how do you land a 757 with no elevator

[rick-l]

NTSB Report

As the airplane neared the runway on final approach, the flightcrew discovered that the elevator and standby elevator trim systems were inoperative

Why would no electricity disable that? Does this mean they just had no power assist?

Sounds like they read the part about 30 minutes of power left after they had been flying for an hour and forty minutes.

[Eric Coffey]

Originally Posted by rick-l

NTSB Report
Why would no electricity disable that? Does this mean they just had no power assist?

I think that is the case (loss of power to the electrics/trims only). Hence the need for the FO to assist with the controls. I'd say at least part of the blame lays on the vague info in the pilot's QRH though. If I am reading it right, they were following procedure by setting the standby selector to "BAT". But, in doing so, also disconnected the battery charging system. So, instead of only the verbiage of "The battery will provide bus power for approximately 30 minutes.", it should have had in bold something like "Once BAT is selected, the charging system is no longer active/functional!" Or for easy CYA: "If batteries are discharging in flight, divert to nearest airport/land immediately."

Of course it's easy to armchair QB, but a few questions I would have brought up in the debrief:

1.)After issue was apparent, why not divert to closest at once? Were they even monitoring the battery's voltage at that point? I realize it wasn't mapped out in the QRH, but wouldn't that just come down to common sense?
2.) Why not use full flaps? (beyond the given explanation).
3.) Why not opt for the LONGER runway?

[Embraer]

I teach Threat and Error Management (a cool-new name for CRM) for my airline, and I'm sure we'll be using this case study as more details are figured out.

Like Eric said, it's easy to armchair quarterback.

However, they did choose to choose a shorter runway...in fact, the shortest runway at ORD (although they said they were having control issues due to manual reversion)

Also, after talking to MX Control (who notoriously always say "continue the flight, write it up on the ground") they elected to continue on. ...MX Controllers generally aren't pilots.

[fingpilot]

'MX Control' has killed more people than saved. I'd waste bandwidth giving examples.

Almost always the worst possible advice delivered under the veil of invincibility from the safety of a chair on the ground, right before lunch break.

Get it on the ground, and then troubleshoot.

[Joeaksa]

I had this happen on a new airplane about a year ago. Took off from Lagos Nigeria on a ferry flight to get it to Berlin and maintenance after the previous crew had reported problems. Everything checked out on the ground so we headed North across Africa on a 5 hour flight. Enroute the secondary trim CB popped.... well we have two for that reason. Another 2 hours later and the primary overheated and popped as well.

Lucky for us the old grey haired fart in the left seat (me) was ahead of this and had descended from 38000 feet down to 15000 feet in the meantime. Just had a little feeling that it might be needed. The trim is full nose down at high cruise, and that is exactly opposite to what you need for landing. By doing the descent while I had control of the trim I was able to get the trim to the middle of the trim range.

Continued another hours flight to our fuel stop at Majorica Spain, an island off of the coast South of Spain. Flew with a seatbelt around the control column to push on with my feet to keep the nose down in cruse. Copilot (an African) helped as able but not a lot. For landing put 20 flaps in and the gear down then put the seat belt around my waist to be able to lean my body into the control column and thus pull the stick back for landing. It was not fun...

Landed at 175 knots (main gear tire speed is 182 knots) and it was not a smooth landing but we got down. Forgot to add that enroute on this flight we also lost the #2 PFD (primary display), #1 RTU (radio tuning unit), autopilot, both yaw dampers and one pack.

It was not a fun flight and I do not ever want to do that again.

Eric,

Longer runway is good but depends on the situation. Full flaps in some airplanes put the nose full town, and with no trim you do not want that. Agree with you about the battery and most ships batteries last only 20 minutes. You need to be on the ground ASAP and at any airport. Its not a time to be picky.

Joe A

[sammyg2]

how do you land a 757 with no elevator? Easy, just take the stairs

[BlueSideUp]

Thank you for the seat belt tip Joe, I will add that to my little pilot memory bank.

From what I've read about this incident it sounds like the QRH wording led the crew to believe that the battery was still being charged and everything was fine for their trip. Who knows if that was reinforced through conversations with MX Control. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this incident.

I have heard this exchange on Atlanta Radio before....

Heavy "Atlanta Radio, we're on the ground in SLC and it appears that snow is building up on top of our anti-ice fluid, should we return to the car wash to get de-iced again?"

ATL Radio "Uh no as long as the snow blows off by V1 you're fine"

Heavy "OK thanks"



That conversation happened six years ago.