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Originally posted by Zaphod58
Then you had absolutely no point there then. Because I'm NOT ignoring the laws or rules of aerodynamics. The airframe was stressed beyond the breaking point by a 2.4G maneuver at 500+ mph. It broke up. How is that ignoring anything?
Btw way to totally ignore my demand for proof, and to shove words into my mouth with the 7 hijackers in the cockpit.
The 767 was at 16,416 feet, doing 527 miles an hour, and pulling a moderately heavy 2.4 gs, indicating that the nose, though still below the horizon, was rising fast, and that Habashi's efforts on the left side were having an effect. A belated recovery was under way.
Originally posted by Zaphod58
Did you bother reading that it pulled a 2.4G maneuver before it broke up? Apparently you stopped with the overspeed and breakup of the airframe. Or was that all you understood?
Originally posted by Zaphod58
And you are COMPLETELY ignoring the contributing factors. Not to mention that they ROUTINELY travel faster than 500 mph at higher altitudes, where this one was. This break up had NOTHING to do with them flying at 500mph at 700 feet.
An EgyptAir dispatcher rode out on the bus with them, and subsequently reported that the crew members looked and sounded normal. At the airport he gave them a standard briefing and an update on the New York surface weather, which was stagnant under a low, thin overcast, with light winds and thickening haze.
I don't fly the 767, or any other airliner. In fact, I no longer fly for a living. But I know through long experience with flight that such machines are usually docile, and that steering them does not require the steady nerves and quick reflexes that passengers may imagine. Indeed, as we saw on September 11, steering them may not even require much in the way of training—the merest student-pilot level is probably enough. It's not hard to understand why. Airplanes at their core are very simple devices—winged things that belong in the air. They are designed to be flyable, and they are. Specifically, the 767 has ordinary mechanical and hydraulic flight controls that provide the pilot with smooth and conventional responses; it is normally operated on autopilot, but can easily be flown by hand; if you remove your hands from the controls entirely, the airplane sails on as before, until it perhaps wanders a bit, dips a wing, and starts into a gentle descent; if you pull the nose up or push it down (within reason) and then fold your arms, the airplane returns unassisted to steady flight; if you idle the engines, or shut them off entirely, the airplane becomes a rather well behaved glider. It has excellent forward visibility, through big windshields. It has a minimalist cockpit that may look complicated to the untrained eye but is a masterpiece of clean design. It can easily be managed by the standard two-person crew, or even by one pilot alone. The biggest problem in flying the airplane on a routine basis is boredom. Settled into the deep sky at 33,000 feet, above the weather and far from any obstacle, the 767 simply makes very few demands.
Not that it's idiot-proof, or necessarily always benign. As with any fast and heavy airplane, operating a 767 safely even under ordinary circumstances requires anticipation, mental clarity, and a practical understanding of the various systems. Furthermore, when circumstances are not ordinary—for example, during an engine failure just after takeoff or an encounter with unexpected wind shear during an approach to landing—a wilder side to the airplane's personality suddenly emerges. Maintaining control then requires firm action and sometimes a strong arm. There's nothing surprising about this: all airplanes misbehave on occasion, and have to be disciplined. "Kicking the dog," I called it in the ornery old cargo crates I flew when I was in college—it was a regular part of survival. In the cockpits of modern jets it is rarely necessary. Nonetheless, when trouble occurs in a machine as massive and aerodynamically slick as the 767, if it is not quickly suppressed the consequences can blossom out of control. During a full-blown upset like that experienced by the Egyptian crew, the airplane may dive so far past its tested limits that it exceeds the very scale of known engineering data—falling off the graphs as well as out of the sky. Afterward the profile can possibly be reconstructed mathematically by aerodynamicists and their like, but it cannot be even approximated by pilots in flight if they expect to come home alive.
Originally posted by OrionStars
I found the following to be quite interesting, particularly the speed and altitude, concerning EgyptAir 990. The balance of the article is quite informative, as well, when compared to Boeing spokespersons and pilots stating no Boeing 767 is going to fly at high speed at 700' above sea level, without beginning to break apart diving or not or banking and turning or not:
www.theatlantic.com...
It was the last instant captured by the on-board flight recorders. The elevators were split, with the one on the right side, Batouti's side, still pushed into a nose-down position. The ailerons on both wings had assumed a strange upswept position, normally never seen on an airplane. The 767 was at 16,416 feet, doing 527 miles an hour, and pulling a moderately heavy 2.4 gs, indicating that the nose, though still below the horizon, was rising fast, and that Habashi's efforts on the left side were having an effect. A belated recovery was under way. At that point, because the engines had been cut, all nonessential electrical devices were lost, blacking out not only the recorders, which rely on primary power, but also most of the instrument displays and lights. The pilots were left to the darkness of the sky, whether to work together or to fight. I've often wondered what happened between those two men during the 114 seconds that remained of their lives. We'll never know. Radar reconstruction showed that the 767 recovered from the dive at 16,000 feet and, like a great wounded glider, soared steeply back to 24,000 feet, turned to the southeast while beginning to break apart, and shed its useless left engine and some of its skin before giving up for good and diving to its death at high speed.
[edit on 13-2-2008 by OrionStars]
Originally posted by OrionStars
How is one person going to overcome three people already in the cockpit and throw them all out?
Originally posted by weedwhacker
Yeah, someone somewhere said it only takes a few seconds to hit the mic button, but what do you say? Your FIRST instinct, if you see it coming, and that's a big IF, is to defend yourself....but you are in a vulnerable position, back to door, and you are only human in your response time...a response to a completely unexpected and un-planned attack...
Originally posted by weedwhackerYou're busy defending yourself, probably with both arms...no time to sqwauk 7700, nor would you bother...as you say, quicker to key the PTT switch...assuming you still have your headset on.
Originally posted by NIcon
Betty and Amy both claim there was mace or something in business class, so no hijackers there, either.
Originally posted by ULTIMA1
Originally posted by weedwhackerYou're busy defending yourself, probably with both arms...no time to sqwauk 7700, nor would you bother...as you say, quicker to key the PTT switch...assuming you still have your headset on.
So basically you had 8 pilots just let someone break into the cockpits come up and assullt them while sitting there and doing nothing?
Specailly after at least one of the flights had a "secure cockpit door" warning ?
Also they had a warning about the other hijackings sent over the airlines message system. So i guess they just sat there and did nothing RIGHT ?
[edit on 14-2-2008 by ULTIMA1]