Mike Marron wrote:
Ed Rasimus wrote:
Mary Shafer wrote:
Of course, the O'Hare DC-10 had a slat asymmetry, although that was an
asymmetric retraction of an extended slat. Subsequent simulator
studies showed that, even knowing the problem was asymmetric slats,
the airplane was too low to recover.
If we're talking about the same DC-10 that was lost at O'Hare about 20
years ago, the slat assymetry was caused by the engine and pylon
departing the wing, up and over and in the process taking a chunk of
leading edge with it.
The accident investigation and subsequent simulator trials
demonstrated fairly conclusively that the aircraft was recoverable,
however training to immediately pull up and reduce speed to Vmc was
incorrect. What was needed was the more high performance airplane
practice of "unload for control" in which you (counter-intuitively)
ease off the back pressure possibly all the way to zero G and let
airspeed build to a point where more G is available for the recovery.
What you're saying is true (e.g: the crippled DC-10 was indeed
recoverable in SIMULATOR flights) however;
1) During the actual event the stall warning system had been
rendered INOP due to the port engine departing the wing whereas
the stall warning system was functioning normally during the simulator
rides.
2) Although the pilots flying the simulator were able to recover
control after the roll began, these pilots were all aware of the
circumstances of the accident.
3) All participating pilots agreed that based on the accident
circumstances and lack of available warning systems, it was
not reasonable to expect the pilots of Flight 191 either to have
recognized the beginning of the roll as a stall or to recover
from the roll to which the Safety Board concurred.
In other words, unfortunately all those poor folks on American
Airlines Flight 191 back in '79 didn't stand a snowball's chance in
hell of walking away from that one!
But hey - they saved a *lot* of time changing the engines that way.
(Wonder if JT was involved in that idea?)
John
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