SchorschI have posted that IMHO there will be additional landing accidents on this airplane type. To those of you who feel that the grounding is unjustified at the current time, I pose the following question: at what point (how many more accidents) is grounding justified?
When paying customers need to be protected.
SchorschI think the -31’s best chance for defeating F-15’s (or anything, really), is to go after the AWAC’s and tankers, instead of the individual fighters.
Airborne Warning And Control System – AWACS.
If the MiG-31 runs for the AWACS, it might easily become a target for the F-15.
In such a high altitude long distance encounter an AWACS would increase situational awareness quite a lot. In a 4 versus 4 encounter, the F-15s should try a bracket attack. The MiG-31 should be lured in firing their missiles out-of-envelope.
Best option for the F-15 is to get within visual range. In BVR the MiG-31 is probably superior.
SchorschReally? Here is short quote from MiG-31/F-14 comparison. Sure F-14 have better fuel consumption….
Reading some lines carefully shows that the article is bullcrap. Calling the AIM54 as “uneffective” as it has not yet scored kills is so … stupid.
SchorschThe NTSB has always shown a mixture of ignorance and unwillingness when it came to this rudder issue.
The pilot control system (= pedals) on the A300-600 is below optimum. There is no doubt about it. It can relatively easily lead to pilot induced oscillation.
The A320 works different.
What those guy did was at first crappy piloting. There is no need to use rudder in flight as the aircraft is “self-stabilizing” with its yaw damper.
And even if there is a need to use the rudder, decide on one direction and keep it one direction (vertical tails are designed to withstand full pedal application at all speeds and altitudes).
The problem is an oscillatory movement. You can achieve higher loads than when you just use full one sided rudder application.
At first pilots need to be told that large aircraft are not built to take any control action at any speed in any combination. Usually a pilot can fully use one control (rudder, aileron or elevator) at one time to full extent. A combination is not covered by certification requirements.
Further, oscillatory movements are not covered by certification requirements.
There are over 4000 Airbus Single Aisles in service, which have flown 5 billion people. If something happens with an aircraft that has seen 20 years of successful service (with some flaws sorted out in the mean time), I would first ask if the crew performed well.
In consequence, pilots will have less authority in future aircraft.
Say welcome to A380 and A350 rudder control system.
SchorschThey should rather teach the pilots that at cruise altitude there is no need to use the rudder.
SchorschThe original 200/300 series use the top-end CFM56-engines with 36k thrust rating. Not the ideal engine.
Why not? I’m suggesting using the 200/300 series airframe for this particular mission as I think the 500/600 might be too big. The CFM engines are very reliable, and very fuel efficient. CFM’s on the KC-135 series have proven to be a very good choice. Granted, they are a huge improvement on the J57’s they replaced, but it’s still a good engine series.
I suppose at the end of the day maybe it does boil down to marketing…interesting food for thought.
Funny enought the A340-200/300 series is powered by the same engine that once were build for the KC-135. CFM56-2B1 (22k) versus CFM56-5C4 (34k).
SchorschEGPWS is mandatory these days.
Problem is that the system is a little bit more coward than some procedures. It calls “Terrain” in more than a few approaches. Many crews are already trained to ignore it.
Ignoring EGPWS messages is OK if you have full situational awareness. If not you better get away.
In the last couple of CFIT-crashes, you could always listen to the plentiful warning messages. I guess this time will be the same.
@Rookh:
Full position awareness (including height) plus a terrain and obstacle databank are actually better. But technically it would be no problem to use the radar of aircraft for ground mapping. At least to some sketchy extent.
SchorschHave you ever seen a fulyl loaded A340-300 take-off. It takes ages.
But so far they always took off, or didn’t they?
Fun fact: the A340 has better field performance than the A330.
Due to lifetime conservation A340 use derated take-off.
The -500 has new engines and much more thrust (which doesn’t help its fuel economy).
The original 200/300 series use the top-end CFM56-engines with 36k thrust rating. Not the ideal engine.
SchorschThe A340-300 has MTOW of up to 275t.
The A330 is limited to 238t in its newest version, the current MRTT is based on the 233t Weight Variant 052.
An A340-200 based tanker would have the option to load even more fuel.
I also think that for military purposes 4 enignes are of advantage. Think of 3-engine ferry.
I think it is a marketing issue: Boeing has no 4-engine aircraft for the job, and KC-X was originally tailor-made for the B767. Airbus then brought up its most similar aircraft in production (otherwise it would have been the A310).
Additionally, the extra 40t would have lifted the A340-200/300 even farar away from the original KC-135.
Why not taking the B767 for the KC-X and using an A340-500 based aircraft for the KC-Y contest? The A340-500 has 175t fuel capacity and 375t MTOW, more than B747-200.
SchorschJust a thought! There only ever was one ship built that was “unsinkable”. Unfortunately she sunk on her maiden voyage. A dirty big iceberg put a hole in her.
Moral…. if someone or something puts a big enough hole in a surface ship, it sinks.
Like VIP protection, the opposition has to be successful once, the defended has to be on top of his game all the time.
The Titanic was built crappy in many respects.
Any ship is sinkable by physics. But one can build a ship that can take lots of damage and take all the damage that can be inflicted by one or two weapons of type A.
A carrier will take one or two torpedo hits and still float, probably one or two cruise missiles and still float. Probably one or more conventional bombs and still float. No combinations or unconventional weapons though. And all with active damage crew.
When you have a big ship, separate it in many sections and give it some extra strength, it is simply difficult to destroy it.
Many WW2 ships were very difficult to sink. Especially those build later (think of Essex class carriers). While WW1-veterans turned out to be sink-happy, later battleships were quite tough (and not only due to additional armor).
SchorschProblem is that pilot do fail sometimes.
Their normal rate is somewhat X times out of 1 million, where “X” is usually pretty low (and a failure of the pilot does not necessarily result in a crash or an incident, guess why they build envelope protection into the Airbus).
When the aircraft is more challenging, the “X” easily jumps and protection systems and other checks are not able to catch them all.
Many aircraft each day aboart and approach due to “not stabilized”. Some crews continue and still land it safely (while not by the book). The MD11 reduces margin everywhere, especially when flown as a freighter with high landing weights.
These reduced margins are:
> It is damn fast at approach speed, also called “Starfighter für alte Leute” (Starfighter for old people) by Lufthansa crews. 165KIAS and more just take away time to think.
> It requires you to be within a very small pitch zone at flare and landing.
> It tends to oscillate when pilots do corrections (LSAS isn’t that advanced).
> When having a hard landing, it tends to break up and burn.
Take away one or two of those factors and we would have seen half the number of accidents. Some reasons are specific to the freighter, namely the high approach speeds and small pitch target zone. Reason are the high landing weights.
MDD has beaten their 20 year old DC-10 to become a contender of much more efficient twinjets. They used every option they had in stock, including reduced stability margin and high wing loading.
They double-failed.
(MD11 was no contender for A330/340 or B777, and the aircraft sucks).
SchorschThe screens tell you where you are! BUT, and it is a big BUT, you must also know where you are. That situational awearness, knowing where you are without the screen in front of you, is fast fading in todays computerized world. I´m not old, but I´m of the old school! A lot of people continue what is clearly a missed approach, based on what the screen is telling them. A human factor issue? Ofcourse it is! And who is to blame? The tools or the user?
Good post, very insightful.
I would consider this as a challenging procedure, however many crews seem to master it. All tools are present. The biggset issue is in my eyes (and apparently also in yours) the fact that an VFR procedure is executed without adequate vision.
The captain should have recognised he is lost, hit the throttles and get the hell out of there.
SchorschI realy do not appreciate how you are cheapening the lives of the pilots Schorsch. You speak of them as if they were cattle.
They are free to walk away.
Actually, no MD11 operator has problems to find new pilots.
Pilots know how risky their aircraft is.
Compared to General Aviation aircraft or motorcycles, the MD11 is a safe place.
In all crashes – except the Swiss crash – pilots were ultimately responisble.
SchorschThe M2000 had a huge instantaneous turn rate and a nose-pointing ability unmatched by any aircraft of that era. Good pilots could use that for their advantage.
SchorschI see no need to retire the MD11s. I would require airlines to do additional training (which pretty much all airlines do, at Lufthansa only the best pilots are allowed to fly MD11, the average is put on an Airbus 😉 ).
Apart from that: the last operators of civil MD-11 will put them out of service in due time, leaving only freighters behind.
And honestly: professional pilots need not to be saved by certification authorities from potentially unsafe planes. No pilot is flying the MD11 because he lost a Poker game, everybody sits there and becomes more proud each time one crashes (until he becomes one of those pilots of course).
And – just to take out some heat of the discussion – the MD11 is not unsafe. It is less safe than the standard we are taking for granted. That should be enough reason to take those aircraft out of passenger use (which is pretty much done). But flying boxes … hell, what should happen? So far the aircraft always crashed inside the airport and killed no-one except their pilots.
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