Does the last five seconds of this commercial tilt you severly?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4JdQi60an0

I'm not sure what you mean. The cheesy slogan? "To fly, to serve"

It's a little much, but that's marketing for you. I've always loved their callsign though: Speedbird.

LOL...no, the 3-4 planes all flying within a few hundred feet of each other,,,after the talk about separation

CGI.

More marketing...it looks cool.

BUMP

I remember reading in the thread that when you land the airspeed of the plane is around 200km/hr? How slow can you safely land the plane without it stalling? I'm just wondering if you were ever over a body of water and had to land your aircraft in the water for whatever reason how softly it could be done?

It's all about accumulating the ratings and the flight time, both of which take money. If money is no object, there is no shortage of flight schools that will gladly tailor a course just for you. As I've mentioned earlier itt, I knew a guy who went from zero time to PPL in just three weeks. I've never heard of anyone else even close to this (after all, you need a minimum of 40 hours of flight time logged before taking the check ride).

Once you've got the PPL, you have to start logging time to meet the thresholds required for the instrument rating and the commercial license (used to be 200 and 250 hours, respectively, back when I got mine but I'm pretty sure they've lowered the requirement, at least for the instrument rating). For the exact requirements for each license and rating, go read FAR Part 61 -- CERTIFICATION: PILOTS, FLIGHT INSTRUCTORS, AND GROUND INSTRUCTORS

There's really no way to rush the logging of flight hours, other than just pencil whipping your logbook. And it's expensive. When you add the multi-engine rating, you're getting into some pretty steep rental rates. If money is really no object, then no big deal. But a common way to ease the financial pain is to get the Flight Instructor certificate and start accumulating hours by teaching.

To get to my position (i.e. flying for a major airline), they're not going to realistically consider you until you've got a few thousand hours, including a bagful of multi-engine time, and they're going to want to see some kind of relevant work experience. This means either another civilian flying job (not just paying for time out of your trust fund) or military flight time.

So, bottom line: while you can buy the hours, you can't rush the time beyond a certain point. And you also can't eliminate the need for real-world experience.

Let's see, 200 km/hr = ~125 mph = ~108 knots.

This is actually a little on the low side for 757 or 767. About the lowest approach speed I've seen in a 757 is right around 120 knots, so the actual touchdown might be a few knots lower. The approach speed (and landing speed) increases with the weight of the plane and more typical 757 approach speed is in the 130-140 range. A heavy 767 might have an approach speed in the neighborhood of 150 knots.

So, to get to your question about how slow you can get, you can see that a lighter plane can land at a slower speed. The numbers above don't change when landing on water. And while the airspeed at touchdown is important because it determines the kinetic energy you have to dissipate after landing, the "softness" of the landing is a function of descent rate at touchdown and this is more about pilot technique than the airspeed at touchdown.

Raising the nose during the roundout to landing bleeds off airspeed and reduces descent rate. Ideally the plane touches at close to zero fpm descent rate and an airspeed just above stall. But we don't land large planes in a full stall as you might with a light plane, so that "ideal" is not really what we're shooting for.

At what speed would AWE1549 have ditched into the Hudson? Captain Sullengerger obviously wouldn't have had the option of burning off or dumping fuel to bring the weight and consequently the minimum approach speed down. What sort of take-off weight would the aircraft have been at for the flight to Charlotte?

Wsup S,
Pleasure meeting you at the table last night. See ya soon !
Dean

I've never flown the Airbus 320, so anything I say would be a wild guess. I found this discussion thread about it, with the following post:

That would have been the ballpark I would have estimated and it's pretty typical of most narrow body airline types.

From this other site, showing takeoff weights of most airplane types, I see the A320 Maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) listed as 73.5 metric tons or about 162,000 pounds. For the short flight from LGA to CLT, it wouldn't have been at max gross weight. Just a guess, but it was probably in the 140-150 thousand pound range.

Thanks for your informative answers as ever.
So, in your opinion as a professional pilot of a similar class of aircraft, what do you think Capt. Sullenberger's primary concern would have been at "splashdown", airspeed or attitude/AOA? (I haven't read his memoirs so forgive me if that info is already in the public domain)

Both are very important, of course, and he was managing both of them instinctively. Airspeed is life in an airplane and the only way to maintain airspeed in an airplane with no engines running is to trade altitude for it. The real problem in a deadstick landing is knowing when to break the glide, i.e. when to start trading off the airspeed for altitude (or, in this case, a decrease in the descent rate).

If you raise the nose too early, you'll bleed off the airspeed while still too high and risk stalling into the water. If you do it really poorly and get in a full stall, the nose would drop down and you'd hit the water nose first which could be disastrous.

If you have to pick one over the other, I think that the pitch attitude at impact might be more important than airspeed. I'd rather be a little fast and hit with a nose high attitude and minimum descent rate instead of be right on airspeed and impact the water nose low.

But, again, I should point out that Capt. Sullenberger was not consciously prioritizing airspeed vs. pitch attitude. He was flying the plane using his years of experience and his familiarity with this particular type. When it comes time for the roundout (i.e. the "flare" for landing), his attention is mostly outside the plane. He can tell by the sight picture what to do; he's not fixating on the instruments during that maneuver. Remember Skyles was there too and Sully may have asked him to call out the airspeed as it decayed. I haven't read any accounts by either one of the actual landing, but this would make sense to me.

Thanks again for your considered thoughts. Either way, they did a perfect job and I reckon they could just about have drained that plane off and put it back into service again

Thank you for this thread and, esp the recent posts. I have a lot of butt time in the back on UA (IAD/BRU). I knew it was complex, but your humble way of describing what you folks up front do is fantastic. Hope Santa is good to you and yours.

Coincidentally, I'll be going to Brussels on the 23rd and returning on Christmas day. I haven't been there in over a year and I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, with just the minor exception of the salt water. It's not the best environment for mechanical and electric devices.

"Either way, they did a perfect job and I reckon they could just about have drained that plane off and put it back into service again."

This was in fact the case, although Skyles did it on his own. Also, Sully was initially going a little too slow, but given the Airbus equipment, and Sully's turning on the APU which kept the flight envelope control system going, the plane self-corrected.

Grunch

Any comments/information on Turkish Airlines pilots? I am asking because I often hear that the company is one of the best in the region as well as their pilots being most amateur/incompitent.

I've flown into Turkey several times, but I've never had any dealings with their airline and I don't know anything about the quality of the company or the pilots.

This isn't a response to any post, but I thought some of you might be interested in downloading this very thorough 757-767 Study Guide. It's compiled by Dave Collett, a fellow pilot, and it's so thorough and up to date, that most pilots I know use it as a study aid.

You may not understand all the terms and jargon used in it, but it will give you a good idea of the normal and abnormal procedures we use, and give you some idea of the scope of knowledge each pilot is supposed to have.

Excellent. That actually answered a question I'd been wondering about. After the Critter incident in Florida, I became curious if there was an SOP regarding dropping the O2 masks in the cabin during a fire. Seems like a DIYD/DIFD situation, possibly crashing the plane vs possibly landing with 300 dead pax. I had assumed that the masks were pure O2, but seeing as they're mixed with cabin air, the situation becomes a no-brainer.

I gather that you guys up front get nitrogen/oxygen out of designated cylinders.

That study guide is mind blowing esp for this guy who just sits in back. I knew flying wasn't easy, but this makes that an under statement. Fun reading. Thanks

Someone linked me to this site about the mysterious Air France accident few years back. There's a transcript from the black box recorder and little commentary on what went trough in the cockpit during the last moments before the crash. Does the explanations in the article make sense to you? Who is to blame here, the captain was not in the left seat, but seems that the guy in the left seat had no control of the situation either. Only guy doing something was the novice in the right seat, but unfortunately he didn't do much right. What a waste

Why doesn't Airbus have synchronous controls?