I dunno how likely it is in this case. I do know that human error is the cause of more accidents than any other reason.
For instance, there have been crashes because of things like running out of fuel. The crew has miscalcuted the amount of fuel necessary, or miscalculated the rate of consumption because of headwinds, or simply selected a tank to draw from that was already emptied, and I don’t know how many other ways fuel starvation can occur.
But to tell the truth, this doesn’t sound like fuel starvation, as you wouldn’t think that would kill all the engines simultaneously.
Despite the title of this thread, we do not know right now (Friday 2008-01-18) that the the plane “lost power” at any stage, or that it glided to its crash landing. AFAIK that is just rumour that comes from some airport worker who claims he talked to the pilot.
It is also possible the pilot was attempting to slow down the airplane as much as possible prior to actually contacting the ground. The only way to reduce the kinetic energy in an upcoming accident is to reduce speed. Since the next speed down from “minimum controllable airspeed” is “stall” that might be how one occurred, and such a maneuver would result in a nose-high airplane until the stall, after which, yes, it will tend to descend with great rapidity. It may well result in a “thud”. On the other hand, they can’t have “fallen” from that high up because while the airplane got badly hurt no one inside did.
I will leave it to the pilots around here who fly big airplanes to discuss the possibilities and/or merits (if any) of attempting a full-stall landing under such circumstances.
The pilot also might have been trying to extend the glide as much as possible to avoid roads and such, resulting in a relatively long glide at low altitude, in ground effect, that ended in a very low-altitude stall. Or perhaps that “nose up - !thud!” was from the landing gear digging into the ground and drastically reducing the airplanes forward motion prior to being ripped away entirely.
I have some ideas and speculations, but I don’t want to extrapolate too much from my experience with very small airplanes because things don’t always scale up as you think they would. The fact there are several possibilities is of course just one reason why airplane incidents and accidents are investigated.
Ever heard of the Gimli Glider? Heck, Air Transat Flight 236 lost engine power(but not the electronics) over the Atlantic ocean and managed to glide and land safely.
As a Boeing employee, you are going to get 15 lashes with a wet noodle for that.
According to the report passed along on the Boeing intraweb that was released just before I got off work today, the airplane lost power on final approach and landed short of the runway taking the left hand main landing gear in the process. They don’t know the reason for the power loss. Some of the AOG guys at work said the airplane might be salvageable depending on the damage to the airframe. We always get a “crashed plane” report at crew meetings a day to 2 after something like this, I will know a lot more tomorrow.
I know I’m going to hell not only for laughing at that, but for laughing at what, to me, is an old joke. Most recent time I heard it was about two years ago when a 1942 vintage Boeing Stearman lost its tailwheel on landing in my area, but the joke is far older than that. It probably predates the year that Stearman rolled off the assembly line. But hey - Boeing is a long term survivor in an industry that eats companies easily and rapidly. We still luv ya guys!
I’m sure I’m not the only person interested in reading any solid information you can pass on to us.
“British Airways officials issued a statement expressing gratitude to American film actor George Kennedy, whose unexpected appearance and timely advice to the pilots proved to be of critical importance during the crisis.”
Sorry, but a similar thing happened to a flight out of Victoria, BC just last week. 10 people were hurt, and the plane had to make an emergency landing in Calgary. Seriously, keep your seatbelt on all the time you can while in the plane.
That’s not at all the same thing. Unless I’m misreading that, it sounds like that flight made an emergency landing because passengers were injured in sudden turbulence and needed medical attention. It doesn’t sound like there was anything wrong with the plane.
Unless I’m misunderstanding, I think El_Kabong’s concern is that there is some design flaw in 777s that he needs to worry about, not that things sometimes happen on planes.
Well, there can be flaws that show up with age, such as the problem involving electrical wiring that presumably brought down TWA 800 off Long Island some years ago.
Just to be clear, however, I feel I’m reasonably clued in on actual risk factors, and my chances of being in a crash are quite small regardless of aircraft type. In any event, I’ve flown transatlantic in 777’s of Continental, BA, and Air France at least half a dozen times, and this incident won’t keep me off the flight next week unless, say, the whole fleet is grounded for some reason.
“I just want you all to know, we’re all counting on you”
But seriously…
As far as modern commercial airliners go, I’ve always heard they they don’t make the best gliders. Obviously all airplanes are gliders to some extent, but the stall speeds on some of theses suckers are pretty treacherous. But I do believe that an engine failure on a landing approach or even worse just after takeoff are the worst situations to lose power.
As dumb as it sounds I’ve been a flight sim junkie in my life. I’ve done loads of no power landings. But never without loads of altitude. The old rule was, use throttle to control altitude and use elevators to control speed, contrary to what the two things actually do. Absent throttle you have to use the elevator to control speed and altitude is what it is. To keep above stall speed you have to have it going down to a certain degree, which will cut your range. I’d imagine most competent pilots could land a 777 from 30,000 feet within the appropriate distance. But I don’t know what happens if you come in hot with no reverse thrust or spoilers.
Anyway. It’s obviously a great thing they they managed to keep it under control. The reason why I said that it could be difficult is that the aforementioned problem with airliners not being good gliders.
But my flightsim experience makes me most nervous during takeoff and landing. Because if you don’t have enough altitude to translate your height into forward momentum then you’re screwed. I’d much rather be at 30,000 ft. and lose power than be at 2000 ft and lose power presuming that I have a flyable airplane
My point of similarity was that the plane had problems midair (dropped and rolled over, apparently), and had to make an emergency landing. As I understood it, the flight crew didn’t know what caused the problems, so they put 'er down. I don’t know what caused the problems - I think they’re speculating it passed through the wake of another jet.
Well, I can answer that…you just put her into a slip:
No flaps or spoilers, either, and whilst sideslipping the emergency fan turbine powering the control hydraulics lost pressure, and they only just got the thing straightened out before touching down. The Gimli Glider is a remarkable story. Some absolutely fabulous flying, ridiculously good luck, and monumental stupidity that caused the lack of fuel to begin with.
Another note about this incident is that, if the plane had crashed on the perimeter road, it would have squashed the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was passing by in his official car at the time.
Then it would have been terrorism accusation and conspiracy theory central. Glad we dodged that one.
not sure what you are saying here. On the Gimli glider when the engine quit everything quit. No hydraulics and a dark cockpit. they had to deploy the RAT (ram air turbine) to get partial hydraulics and partial electronics back.
Well, some time ago an English 737 crash landed just a few hundred meters from the runway when, after the left engine compressor lost a blade, the crew shut down the *right *engine by mistake.
