bighitdh

how can someone who claims our's as a profession even let the shaker get on in the first place????????

the shaker should only come on during the ground test, at the gate (when selected).

I agree, shoot, even then it's kind of scary.

Now after saying that, in my check ride in the 727, which was given by the FAA, when I say the FAA I mean the real FAA, the guy in the right seat was FAA, the FE was FAA and the examiner was FAA, I had to take the dirty stall to the stick shaker.

Let me tell you, the split second I felt the yoke start to vibrate, I went to full power and flew that sucker out of the shaker envelope. Managed not to lose a foot of altitude either.

I did okay, but I sure didn't like it.

Well, **** happens. No one is immune from a mistake, and from the story it sounds like alot was happening all at once. I'm not normally one to judge, but seriously, one minute of stick shaker, 12 deg nose up, speed low, autoslats... :ugh:

It's how you deal with it that counts.

Guys I'm not defending what happened, but these pilots were trained that the max slat speed indicators would keep them safe.

Obviously the max slat speed indicator was giving them erroneous information - it wasn't taking into account max Mach. Once they dropped the slats the computer changed its mind, dropped the max slat speed to .51 Mach and pulled the throttles to idle.

Their first big mistake was retracting the slats - but they were, indeed, overspeeding them.

After that it was just a high alt/weak thrust/heavy weight/low speed scenario. Sure, they should have hit the big red button, dumped the nose and maxed the power. But they were also in very congested airspace.....

Like I said, I'm not defending their actions, but they thought they could trust the max slat speed indicator....

Add power, fwd control pressure to lower angle of attack comes to mind. Works in all aircraft. How many times do you get an unplanned stick shaker in an airliner. Never sounds about right. Many times training in the sim but not with real passengers.

I know quite a few Fedex pilots who are all true pros. They have a fine training program so this incident is hard to understand. Allowing the pitch to increase to 12 degrees with stick shaker is hard to figure. Going to max power would cause a pitch up but all pilots know that and would coordinate forward control pressure to counteract that not allowing the power to increase beyond what could be controlled with pitch control.

That problem was fixed - after the Turkish Airline crash in Paris in the 70's. Didn't happen again.

Not so much - remember the donkey in the tail.

I do about six of these a month, testing them. The stall doesn't scare me. Having a wing engine cough when you bring them up DOES scare me. It happened to a friend of mine - he ended up on his back at 12,000' in an MD-11....

How could he end up on his back at 12,000 ft? He had to be doing over 250 knots. I know the MD10 has one engine above the wing and two below. Even in the 727 adding full power without a pitch up can only be accomplished by trimming down and fwd yoke. Once power is applied speed increases and the nose will pitch up. How could you end up 12 degrees nose up in a standard stall recovery?

You're mixing up events. The inadvertent roll was an approach to a stall to do a functional check on the stall warning system. When my friend recovered he pushed up the throttles and one wing engine compressor stalled. He was sitting there at about 105 knots with MCT thrust on one side only.....

Speaking statistically, nearly every transport craft from this era went through a similar evolution. (Speaking of evolution, the MD-10 is now the purvue of Boeing, after McDonnell-Douglas was purchased by them, and Douglas was purchased by McDonnell.)

Huck

You are wasting your time as unfortunately the likes of p51guy / protectthehornet like to shoot from the hip and talk of WIWO ... instead of reading and understanding the posts. I and many others knew what you were describing!

The point of this thread is what protectthehornet? Another excuse for you to vent your bias?

devil's advocate...
 

I might be called after my comment. But Im starting to ask myself why so many incidents and accidents to Fedex only? Many around the world fly the same types of aircraft , right? Are this pilots not well trained, tired ,fatigued, lack the necessary discipline the job demands? No PAX gives them the idea that they can do some stunts? Dont take me wrong but to many events in a very short period of time. Do some research of the last 10 years and you will be shocked.
I was not told, I saw it yesterday. A MD11 taking off ,probably half empty, no windshear or bad weather to avoid etc and after rotation I thought I was watching the space shuttle instead. Why fly the AC to its limits when is not necessary from a operational point of view? I may have a clue what was this take off all about because once I did the stupid maneuver. Low weight, flaps 15 , full thrust (26K) static T/O brake released and liftoff, literally. It was scary and DANGEROUS!
Again, just a thought not to nail anyone but to shift the attention to somewhere else and see if we can find some answers.

After landing the TRE said "well done", to which I replied "what do you mean, that was a total cluster ****". His repose was, "yeah, but it is how you recover that counts" :\

:ugh: You obviously have *no clue* how much performance/thrust an MD-11 has, even of the highest Flex Temperature setting. If you are taking off with low weight and not following your pitch bar on the FD, you would accelerate so quickly, it is not even funny. You couldn't probably even raise your gears... :rolleyes: In my experience, even if you are following the pitch bar on a low weight/max flex temp TO, by the time you have rotated and sitting there in a climb, you end up with a speed far greater then V2+10. This is not a 737, mate ;)

What looked dangerous to you, was most likely standard ops for a normally trained crew - following SOPs and MDDs MD-11 Flight Guidance System - Freight Dogs are flying on the extreme sides of the performance envelopes quite often (low/heavy weight).

VONKLUFFEN,

Have to agree with Burger Thing here. Was it a wet runway that you saw this "space shuttle departure"? If so, then per company SOP's "Standard" (or Max) power must be used (no flex). As i'm sure you're aware, the MD-11 has plenty of performance even using flex 50. You also might want to know the facts before you start using the word "stupid":=

As it happens, there was an Interflug A310 which pulled a silly amount of g's over Moscow, stalled several times and got down in one piece, so less of the bashing, if you please. ;)

J.

VONKLUFFEN: that's an uncalled for-comment.

No pilot would want to do stunts, knowing a mistake will also bury the pilot, not just the plane.

Various planes take off under variour power settings for various reasons ... and trying to do a space shuttle take off isn't one of them ..

And planes burn out faster - in simple terms, if you over do max-thrust take offs ...

And I have met a few Fedex guys, who are professionals, and value the profession and are least interested in showing off to the others ... := :=

This is why we got the high altitude holding speed changed to 265 above 14,000 almost 20 years ago, so crews wouldn't keep bugging ATC for a higher (read: safe) airspeed. Had the captain been in charge of the airplane he would have been at 265 knots IAS in the hold. (or some slightly lower speed if performance data supported such lower speed.) Improper holding procedures in the higher flight levels can burn you in a hurry.

At those altitudes normally it should always be right at 265 KIAS or the limiting Mach, if lower than 265.

I don't know about DC-10, but many years ago when annual "C of A" test flights required verification of stall, etc, we had a DC-9 that frightened everybody by stalling about 10 kts sooner than expected.
When being investigated, it had flown through a cloud of insects and what we thought was minor leading edge contamination was enough to cause a significant stall speed deviation.

Similarly, a brief passage through an almost invisible layer of stratus (as in climb-out) can put a thin layer of ice on L.E. that is not noticeable in a casual inspection. As the climb continues closer to the limiting altitude, it is silently sitting there waiting for the unwary.

Supercritical wings are efficient, but touchy.

edited for spelling

Zqa297/30
 

What a fine addition to this thread! That is the kind of thing I was looking for. The DC9 wing is close enough to the ground that a tall pilot can reach up and feel it...the leading edge that is.

Perhaps this is why our ancient pilots always added a few knots for the wife and kids? Bent wings,all sorts of things that degrade the plane must be accounted for by the prudent pilot.

Are MD-10/DC-10's equipped with "autoslats"?