Barely controllable Tu-154 - another UA232
 

Takeoff:

Attempt to return:

Final:

Well done by he crew.....:ok::D:D

Hope there will be a report on what happend to this flight....

I wanna open this threat with my guess:....

CG too far aft and out of the envelope.... Just a guess....

holy crap.

Holy crap indeed!!!

How that didn't end in a ball of fire I can hardly believe.... :D

That deserves more than a few shots of vodka. Wow.

I dunno - the pitch seems to be the one thing that is pretty stable through most of the "flight" (or is that "fright?"). Rotation seems normal and smooth.

A textbook Dutch Roll - so a failed yaw damper? [nah, - never mind - Tu-154's anhedral supposedly eliminates need for YD)

Dutch roll - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anyway - stupendous work by the crew to work around the instability and bring 'er home!
____

Edit: Chkalovsky Airport outside Moscow? (trying to translate the cyrillic)

Looks like a complete loss of flight controls, or a combination of hydraulic loss and stuck flight controls. My guess is they steer the aircraft with engine power.
No wheelbrakes upon landing.

BTW Dutch roll is only at high altitude.

Seems a little suspicious to me. If anything I would suspect a YD failure (not sure about how the 154 is equipped). If this had happened on my trusty 727 we'd simply disconnect the thing and land normally.

Some control locks still on ? In any case big applause to both the crew and Mr Tupolev for building good strong airplanes . Pity we miss flare and touch down on the video, I bet it did not touch down on the 2 mains at the same time .

Astounding oscillations on that "downwind" and besides the roll and extreme yaw, it looked to me like some large pitch down cycles as well. Can't help but wonder if the tails of certain composite material jetliners would have stayed on.

What ever the problems reguarding the cause.Well done for getting it down in one piece

Russian ab initio training? :E Those damn CTC guys set up new shop.... :}

Good job getting the bird on gnd!

I wonder if any of our Russian friends on Pprune can find out if that was a scheduled PAX flight...?

It was certainly heart stopping to watch..! Well done to the crew for getting it back on terra firma safely:ok:

Rumour control has it that it was a test flight after being in storage for 10 years. That is and I stress, just a rumour...

Comment from Youtube poster is: Loss of roll and pitch control.

Given that the airport looks like a bit of a parking lot, this sounds credible to me. In any case, the fact that they got it back on the ground and were able to taxi in is remarkable. Well done, lads! :ok:

2nd YT clip does seem to show a line up of stored 154s. If true, wonder why this one was being brought back into use.

Well done indeed to the crew - not a pleasant experience from the footage!

A nasty short period, undamped yaw roll situation.

Will be interesting to see what caused it. Kudos to the crew.

It was indeed a first test flight after being in storage for 10 years. It's a military airfield and an aircraft belonging to Russian Army, so you won't ever know why was it necessary to get this plane back in air after 10-year break...

Not to be too flippant - but I hope they were all wearing brown corduroy trousers! But to be serious for a minute great airmanship to get the thing down in one piece.

If you look at video no. 2, I see apparently no aileron movement, but a lot of rudder movement. If ailerons are locked, you can use rudder as a roll control, but it is only a secondary result.

Pitch cannot change so quickly unless you have some kind of pitch control (Trim only??). I flew the 727, and change of thrust gave no initially change of pitch. That was also a secondary result of speed change.

I have tried similar problem - simulated in a little piper - we froze the stick, and had only trim and rudder. It was possible to steer the aircraft, but the handling was exact like we see on this video.

Maybe we should test a frozen stick in the simulator and see how it will turn out?