- This topic has 1 voice and 0 replies.
-
Posts
-
-
#News(General) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]
The trouble started almost immediately. A few minutes after taking off from Lisbon on Sunday, the pilots of an Air Astana Embraer 190 jet called Mayday. “We have flight control problems,” he told air traffic control, asking for a path to the sea for an emergency landing.
In the first portion of the flight, the Embraer traced the sort of flight path you’d draw if you took your Spirograph on a roller coaster. Eventually, the pilots regained control and, escorted by a pair of fighter jets, flew south to an airport with good weather and landed safely.Pilots are trained to follow a simple creed when something goes wrong: Aviate, navigate, and communicate, in that order. In a loss-of-control situation, Pruchnicki says, aviating means figuring out what systems are working and how you can use them to stay level.
Imagine you’re stuck banking steeply to the right and losing altitude, and the ailerons (those flappy bits on the wings) are frozen. In normal flight, the pilot uses the rudder to point the nose right or left. Here, with the plane at an angle, the pilot could step on the left pedal to move the rudder, pulling the nose up and maintaining altitude. “The airplane will still stay 90 degrees”—tilted to the right, that is—”but it’ll be controllable in a different axis.”
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
