FedEx MD11 crashes at Tokyo

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Postby BigBird » Mon Mar 23, 2009 2:32 pm

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Postby Goose » Mon Mar 23, 2009 3:17 pm

BigBird wrote:
QUOTE (BigBird @ Mar 23 2009, 03:32 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>


jesus, after watching the video why didnt they go around after they bounced like that!?! not that im any kind of expert on big aircraft like that but seems like that would have been the way to go, maybe they tried tho and didnt have the power available fast enough to get it back up.
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Postby Anthony » Mon Mar 23, 2009 4:02 pm

Wow! ohmy.gif That is quite a sight.
Look at what's left of the aircraft...
RIP pilots sad.gif
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Postby Njbb1995 » Mon Mar 23, 2009 4:07 pm

Saw that on the midday news........not pretty, we will have to see what the accident report says. RIP pilots

EDIT: On second thought, upon reading the article, the pilots may not have died smile.gif
Last edited by Njbb1995 on Mon Mar 23, 2009 5:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby K5054NZ » Mon Mar 23, 2009 4:52 pm

Nasty! That was rather unfortunate, wonder if the cockpit voice recorders will give any clue as to why they didn't go around?

Bad day for aviation: a PC-12 crashed in the States today, with children killed sad.gif
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Postby spongebob206 » Mon Mar 23, 2009 5:47 pm

sad.gif sad.gif sad.gif sad.gif
RIP All
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Postby jastheace » Mon Mar 23, 2009 8:26 pm

RIP to the two crew,

to my untrained eye at the start of the video clip it looks like the a/c is down on the end of the runway bounces hard then it looks like the pilots are trying to go around, then it looks like it gets slammed into the ground and flips, looks like they may have been fighting it all the way, (just what it looks like to me) again RIP very sad day in aviation.
In the ongoing battle between objects made of aluminum going hundreds of miles per hour and the ground going zero miles per hour, the ground has yet to lose.

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Postby FlyingKiwi » Wed Mar 25, 2009 3:55 pm

Apparently (this comes from a news article, albeit one on a generally reliable aviation news website) the MD-11 has been known to handle poorly in conditions of low speed and strong winds due to the electronic pitch stability system.
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Postby pois0n » Wed Mar 25, 2009 7:35 pm

I didnt think they could go around at that stage cause the engines take too long to get up to speed again?
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Postby Chairman » Mon Apr 06, 2009 4:21 am

Somebody in the PMDG forum was just complaining that their MD-11 was unstable in the pitch on the approach. The gist of the replies was that's what MD-11s are like and well done to PMDG for modelling it.

One of them pointed to this page http://www.airlinesafety.com/faq/faq9.htm which make the MD-11 sound pretty hairy under those conditions.

The guts of it is that to reduce drag the tailplane assembly was made 40% smaller than on similar airliners and the CoG was moved right back. This has resulted in an warm fuzzy sounding condition known as "relaxed stability" (i.e. it's unstable as buggery) and very light control forces, which makes for a bit of a lottery when doing an approach in suboptimal conditions, with overcorrections almost a given.

This from a high-hour MD-11 pilot ...

QUOTE
The MD-11 is not fly-by-wire. It is, however, fly by CONSTANT pilot input. The geniuses at MD decided to make the empennage 40% smaller than the DC-10 to save on both parasitic drag and induced drag by keeping the c.g.[center of gravity] near the aft limit during high-speed cruise.

This aeroplane doesn't really have a "slot" when you are on final; it doesn't seem to really stay at a trimmed AOA [angle of attack] /deck angle at a specific power setting/airspeed. As such, the pilot is constantly making little corrections, like flying a dynamically unstable fly-by-wire fighter with the computer out. This is unlike any transport aircraft I've flown. Part of the problem is a system called the Longitudinal Stability Augmentation System (LSAS) which is a computer that constantly trims the stab to make up for the shortcomings of the tail size. The landing is also unique. As soon as the plane touches down I have to push on the yoke to counteract a severe pitchup from the spoilers coming to 2/3 extension. Less than a second later, the autobrakes kick in, so you have to pull back on the yoke to gently lower the nose to the runway.

Somebody once said they should let Lockheed design all the airplanes, Boeing build them...and McDonnell-Douglas market them! And let the French guys stick to making Citroens and Peugeots...[/quote]
Add to that a quite astonishing number of electrical fires, highly suspect fireproofing materials, and the small tailplane assembly suddenly becoming even smaller if you're silly enough to stall at altitude. and you start to see why sales stopped at 200.

And you start to get an inkling of why this MD-11 did what it did, in spite of the best efforts of the passengers in the front seats.

Gary
Last edited by Chairman on Mon Apr 06, 2009 9:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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