Posts by user "island_airphoto" [Posts: 14 Total up-votes: 0 Pages: 1]

island_airphoto
June 12, 2025, 22:50:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11899808
Knowing nothing else but watching that, it looked like the plane was very heavy, got out of ground effect, and started sinking again. The pilot, if that was true, needed to level off and gain speed.

Subjects: None

island_airphoto
June 15, 2025, 02:49:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11902064
Originally Posted by donpizmeov
Didn't the 73max stay operational after the Lion air accident?
How long did 737s fly with rudders that got stuck?

Subjects: None

island_airphoto
June 15, 2025, 13:17:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11902459
Maybe a dumb question - A DA-42 went in with double engine failure when the gear was retracted, the additional load of the gear pump was enough to drop the bus voltages low enough to shut down both FADECs. They took off with a very low battery and no one had tested this scenario previously. Obviously a very different airplane, but still raising the gear probably is a significant load and may have caused an electrical problem to get worse.
* or Boeing thought of that, DA-42s got rewired and won't do that now.

Subjects (links are to this post in the relevant subject page so that this post can be seen in context): Dual Engine Failure  Engine Failure (All)

island_airphoto
June 20, 2025, 15:50:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11907076
Re water in fuel - how often do 787 operators usually check the water drains? It seems like the water scavenger would normally deal with it, but if it gets clogged or otherwise doesn't work you'll get water out of the sump drains.

Subjects: None

island_airphoto
June 29, 2025, 13:29:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11913034
Originally Posted by Lonewolf_50
I got the idea that with no (or very little) thrust, and with the aircraft falling, the pilot (may have) realized that he was in out of control flight , and falling.
In a pedantic sense: if you make control inputs, and the aircraft won't or can't respond to them, you are in out of control flight .
The whole event happened pretty quickly. How far into "we are doomed" that his senses told him they were can have informed his decision to say something about it. (the human mind is an interesting thing).
There's also the matter of temporal distortion which can happen during stress or high adrenalin events. (I experienced that during the course of an aircraft accident: not on topic for this thread).
As to conformance with ICAO, not all investigations make good on that.
Spoiler
 



I sincerely hope that this one does.

(Note: some of what I refer to as out of control flight seems to be called upset in commercial transport jargon).
They were neither out of control nor upset. They just had little or no power. The plane flew just fine as a glider until it hit a building.

Subjects (links are to this post in the relevant subject page so that this post can be seen in context): ICAO

island_airphoto
June 29, 2025, 15:18:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11913084
Originally Posted by Pilot DAR
I distinguish between "upset" and "out of control" for any airplane. "Upset" to me implies an unusual attitude, headed for worse if a correction is not made quickly. An airplane can be stalled, and out of control, but not upset. The pilot may no longer have any control effectiveness available to pitch up, so the airplane is not in control in that sense, though it otherwise is stable (for the moment). I saw in the video an airplane which, after suffering a [total] power loss in a climb pitch attitude, and a climb speed, did not noticeably pitch down, so it certainly would have been slowing down, and approaching a stall. If the pilot maintained the attempt to pitch up, and the airplane was not aerodynamically able to respond, it was not in control, so, out of control.

I encountered this thinking while flight testing a modified GA plane in the company of an experienced test pilot. The airplane would bob across an airspeed range with full nose up pitch control. It was a very stable bob, but the indicated airspeed would increase and decrease about 5 knots during this bobbing, while the controls were held against the nose up stop. I asked him, was the indicated stall speed the faster, or slow of the two airspeeds? His reply: "Can you control the airspeed while the airplane is slower than the faster speed?". "No" I replied. Then the airplane is out of control at the faster airspeed, and that is the stall speed. The fact that it would fly slower was not in my control, though the airplane was still controllable in roll and yaw.

It's a fine point, but this event is well into fine point territory!



The 787 was suffering neither problem. Like all gliders, it could only get so far.
Did you have the extended pitot tube for your test? On a lot of Cessnas, one can get them down to 0 KIAS if you are good with your feet. Beyond a certain angle of attack the regular pitot gets very inaccurate.

Subjects: None

island_airphoto
June 30, 2025, 01:56:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11913325
Originally Posted by za9ra22
OK, from my standpoint as a curious observer, what would their options be? They don't have engines to provide thrust, they don't have altitude to lower the nose and gain speed, and they don't have the speed to pull the nose up and extend the glide? All while trying to troubleshoot the same problem we've collectively taken 2 weeks to not understand. What would you do?
I taught all my students to pick a landing area that they could see without turning their head and do your best to fly it to the end if they lost power that soon after takeoff. A total engine(s) failure at that low altitude is pretty much worst-nightmare territory, you can land straight ahead or maybe 20 degrees left or right. If you try and turn back or stretch the glide you'll stall in. An airplane with envelope protection may not do that, it just won't turn much nor pitch up much. This is not something I would expect in a twin engine jet, that is for sure!

Subjects: None

island_airphoto
June 30, 2025, 13:12:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11913614
Originally Posted by Lonewolf_50
Then why didn't that happen on the previous flight from Deli to Ahmedabad, or any of the previous flights since that install in March?

Thanks for the update, and in particular that bolded bit.
If rigorously applied, an "engine thrust balancer" would cause the good engine to fail if something happened to the other one. Surely there is some logic in there somewhere to give up and disconnect past a certain amount of adjustment??
* as for why not before, probably because it didn't happen that way or in Boeing's worst nightmare some weird corner case in the software that does this if certain parameters are in rare combination.

Subjects (links are to this post in the relevant subject page so that this post can be seen in context): Parameters

island_airphoto
June 30, 2025, 13:24:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11913622
Originally Posted by Lonewolf_50
Thank you for that answer, edge cases do abound in complex systems, but would not moving the throttles forward by hand (as the thrust was beginning to reduce {for that strange reason}) overcome that and restore thrust?
(As I don't fly the 787, I may be missing something basic on how the systems work).
I too don't fly that plane or any other FADEC plane for that matter, so I'll leave that to others. I keep thinking of the DA-42 that killed both engines due to an odd circumstance they didn't think would happen. It was a gross example of a corner case, but you can have other ones much harder to root out.

Subjects (links are to this post in the relevant subject page so that this post can be seen in context): FADEC

island_airphoto
June 30, 2025, 14:55:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11913678
Originally Posted by NSEU
The FCOM explains that the system only operates when there is a large thrust to weight ratio and will maintain the required climb performance. If applied during an engine out, it will provide directional control only when airspeed drops below normal operating speeds.
So it has an automated VMC departure preventer? That is pretty clever as long it never goes off when not needed.

Subjects (links are to this post in the relevant subject page so that this post can be seen in context): FCOM

island_airphoto
July 10, 2025, 11:53:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11918969
Originally Posted by moosepileit
787 pilots, If throttles are NOT at idle, will their respective fuel cut off switches still trigger a shutdown?

The above checklist procedure implies throttle lever angle and cutoff switches are independant for resetting FADECs.

If so, is it time for this convention from the days where throttles and cutoffs were mechanical systems, not resolvers and switches, to end?
You do not want a condition where you can't shut the fuel off when you need to because some condition is not met.

Subjects (links are to this post in the relevant subject page so that this post can be seen in context): Fuel (All)  Fuel Cutoff  Fuel Cutoff Switches

island_airphoto
July 12, 2025, 19:55:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11920790
We have a very disturbing choice: Either Boeing designed planes that will randomly shut off for no reason or we have pilots that will do so. Neither one is a happy thought.

Subjects: None

island_airphoto
July 12, 2025, 20:09:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11920800
Originally Posted by za9ra22
As a passenger, it may seem as simple as that, but in reality it isn't and this incident can't be derived down to a simple either/or like that.

It would have saved a thousand hours of internet posts if it could!
It pretty much can and the odds are vastly in favor of a human hand on the switches. I *hate* the idea someone is either that clueless turning off random things or that evil, but the odds of anything else being the cause are rapidly approaching being hit by lightning after winning the lottery.
I know.......it could turn out to be some way out cause no one has thought off.

A buddy went down with double engine failure in an Aztec, when he switched tanks water that had leaked into the airplane formed an ice ball that jammed the cables to the actual switches between tanks and cut off all fuel. If he hadn't landed in a field and gotten an A&P on it before the temps went above freezing maybe no one would have ever known why 2 engines with totally separate fuel systems died at the same time.

Last edited by T28B; 12th July 2025 at 20:12 . Reason: split out the novel failure story in its own paragraph

Subjects (links are to this post in the relevant subject page so that this post can be seen in context): Dual Engine Failure  Engine Failure (All)  Fuel (All)  Fuel Cutoff Switches

island_airphoto
July 12, 2025, 20:32:00 GMT
permalink
Post: 11920816
Originally Posted by za9ra22
I well understand the notion, but the hard reality is that accidents are more often the result of complex overlays of circumstance rather than single individual or system issues. That was really my only point.
I have posted previously about some weird corner-case where a one-in-a-billion combination of settings causes the engines to be shut off, but that idea seems out the window now unless it can both command engines to shut down and fake the switch settings.

Subjects: None