer]

Fair enough NotSoFantastic

I'll eat my humble pie now.