Yep, up 32%
It isn’t quite that bad. The older (3,4,6) were all different, but on the 7 and 8 the wing and tail are almost exactly the same and most parts are used for both. The 9 has the same fuselage as a 7 but different wing and stabilizer. They got into trouble more by not raising prices to keep up with inflation and then not doing good enough quality control on some subcontracted parts.
A long but fascinating read by the inimitable Admiral Cloudberg:
Do you like Swiss cheese? Because there is a lot of Swiss cheese in this story. It came down to a hole that was drilled a few tenths of a millimeter off. You’ll have to read the rest to find out how it almost brought down the plane.
Quite the tale. 150 meters left of a 4000 meter runway. It’s pretty amazing the plane flew again.
they had 50 meters left of what the computer calculated they had based on the long list of mechanical issues.
No big deal
100,000 lbs over safe landing weight
anti-lock brakes don’t work
1 of the hydraulic systems damaged
Damaged flaps requiring higher landing speeds
Cockpit instruments and radio are running on battery power and only 1 radio
Leaking fuel
#1 and #4 engine operating in degraded mode
landing gears had to be gravity dropped
4 tires blown because plane overweight and high landing speeds
can’t shut off 1 of the engines after landing
overheated brakes that could ignite the leaking fuel
bathroom door wouldn’t lock (kidding)
Really great job by the crew. They had a Check Captain in training and a Supervising Check Captain so that had to be a fortuitous addition of assets to help divide the emergency work load.
I’m curious as to why they didn’t deplane because of a fear of a possible fuel fire due to hot brakes. It’s a long plane and departing from the back seems feasible. Maybe because they had to use a limited source of water to shut down the runaway engine. It’s not like there are fire hydrants along the runway to tap into. It would be interesting to read about the exchange with the fire department. That has to be a story in itself.
I wonder if the engine that couldn’t be shut down was stuck on cruise thrust. That would have generated differential thrust in landing configuration. And with the engine running that means the brakes have to hold the plane from moving which means they might have to chock the wheels. Who wants to do that with brakes that are glowing red from heat that are roasting the already overheated tires which are ready to explode. Exploding tires are literally that. They’re exploding with a tremendous amount of energy and molten rubber. I’ve seen a semi-truck tire explode on the highway and it was scary.
The Captain wrote 2 books on it so I’m sure everything is explained in detail.
Weird airplane of the week:
I SO want to fly one of these.
They could load the crop dusting material from in between the tail booms while the engine was running and just taxi off with the truck still there.
They could stuff 2 people in the back facing backwards but they couldn’t open the door with the flaps down.
Not really all that similar, but that makes me think of the PZL M-15 Belphegor, the only production jet-powered biplane.
Wow. If my dog looked like that, I’d shave its butt and teach it to walk backwards.
It may not be the ugliest flying machine ever, but it’s top 10 for sure.
Makes me think a tornado hit a hangar & somebody welded together the bigger surviving chunks as best they could.
While under the influence of mushrooms.
The makers of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome thought the same, apparently. The cars were welded-together from whatever parts they could find… for the Airtruk, they thought it fit the movie aesthetic without changing a bit.
Yeah. But …
The PZL-15 was actually a useful machine despite appearances.
Late add …
I Ioved the Mad Max aesthetic. So plausible for post-apocalyptic techno-society.
I have no idea who got an Oscar for what, but the designers totally deserved several.
It was a typical Russian mindset that insisted Poland make the biggest and the bestest plane to replace the AN-2. It had to be a jet which makes no sense as a crop duster. It never met the efficiencies or ease of maintenance of the old plane for obvious reasons They eventually abandoned it and went back to the AN-2.
Ha!
The weird thing is, from reading this thread over the years, I am the complete opposite.
WOW. Landings are a high percentage of flying skill. Very unlikely a non-pilot could pull it off. I personally know someone who understood the parameters of flight better than a lot of pilots. He eventually became a pilot and might have pulled it off prior to instruction.
Mentour Pilot talks (by radio) non-pilot Tom Scott through landing a 737 in a professional-grade 6-axis (I think) training simulator.
Here’s the Mentour Pilot video on the same event.
Four years ago, Petter explained what steps a non-pilot would have to take to put a plane into autoland.
Well, you do have to come in pretty low to land those things.
I wonder how things change if the person has a plane full of passengers and their own life on the line when landing as opposed to knowing they are in a simulator and will not die if they mess up?
In other words, dialing the stress level to 11.
Pffft. Landing is easy; it’s the walking away part that’s hard.
(someone had to say it!)
The only certainty in aviation is gravity.
