Recreate accident flights or close calls

[radacheck]

I have fs2000. Has anyone re-created accedent flights or close calls so they can be re-created in flight sim.
I am thinking of flights like the Canadian piolet who had to glide to a landing at an old air field after his passenger jet ran out of fuel. And the plane that had to glide to a landing in tha Azore island after a massive fuel leak ran thenm out of gas.

If we were at the controlls could we have done as well?
Also outright accedents too, like crashes that have happended landing in bad weather etc.

Thanks,
radacheck.

[cianpars]

Yep, I've done some of those. I did the Azores one in FS9 and failed to make it as I recall and I've also done the landing inthe Hudson.

Get as much info as you can about the incident and create your flight from there. A good source of info is:

http://avherald.com/

Unfortunatley, the aircraft in flight simulator seem to use more fuel thanthe real ones and need adjusting in some cases.

IAN

[ReggieF5421]

Airlines, aircraft manufacturers and safety organizations routinely use their professional simulators to examine incidents, crashes and near misses. I've been told that just a couple hours after the AAL DC-10 crash in Chicago - simulator pilots had figured out how to survive the engine coming off over the wing. But the crew of that flight never knew that the engine had fallen off the aircraft.

To my knowledge - professional pilots is full motion simulators have not been able to successfully land the Gimli Glider - Air Canada at Winnipeg. This is probably more a fault of the way flight dynamics are done in those high dollar simulators than the pilots' ability. Full motion simulators don't really have a lot of data to successfully model the aerodynamics and interaction with the air of a no-engine flight.

The same thing with the Air Transat aircraft at the Azores, though I've read of a few pilots being successful in the landing there.

Our Flight Simulator program is also limited data to correctly model what actually happens with the aircraft in those situations. It is more of a good luck than and actual recreation.

It is interesting to note that both the Gimli Glider and the Air Transat aircraft came in too high and too fast for anything close to a normal landing. The pilot of the Air Canada bird side slipped the plane to lose altitude, but not might speed. The Air Transat aircraft actually made some 360 turns within sight of the runway to lose altitude.

Both suffered burst tires because the pilots stood on the brakes when the plane got on the ground. At Lajes in the Azores - there was a danger that if the aircraft went off the far end of the runway - there is a 180 foot drop down a cliff to the ocean.

[radacheck]

Very interesting and informative inforamtion, thanks a lot.
Radacheck

[ReggieF5421]

After the AF447 FDR was found and decoded - several top level simulators were used to see how to get a large transport catagory aircraft out of a deep aerobatic stall. Real world aircraft certification stall testing only goes into the development of a stall - not into allowing a real aircraft to completely stall, only the entry phases of a stall, though some times a full stall does happen. Cessna crashed two C-162 Skycatchers when they accidentally went past the test of development of a stall into full stalls and then spins. Both pilots were able to bail out.

They quickly determined that neither Airbus or Boeing had sufficient real world aircraft test data to correctly model the aircraft behavior in such a stall. A lot of very knowledgable, experienced technical people were surprised that the crew was able to keep the aircraft basically level despite the depth of the stall. The design and test data suggested that aircraft designed like the A330, B767, B777 would wing over and invert into a flat spin. That didn't happen.

There are two groups of pilots and aircraft which do train for such stalls - aerobatics and flighters. What happened to AF447 is that it entered the type of stall you see at an air show when the plane climbs into a stall and suddenly seems to fall straight down with the nose held up. The usual exit maneuver is to wing over and use that momentum to get the nose down. Because the airflows over the wings and tail are significantly disturbed.

One former C-130 pilot described on another forum his experience getting into such a stall years ago. Full nose down on the controls did not have sufficient elevator authority to get the nose down. They used a combination of low power on one wing, high power on the other and full aeriolon deflection to get the aircraft to move into a nose down position. It took 18,000 feet of fall to recover. His lead pilot was also an aerobatics instructor - and he said that experience was the only reason they survived.

Simulators depend upon real world data to model aircraft behavior in unusual flight situations - and very little data exists for flight completely outside the normal Flight Envelope. Events such as the Gimli Glider and Air Transat are outside the normal flight envelope and that is where a pilot's real world other flight experience, especially in other types of aircraft is so valuable. The Gimli Glider would never have made the field had the captain not had a lot of glider experience. The Air Transat crew had also learned a lot about non-powered flight - partially from the Gimli Glider experience which is used as training by many airlines.

Our Flight Simulator does not have near the level of physics modeling of airflows to accurately offer you the opportunity to test such events with any realism. X-Plane has much better aerodynamic physics modeling - but it is also inadequate.

However, it is not really the level of physics modeling that is important. What is the key factor in these events, and others in the link above, is the years of experience and training of the pilots. Their experience leads them to choose good survival techniques, but also important they never give up in the fight to save the aircraft.

What was so significant about Sully's flying the day the US Airways A320 went down in the Hudson was not his flying skills. Any transport rated pilot, any airline A320 pilots should have been able to put the plane down on the water successfully. If he could not do that he should not be flying those planes.

What he did that was so significant is that in only a few seconds he analyzed the situation, analyzed the possible solutions and came to the decision quickly that landing in the Hudson was the only option for survival. The only way the plane could go down anywhere not full of buildings and people.

Had he actually run the proper checklist and waited 35 seconds before attempting to restart the engines, the plane would not have made it to clear water. Some pilots have been able to make it back to KLGA in the simulator. Only those who turned back immediately and 50% of them in FAA testing were unsuccessful. If they waited long enough to try to see what was happening - 5 to 10 seconds - it was too late to get back to KLGA.

The Gimli Glider and Air Transat pilots made similar critical decisions with little information and based on their experience and training. In those cases - the decisions turned out to be the right ones.

[ScatterbrainKid]

NO AIRSPEED INDICATOR

There was a factual TV prog (or youtube vid) a while ago about an airliner that crashed in the sea at night killing all on board because the ASI wasn't working, (I think a ground maintenance man had accidentally left the pitot head covered), causing the pilot/co-pilot to stall and crash because they juggled the throttles too much to try to stay airborne.
It was suggested at the inquiry that they would have had a good chance of maintaining control if they'd simply set the throttles to a known setting that would guarantee a certain healthy airspeed.
I'm not a real-world pilot so i don't know if losing an ASI is serious or not, so it might be an interesting challenge to try it in FSX somehow?

[ScatterbrainKid]

Sully...What he did that was so significant is that in only a few seconds he analyzed the situation, analyzed the possible solutions and came to the decision quickly that landing in the Hudson was the only option for survival...

Yes, the co-piliot was flying when they hit the birds, but without hesitation Sully said "My aircraft" and took over without a hint of panic, what a man..




http://nymag.com/news/features/53788/

[ReggieF5421]

about an airliner that crashed in the sea at night killing all on board because the ASI wasn't working, (I think a ground maintenance man had accidentally left the pitot head covered), causing the pilot/co-pilot to stall and crash because they juggled the throttles too much to try to stay airborne.
It was suggested at the inquiry that they would have had a good chance of maintaining control if they'd simply set the throttles to a known setting that would guarantee a certain healthy airspeed.

AeroPeru Flight 603 - a B757 and there was duct tape left over the static port - not the pitot. (The static port is the second critical part of the pitot system - the two work together to determine a pressure difference - which is translated into air speed readings.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_Peru_Flt_603

As you mention - the crew did a lot of troubleshooting but never realized the real problem was Unreliable Airspeed. Just like AF447, the solution to UAS in a jet is to fly "Pitch and Power" - a specific pitch and power which is a memory item. Unless the environment is extreme with shifting winds, updrafts and downdrafts such as stormy weather - pitch and power will fly an aircraft safely.

My flight instructor made me fly with the IAS covered several times. Now, I was in a much smaller aircraft, a LSA where wind noise and engine sound can give you a very good indication of the airspeed. But he demanded I learn to fly the plane and land the plane with no speed indication. The plane also didn't have an artificial horizon, but it was a daytime VFR only aircraft.

Flying a jet that way is definitely harder, especially at night with no visual reference, but it can be done safely. At least 34 other A330, A340 and B777 crews have had documented UAS events and all survived without a major problem. Not following procedure cost the AF447 crew their lives, and the lives of their passengers. Not recognizing the base problem cost the AeroPeru crew their lives.

I've flown many times in FS without a functioning IAS, but it is much more difficult in a light aircraft than in the real world. The aural and visual clues are not persented correctly in FS, especially with no prepherial vision, not to mention the lack of feel for aircraft movements.

Night with no visual reference and no IAS and not trusting the ASI - no hope for me in FS to avoid a crash.

[ScatterbrainKid]

..I've flown many times in FS without a functioning IAS, but it is much more difficult in a light aircraft than in the real world. The aural and visual clues are not persented correctly in FS, especially with no prepherial vision, not to mention the lack of feel for aircraft movements...

Yes, flight sims can never reproduce what a pilot is feeling through the seat of his pants and his inner-ear or it'd be a whole new fascinating ball game.
For example WW1 fighter pilot Cecil Lewis wrote how he once climbed through a layer of cloud on rudimentary instruments (and seat of pants) and was certain he was keeping the wings level, but was amazed when he broke out the top to find that the horizon was tilted.

And a tragic example of relying on your pants rather than on the instruments occured a couple of years ago when an F-14 Tomcat pilot thought he was climbing too steeply in cloud, so he pushed the nose down, and although the artificial horizon read 'straight and level', his pants were screaming at him that he was still climbing, so he pushed the nose down even further, broke out of cloudbase and hit the ground, killing him and the guy in back.
There was a TV docu about it, apparently the fact that he was on full afterburner had something to do with it, because when he levelled out in the cloud he was still accelerating and being pushed back in his seat, and his brain/pants misinterpreted it to mean he was still climbing, even though the AH was correctly reading straight and level.

[william1953]

I remember reading about that DC10 crash in Souix City {back in the 70s I think} that had an explosion of some sort...don't remember but it cut the hydraulic lines to the rudder I think it was and the aircraft was stuck in a wide right turn. I think he had to use engine power to steer but he actually not only made it to the airport but also to the runway...cartwheeled down but there were survivors. It was recreated in professional simulators but there were no pilots that could even make the airport let alone the runway.

I remember hearing the black box voice recorder when ATC told the Captain to land on ANY runway he wanted and the Captain replied..."Oh...you want it on a runway do you?" Amazing the skills some pilots have.