Shok

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Im building giant fod screens in my garage!



Odd coincidence, isn't today the anniversary of the Air Florida Flight 90 crash into the Potomac River in D.C. back in 82?


weird

Bryce Watson

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Depends on a few things George, airspeed being the primary. If I remember correctly from the 5 years I spent flying the A320, Airbuses have a couple of indicators (the yellow line or alpha max) on the left side of the PFD that actually gives you the best L/D speed for the weight that you are at, that would have been very useful at time like this, also the A320 has a "ditching switch" which when pushed closes up all the external openings on the jet, which obviously would have also helped here as well. As far as flying again..........with over 2 years and no fatalities here in the US in commercial aviation x the number of flights x the number of passengers that have flown x the number of days....................I'll be safer going to fly that 757 tommorow from NY than I will be driving in my car to the employee parking lot.

Just make sure they're heated Ronnie.....

Goodnight All, time for me to get my crew rest.

Bryce

FalconWings

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Bryce, exactly how efficient are spoilers if you are descending "heavy"? Is there a VNE for spoilers?

David

Bryce Watson

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Well David that depends on the aircraft. For instance, when I flew the older generation 37's I was told in training that "You can't go down and slow down with this jet, it's one or the other." The joke was that the speedbrake handle was just a "rumbler" because it did'nt really do anything but shake the plane unless you were level then the deceleration was something like it takes one mile to lose 10kts of airspeed with the boards out level and engines at idle with anti-ice off. Now I have'nt flown the newer generation birds where some major changes were made especially to the wings which were completely redesigned from the ground up, all the way out to the wingtips which are now blended winglets. I'm sure there's a huge difference in the performance numbers on those birds vs what I remember from the old birds.

Now on just about every other jet that I've flown spoilers are very effective. Most will give you a deceleration in airspeed while being able to maintain a standard ATC descent rate, some jets you can slow with an even higher rate of descent which is nice.

Keeping in mind that for just about any aircraft that generates lift, the formula is........as airspeed doubles, lift quadruples.

So with that, depending on the weight of whatever heavy jet (or any plane for that matter) is flying......short of diving or stalling, by using the spoilers to kill the lift on the wing will give you a slight descent rate......as the airspeed decays from the drag of having those spoilers out......the descent rate will begin to increase pretty rapidly.

As far as a VNE for spoilers, once again it depends on the plane, most don't have that restriction, however some do. We have slowly been adding blended winglets to our jets which give a considerable savings in fuel efficiency. They add to the wingspan a bit and also incorporate a load alleviation system, whereby exceeding a certain airspeed under certain conditions while using full speedbrakes will actually cause the spoilers to blow down to 50% until the speed is reduced below a certain value. But as I mentioned, that's just the case with this particular retrofit on these aircraft, most others that I have flown, including corporate do not have that restriction/system.

Lot's of ice out there in the Hudson this morning just north of the GWB, pretty fridgid scene, it's nice to know there's a whole bunch of happy people out there today.

Bryce

BalsaBob

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Yes, fantastic/incredible job by the captain and the rest of the flight crew. Many lives were saved !

Jay Leno was funny last night. he said: " The airplane actually could have landed in Newark but, the flight crew and passengers, said, no thanks, ... we'll take the river ... "

Bob

Bryce Watson

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Gotta love Leno, glad everybody's safe.

bevar

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Here is a good one. There is a rumor starting to float around that some think that MAYBE the ditching might have ultimately been self induced. A story is building that some out there in the industry are wondering if the evolution went something like this :bird strike/FODing out of the right engine followed by the crew mistakenly shut down the left engine by mistake. There is also a case back a while ago where several 737s were built with the fire warnings wire in reverse...so maybe that another possibility.

I just read about this on a different board. Interesting food for thought to say the least.

Props4ever

Anyone have any latest news on recovery of the aircraft, there was talk on other aviation sites that they have huge crane to lift the plane out of water and place it on a barge so it could be taken to the airport for investigation. Recovery pictures would be great.

Just found a picture seconds before it splashed and one from last night when aircraft was towed to the edge of the bay still submerged. US Air announced today in there press conference that this A320 is missing both engines now!, my opinion is that when rescue boats were all around the aircraft's fuselage rescuing the passengers thats when they were broken off...

rhklenke

My Feedback: (24)

No, I'd bet that they came off, or at least the mounts were severely damaged, when it hit the water. If you look at the video of the airliner that dead-sticked off the beach (in Africa?) a few years ago, you can see that it is relatively under control until one of the engines contacted the water. Then the plane skidded sideways and broke up. It was very lucky that this aircraft didn't do the same thing. Likely the USAirways pilot touched down as level as possible and as slow as possible. The passengers still reported that the plane "jerked left" or words to that effect. These big turbofan nacelles are like big sea anchors when they hit the water.

Back when I was a kid, I remember reading one of my Dad's Navy Safety Magazines from when he as a Naval Aviator. There was an article in one of them about some ditching tests that they did using models of various types of jets in service at the time. They tried hitting the water at different pitch angles and different airspeeds and looked at the relative survivability of the resulting deceleration events. When it came to the A-7 Corsair, the conclusion was "don't ditch, eject." The reason was, no matter how you hit the water, as soon as that big airscoop under the A-7 nose hit, the airplane would decelerate and dive under so quickly that the event was generally not survivable - and that's a tiny opening compared to a 10' diameter turbofan nacelle...

It might be that they came off in the effort to push, tug, whatever they did to get the plane out of the current and up against Manhattan Island, but I'd bet they came off earlier...

Bob

highhorse

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"Why don't they have screens on the front of those engines?"

It's all about the $$. The cost in material, weight, and reduced fuel efficiency of a screen tuff enuff to handle the impact would be emormous.

Airforce7

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More info on the pilot's early school days...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,480250,00.html

Airforce7

My Feedback: (31)

I happened to be at home watching TV when the news broke about the jet splash landing. I was watching CNBC and they had really good live video of the jet in the water as the ferry boats arrived. I switched over to Fox News and they were reporting on it, but had no video feed. I then switched over the CNN and they had live video feed. I cycled through each of these programs for a while and came to the conclusion that CNN, hands down, had the best coverage. What really set them apart from the rest was the fact that within 1 1/2 hours after the incident, they had one of the passengers on the phone speaking to Wolf about the entire experience. I thought it might be a prankster, but no it was the real deal. I was getting goose bumps listening to his experience. I wonder if the pilot had to actually swim or even go under water to check the very last rows of the plane. I know from one other passenger interview today, he said that he was the last to get out and the water was already up to his waste before he exited the front of the jet. He said the pilot was calling him from the front to get out. Really is an amazing story.

Props4ever

Aircraft was still floating this morning by the edge of the bay!!

Was there a try to pull it out made today i don't know and i can't find info on it either, my guess is NO to it but i could be wrong also...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/16/hud...ew#cnnSTCVideo

ghost_rider

My Feedback: (20)

It is really sad to hear people talk about how great the pilot was without giving THANKS and HONOR to the GREAT PILOT ABOVE for another one of his GREAT MIRACLES. (Please take this FWIW)

mugenkidd

My Feedback: (94)

wow!! so god only cared about these people and not the other ones that died in air disasters (sept 11, plus thousands of others) maybe god doesn't give a $%&# and the pilot of the airplane really saved those people..free will....(Please take this FWIW)

HotelSierra

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Bryce, thanks for adding your personal and professional insights to the whole story. I think they are very interesting.

bigplumbs

I can tell that you like a laugh

AMA234

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Amen, ghost_rider.


Mugenkidd,
God cares more about EVERY person on earth than you can comprehend...he even cares about you even though you don't know Him. (Please take this FWIW)
The pilot did do a good job, but who gave him those skills?

Les

bigplumbs

I guess he got those skills from his instructor at flight school

skyhawknut

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No - they came off when they entered the water.............just as they are designed to do on all commercial aircraft.

And why do people keep comparing this to the African 767?????[:@]

That one would have ended just like this one had it not been for 1 hijacker trying to crash it and another beating the pilot with a fire axe!

vasek

My Feedback: (4)

Is there a vid out there of the plane "landing on water"?

There's a pic on ABC news but no vid of it ditching.

Props4ever

After reviewing some of the left wing's pictures that is presently sticking out of the water's surface it is very much possible that engines with pylons sheared right off upon impact with water!, the reason why im agreeing here is that there is no sign of pylon on left wing anymore and damage is on LE, lower full chord of the wing including TE of the wing!....

Weird thing is, this aircraft impacted only at speeds of 12mph to 15mph yet engines sheared right off with pylons!!!

Props4ever

I was looking and hoping for it also but nothing has surfaced as yet!. Impact picture is very dramatic!!..

causeitflies

I didn't see the impact picture but Fox had a video of the impact supposedly taken by a Coast Guard vessel. It isn't very clear and is far away. The thing about it that caught my eye is what looks like the twin towers in the background[:-]. This is on Comcast.net.

Props4ever

Recovery going on live at the moment on fox.net

http://www.foxnews.com/video2/live.html?chanId=5