Al Gerharter wrote:

The was an incident some years back where a crew lost control of an
airliner in turbulence, and pulled forces way outside the design envelope
inorder to prevent a dive into the ground. Also lowered landing gear above
gear down speed, etc.

The aircraft suffered severe damage, but landed OK. Unfortunately, I
cannot remember the airline, aircraft type nor location, which makes it a
bit hard to find.






I believe it was a China Airlines 747, at SFO. I saw the aircraft the next
day. Hard to believe it came back.
The horizontal stabilizers and elevators were clipped off at about half
span. The gear doors came by after the gear was extended. The left aileron
had a two foot hole in it where a part came off of the leading edge, and
went through the obviously very extended aileron. There were wrinkles
everywhere. A commercial pilot in the cabin estimated 6 g's.


See: February 19, 1985, China Airlines Flight 006,
http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publ...r/AAR8603.html)



Yes, that looks like the one.

Although I cited this as an example where the ability to fly outside the
design envelope allowed recovery of an otherwise disasterous
situation, it looks to me, on a cursory reading, as if the damaging
accelerations occurred during a period when the captain was not trying
to recover control because he couldn't tell what the aifcraft was doing
anyway.

Oh well.

I'm amazed that the crew apparently thought it reasonable to resume
normal operation after a descent like that. They should surely have
realised that an immediate landing was indicated.

Sylvia.