Jet transport dead stick landings after loss of all engines in heavy rain and hail
 

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/...ts/AAR7803.pdf Well worth re-visiting. Old accident but little has changed in terms of procedural advice to operators. DC9 into a severe thunderstorm. Loss of both engines due heavy rain and hail ingestion. Pilot error in throttle handling. Forced landing attempted on a road. Fatal.

On 4 April 1977, a US registered DC-9 forced landed on a highway after loss of both engines in a thunderstorm. Many of todays pilots reading this accident report would not have been born by then. Yet the circumstances of the accident and lessons learned apply just as much today as all those years ago. The CVR reading was invaluable to the investigators. While the length of the NTSB report may put off those who prefer a shorter version via IPhone this scribe nevertheless recommends study of the complete report to gain full professional value.Some edited extracts may help.

For example: The feet of a number of survivors was cut and some were burned because they had no shoes for protection. The FA had briefed the passengers to remove their shoes to prevent damage to the evacuation slides.

Para. 1.17.1 discusses in depth the glide ratio of the DC-9 assuming double flameout.

Para. 1.17.3 discusses the limitations of aircraft weather radar in heavy rain. Severe rainfall within the antenna field (100 feet) disperses the beam with consequent reduction of radar performance. In several cases all targets disappear and an indistinct haze may appear at the indicator origin.

Paragraph 2.1.1. Engine failure and flight crew reaction. Regarding the dual engine failure with no thrust available to correct flight path misjudgements. Consequently, instruction and practice are required to develop these skills and the flight crew never received or were they required to receive any instruction of practice in emergency landings with all engines inoperative. Moreover, the approved operating manuals contained no guidance or procedure on the subject.

Para. 3.2. Loss of thrust was cause by the ingestion of massive amounts of water and hail which in combination with thrust lever movement induced severe stall in and major damage to the engine compressors. Similar circumstances to a Garuda Indonesia Boeing 737-300 on 16 January 2002. Penetrated a severe thunderstorm and experienced a flameout of both engines in heavy rainfall followed by total electrical failure. At the time the weather radar was ineffective in heavy rain. The aircraft was ditched flapless. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_T...t_C-5_accident

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....46cb1e7a3e.jpg

And lets not forget TACA 110, good work gentleman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110

And still Boeing offer no advice in their operations manuals on how to conduct forced landings following failure to re-light after loss of all engines. Rarely practiced officially in simulators. Even then it becomes a matter of experimentation with the blind leading the blind

Every time I get leftover time in the SIM and I ask to try a dead stick landing I get turned down. Except once. Mid North Sea, 20,000ft. Both engines chopped, emergency descent to 10,000ft then a glide to AMS. APU failed to start as well. So clean +20 and I needed to circle AMS twice to get the height off. So many runways to choose so not really the best placement to try it but surprising how well the 737-800 glides clean. And what a difference it is with flaps out!! got down OK but lots to ponder over.

As a regular flyer I was interested in RVF s comment s. With almost all aircraft now 'only' having two engines and seemingly an increasing frequency of extreme weather especially around storms it seems a reasonable thing to include in training details . After all there must be a very considerable startle factor to say the least and having at least some idea of initial actions to preserve altitude and speed and thus buy time for some considered analysis would appear invaluable.

On the whole, commercial pilots seem to have done fairly well with dead-stick landings. Even BA38, where the crew had only two miles and under 800 feet of height to make it happen.

Of note, the rural-highway landing (not the cause of engine failure) from the 1977 accident was swiped for a segment of the movie U.S. Marshalls - watching that for the first time I though "Wait a minute! I know this scenario."

After Sully I'm surprised Boeing didn't introduce dead stick landing procedure into the QRH. During sim checks (757/767) I would invite crews to have a go if they wanted to and there was time available. I compiled a set of notes which I thought might be helpful and included it in my 'How to do well in the sim' paper (page 9) before I retired 10 years ago.

Airbus did include an All Eng Fail QRH procedure and FCTM was modified accordingly, instructing pilots that, upon dual engine flameout/failure, they should assess whether or not there's enough time to attempt a relight or just get on to the introduced procedure. We even got assigned a "spot" on our next sim to try this new procedure in a fairly similar way to what Sully & co. had. Good mark to Airbus on that one, I say

The airlines don't want to pay for such training. $$$ They would rather write off the rare loss of both engines. If they went there, then you get into sim training for a ditching far out in the ocean or over the polar routes.

Funny you should say that. The ditching sequence in the 737 simulator is very rarely in any syllabus. Where it is trained however, from experience it is rarely performed correctly with the result that the aircraft "torpedoes" into the water due incorrect nose attitude.
Maintaining VREF 40 at 200-300 fpm rate of descent until start of the flare then rotating smoothly to a touchdown attitude of 10-12 degrees while maintaining airspeed and rate of descent with thrust,seems to be beyond the capability of most pilots instrument flying skills. Skill at raw data instrument flying is essential which few possess nowadays it seems.

Given the discussion is about dead-stick landings (loss of all engines - see title) - walk me through how this applies.

I've skipped it recently, but for a long time during recurrent training at my US Major, I'd ask for the double flameout in the sim after the normal training is completed.
This has been in various conditions, used to be LGA where the Instructor would flame out both while headed down Manhattan Island at low level at 350 kts, roll 90 degrees
between the World Trade Center Towers (The visuals were removed from the sims weeks after 9/11), turn left and deadstick on RW04 at LGA. Good energy management practice
even though some flight scenarios were suspect. Fun part was managing energy to a normal landing and coasting to a Gate.

It's tough learning the glide skills in most US or Europe busy sectors. Endless ATC commands for speed and altitude wipe out most brain work for descent planning.

I understand the limitations in attempting to practice such events, but those flying should try to manually gauge their energy to a field without the Flight Directors, ND Map displays and vertical path indicators.
Fly it like a sick J3 Cub. You never know when you might need the skill set. Tough to do in many airspace environments as well as long duty days with fatigue issues, but worth the try. (safely within your accepted ops limits of course)

Another 737 was Garuda Flight 421 (January 2002) which lost both engines due to hail ingestion and ditched successfully into the Bengawan Solo River in Java. One Flight Attendant died but the aircraft pretty well stayed in one piece. I suppose as long as the energy is managed and there is a clear place to go, it's workable. Night-time would be quite exciting. Best to avoid the weather in the first place.

Garuda 421
 

The correct Wikipedia link for Garuda Flight 421 is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garuda...sia_Flight_421 .

Thanks PB. Typo on my part. J.

Funny you said that ;
Many moons ago ( 1980's somewhere ) there was a Varig Captain that was famous in Brazil for his stunts and one of his specialty was dead stick landings on the 707. I was invited in the jumpseat of one of his flight from Rio to Brasilia , night time, low traffic. . Cruising at 330, he kept looking at his watch , then asked ATC for a straight in continuous descent . The guys knew what it was about and it was approved .He then put the 4 engines on flight idle and started to descent. When 20 min or so later , stabilized on finals a bit high , he lost the excess altitude slipping the 707 , landed on the numbers, kept rolling until the gate not adding any power during the taxi. . He never.touched the throttles during the whole time .and never said a word , just slightly used the brakes to vacate and again at the gate. Only then he turned at me and winked and smiled.
I forgot to note his name. But he must be known to any Brazilian .

Probably from the same flying school as the WW1 pilot who was renowned for deadsticking his aircraft to its drip tray inside the hangar at Netheravon. It had no brakes.

As noble as the story is, one, four, or even eight on idle is not dead-sticking. On a glide with all on idle (or not installed) the A/C behaviour still fits the trained skill.

..Let´s not forget the SAS-flight..Remarkable job by the crew..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandi...nes_Flight_751

Fly Safe,
B-757

There is a bit of a Catch 22 when it comes to what is required simulator training. Simulator time is a finite quantity, so the emphasis is on the sort of things a crew is most likely to encounter - such as engine failures. When a scenario becomes sufficiently rare, the regulators don't want to waste simulator time training for something that the crew is highly unlikely to ever experience.

I've had debates with the FAA about how the crew would handle an extremely rare failure - to wit the FAA wanted the fault considered catastrophic (and hence we needed to come up with a design such that it would never happen) - and we argued that the failure wasn't that difficult to deal with if the crew knew what to do. To which the FAA said isn't not practiced in the simulator so we need to assume the crew wouldn't react appropriately. We'd say 'add it to the simulator training', to which they'd respond 'it's too rare to be included in simulator training'. Catch 22...
Dead stick forced landings are extremely rare - and a surprisingly large percentage of those have happy endings (Sully, Gimli Glider, previously mentioned TACA). Given finite training resources, you can't train for absolutely everything - as desirable as it might be.

Just as in the Lion Air 610 accident, the SAS 751 crew also lacked knowledge of a critical system feature.
In that case, Wikipedia notes: '...the newly installed ATR prevented the pilots from successfully performing the normal remedial measure to halt compressor stall'. Dual engine failure and crash followed.

Whilst the Wiki article is informative elsewhere, I don't see any reason why the pilot could not command a retard of the engine throttles in the early stages of climb..However it is true that the ATR in itself did command a thrust increase in a high workload condition.which greatly increased the onset of internal damage..

Derfred,

I used to practice them for fun on the 747 simulator. I forget the glide angles with various stages of flap and with and without gear down, but one way of modifying the glide angle was to use sideslip, it worked in the simulator but I don't know how much could be used safely on the real aircraft. The other way of adjusting height to touchdown was to use a turning approach where you could cut the corner or tighten the turn as necessary and, for obvious reasons, taking great care to control the speed well above the stall.

Rasmussen and Cedarmark did a spectacular job with SAS 751. And I don’t think anyone has yet mentioned Piche and de Jager flying Air Transat 236 to a successful deadstick landing at Lajes. Admittedly, they mismanaged the fuel problem, but their airmanship when it really counted was superb.

Many moons ago, whilst flying a 727 to an early morning arrival on BOS runway 22L, ATC had characteristically kept us quite high. Turning in toward the runway, I hung all of Miss Piggy’s appendages into the wind, and, as only the 727 can, was descending nicely into a standard glide path. The senior captain in the left seat said, “You ain’t gonna make it.”

I looked around, trying to figure out the problem. “What are you talking about? It’s coming together just fine…” I said. He says, again, “You ain’t gonna make it!”

Frustrated, I said, “Bill! What the hell are you talking about?” He smiles, and says, “You’re gonna have to add power…”

Finally recognizing the tug at my leg, I said, “Well, yeah…I was sort of planning on that…” And he replied, “We never used to…”

Hmmm...:)

Did that training include a powerless landing or ditching? If it was simply a restart drill then it was window dressing.

I’ve trained dual engine failure and dead stick landings on the 737.
The tendency is to end up in a high situation as the aircraft glides much better than you think.
The art of sideslipping is your way out of this situation. Best to stay on the high side since when you add drag you go down pretty fast.

Interestingly, there appears to be all sorts of ways to handle a double failure. We used to throw this in for play time exposure years ago and it was good value. I recall some Chinese military VIP pilots transitioning onto the 732. They all did something different in the way of managing the descent, approach and landing .. and all of them nailed it nicely ... one guy did touch down about 2000ft in but he was the exception.

Impressive to watch from the panel operator's seat.

I saw it a couple of times in the mid-1960s. Fools.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236

Always liked this one.

Fokker had a procedure in the QRH and I remember training it at least once. One big question is whether the Sim reflects actual glide performance. Operations-wise it's a tough call to decide between high speed and bad glide ratio to restart the engines or best glide speed but no chance of restart. A little less tough, whether to try starting the APU to have more equipment and usually more flight controls working.

Austrian 111 probably qualifies as well. Engines were running but with negligible thrust due to the fan airflow being blocked by dislodged ice impact panels. Landed in a field around 2.5 NM short of the threshold with only minor injuries to occupants.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....6cc1828bbe.jpg
All occupants left the airplane without assistance via the forward passenger door exit.

At the time I was totally in awe of that crew, actually still am.

I recall Hapag Lloyd bit the dust during a wheels down ferry and ran out of fuel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapag-Lloyd_Flight_3378