Quote:
Originally Posted by cashflyer
Honestly, I don't think the autopilot would make any effort to maintain altitude. Most likely, it would disconnect as soon as the master alarm tripped from the fuel starved engine losing thrust. On the off chance that the 777 has an autopilot that does not disengage, the 777 is programmed with "flight envelope protection" in it's flight computer, and the autopilot would simply hold a descending altitude of "best glide" until it hit ground or water.
|
No doubt, this is correct.^^
This whole segment of the thread was due to an oversimplification of the above, by the simulator pilot, for the benefit of the lay public. Add to that a further, out of context, oversimplification by the CNN crawl and a misreading of the crawl by some viewers, and you get this ridiculous "777 has difficulty maintaining altitude without fuel."
To me, this whole sidebar dealing with the supposed CNN report is illustrative of the importance of
semantics. The word, "struggle" was used by the simulator pilot, on purpose. It has a meaning that is subtly different than "difficulty" and in the
context of his statement, it is significant--so significant, in fact, that substituting the synonym, "difficulty," completely changed the
meaning of the statement. This is one reason why it's often a good idea to read the primary source of statements or articles
whenever possible, especially when the statement or article seems too good to be true or, in this case, too stupid to be true.