Questions about the water landing
 

Things I haven't heard addressed:

1) How did the pilot know it was a double bird strike? Do he get some kind of indicator of such? How does he know he hasn't had some other engine failure or fuel problem?
2) How did he control the plane without power? Do these jets still have that drop down air powered compressor/pump for hydraulics?
3) How high up was he? Do those things glide very well?
4) Did they know the plane would float?

1-When all engines parameters fall...you know it.
2-There are back up...electric driven hyd. pump or ram air turbine.
3-These thing (Airbus) glide very well...but he was loaded, no altitude to play with
and no speed buffer....Remember Air Transat A-330 in the Azores in 2001....!
4-If you ditch at a great speed, the engines act like scoops and torn the wing away...The ditching speed was slow enough to prevent this and he probably put her in the water on stall with the nose up....


In fact....A really...really good pilot.

I think the news said he was at 3200 feet when the bird/s went into the engine/s.

I wonder what the glide slope is on a commercial jet.

The glide ratio on a 747 is 17 to 1, a 767 is 12 to 1. Jets actually glide pretty well but there is a huge drag increase on a swept wing as you decrease speed below optimum and increase angle of attack.

Beside having a pilot license the pilot also has a glider license.

How does that compare the little private planes we see at the local airports?

I doubt than the 747 got a 17 to 1 glide ratio...A Cessna 150 get about 12 to 1.

http://cadlab6.mit.edu/2.009.wiki/anchor/index.php?title=Anchor_Quantities

Look under "Fluids"

Simply incredible....And the ratio of the Concorde is 7 to 1....And the Space Shuttle at 4.5 to 1....!!!

Yeah - seems odd, but the 172 has all kinds of junk sticking out: struts, gear, and prop (which is a big speed brake when it's not doing its job). A jet with low wing-loading can have a very good lift/drag ratio.

There was a case a couple of years ago.... the ground crew did not load an adequate fuel load on board a commercial aircraft making a trans-Atlantic crossing... and the aircraft ran out of fuel hundreds of mile out.. glided like >>> forever.;... made a landing at Ladjes , Azores...

Was it this one :D?

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/sytZJvz597Q&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sytZJvz597Q&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

1.I've had many bird strikes over the years- you generally know when you've hit birds-esp. if it's VFR and you fly through a flock of them.
2.Never flown a 'bus, but yes, you do need hydraulic power for flight controls. Not much time to deploy a RAT (if the A320 even has one) which requires a fairly high airspeed to be effective. My GUESS is that they had some degraded power from one or both of the engines. No engines running=no hydraulics/electrics. I can't imagine they had the APU running (day, VFR, high cost of fuel...)
3.Don't know about glide ratio on the A320-don't matter-ya get what ya get.
4. Most planes will float for a bit depending on the condition after impact. Evidently the A/C had a "ditch switch" that closes ports on the ship. You hope the plane will float.

BUT....EVERYTHING (including my reply) is pure conjecture (BS) untill the NTSB has released their report. Hats off to the captian and crew for their jobs- any time you ditch and everybody lives is quite remarkable and indeed praiseworthy.

It was an Air Transat Airbus 330...There were sufficient fuel on board...but due to a wrong hyd. line installation that chafed against the HP fuel pump outlet tube, they lost lot of fuel...and the crew opened the cross flow valves and dumped more fuel overboard to finally lost both engines..I was working at Air Transat technical operations when this happened..........!

In 1983, an Air Canada 767 glided in all the way from cruise altitude to touchdown on a closed runway in Winnipeg. Here's a link to the story: http://www.wadenelson.com/gimli.html