So, let’s make a hypothetical scenario where a Boeing 787-9 is flying in the over the ocean at 12.5 kilometers. Suddenly, there is a terrible noise and the cockpit section tears away from the fuselage and falls away. Luckily, all 3 pilots and flight attendants are busy in the back restroom and the cockpit door is still closed as it was before, albeit with a bit of wind running through it, and the aircraft frame is somewhat totally fine.
Could the plane still be safely landed? How would the ground stations react to this? How would the pilots and flight attendants handle this situation?
Let’s say that all the engines and fiddly bits “turn off” and go to their natural state, although the airplane’s fuselage is still powered and pressurized.
I remember there was once a fighter plane where the pilot ejected, but the plane landed safely in a cornfield somewhere. Could this also happen here? Or could the plane be controlled by playing with the wires, or by some sort of secondary control panel?
If a pilot knows he’s going to eject, he’ll try to make sure the plane is in a trajectory that allows it to crash without injuring or killing people on the ground. Unless you have a cite, I doubt the plane landed safely. If a pilot ejects, it’s because he knows he has no way of bringing it in for a safe landing.
My WAG as someone who has never flown an airliner: Not a chance.
Landing an airliner requires not only that you be able to manipulate control surfaces, but also know where you’re going. Only a very narrow range of altitude, speed, pitch, angle of attack, etc. can get you to a safe landing. You can’t smash into a mountain; you need to hit something like ocean at low speed and a good angle, or flat land. This is far more difficult than Sullenberger-ing into the Hudson. Not to mention that now that the cockpit and nose have been ripped off your plane, your plane is probably going to experience some pretty wild, unfamiliar, aerodynamic behavior - you’re not very streamlined.
That all depends on your even having the ability to control flight surfaces without use of anything in the flight deck, which is already highly, highly doubtful. Your aircraft, without the flight deck, is a body without a brain, maybe even without a nervous system.
Jets like the A-10 have manual control with pulleys, etc. in case of FBW failure, IIRC, but even then they need a cockpit.
Your described scenario would lead to a deadly crash pretty soon.
The emergency cockpit? There is no way the aircraft could stay pressurized with the cockpit broken off, and there would be no way to control it at all. Divine intervention would be their only hope.
Awaiting one of the board’s commercial pilots to weigh in on this…
Exactly. The 787 has “fly-by-wire” control systems. In order for the OP’s incredibly-far-fetched scenario to work, the flight crew would somehow need to be able to patch into the wiring for the flight controls, and then control them, without any of the hardware or software that’s in the now-removed cockpit.
And, they’d need to be able to do it very, very quickly, since the loss of the front of the plane will have disrupted its aerodynamics.
I believe the avionics bay is right under the cockpit. If the cockpit section is torn away, there won’t BE any control system for the crew to patch into.
Also, wouldn’t this rupture all hydraulic systems?
All this sounds like a horrible direct-to-dumpster movie plot. There’s not the tiniest shred of possibility [Asteroid, I’m talking to you]. The plane will disintegrate, there are no “alternate” control panels, I’ve wasted too much time already. Back to reality.
Something sort of like the OP’s scenario did happen to TWA Flight 800 back in 1996. After an explosion in the center fuel tank severed the front third or so of a Boeing 747 flying at an altitude of over 13,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean near Long Island, the rest of the airplane (including most of the fuselage and the wings, tail, and engines) continued to fly for 34 seconds before the wings started to come apart. Needless to say, there were no survivors.
After the break-up, the main remaining body of the plane continued on for a bit. FAA analysis indicates it actually climbed some.
But the fire and other damage lead to instabilities, it started to roll, a wing came off, etc.
So a jet with a less explosive separation can fly stably for a likely small amount of time. If, and it’s a big mega if, there was some way to control it. Which there isn’t.
I’m unable to imagine this rather far-out scenario ending well.
First of all, both pilots on an airliner are never out of the cockpit at the same time. But playing along with what the OP described…
Unlike the F-106 (I’ve seen that plane at Wright-Patt BTW, very cool story), we’re talking about a large plane with passengers that we’d like to survive the incident. The cockpit falling off the airplane would represent not merely a change of CG like the F-106. That would be a fundamental change in the structure, and I doubt it would survive the mechanical effects of the separation. But even if it did, there would be no way to control the plane. You’re screwed, end of story.
Actually the same would be true for a pure hydraulic flight control system. If the cockpit were removed there would be no way to activate the controls, plus hydraulic pressure would be lost.
While not specifically related to this point, all commercial fly-by-wire aircraft use hydraulic actuation for most control surfaces. They are not fly-by-wire from pilot cockpit all the way to the flight control surfaces. Even space shuttle used hydraulic acuators, as does the F-35: The end of hydraulics in aerospace? Not so fast …
But as already stated the aerodynamics of a fuselage with a detached cockpit would not permit control of the aircraft even if there were operational flight controls in the passenger cabin.
The closest thing to this was Aloha Airlines Flight 243, where a section of a 737 fuselage tore away and the plane (barely) landed safely. However that would not be aerodynamically possible if the cockpit itself was detached, leaving a blunt, flat surface. The drag and control problems would be too severe:
An Israeli F-15 landed after one wing was sheared off in an air-to-air collision, but this was only possible since it was a fighter plane with tremendous differential control authority from the elevators and a body generating lift:
