Commercial Jet Gliding?

Question

If a plane lost all engine power while at its cruising altitude, would it be possible for it to glide down and make a crash landing without destroying the plane and killing everybody?

Answer 1

Yes, a 767 in Canada famously lost all engines and landed at a retired airfield only to find that kids were cycling on it. Anyway it was later named the "Gimly Glider".

Answer 2

Yes

Krisz N  is correct

read this link ( everybody survived the Azores landing )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat...

Answer 3

Yes it is possible.

Answer 4

It is possible and it has been done.

Air Canada Flight 143 (Gimli Glider) landed safely after the B767 lost both engines due to fuel starvation.

Air Transat Flight 236 landed in the Azores after loosing both engines to fuel starvation (A332)

Southern Airways Flight 242 touched down safely on a rural highway but clipped a tree and lost control before coming to a stop.  The DC-9 lost both engines after flying into extremely heavy rain and hail. dont have the numbers on hand but quiet a few people died.

British Airways flight 9 lost all four engines (B747) after flying through a volcanic ash cloud over Indonesia.  It glided out of the ash cloud and restarted all four engines safely and diverted to Jakarta for a safe 3 engined landing (the crew inadvertantly flew back into the ash cloud and lost an engine a second time)

Ethiopian Airways Flight 961 crash landed in the Indian Ocean after terrorists forced it to exhaust it fuel trying to fly to australia.  The B767 was destroyed upon impact but 50 people survived, making one of the more successful ditchings for a large commercial airliner.

Answer 5

A Boeing 747-400 has a glide ratio of 9:1, which means that at 30,000 you can glide with no power for about 52 miles.  That gives your crew an area of 2,100 square miles in which to find an airport or other suitable place to make a power-off landing.

The navigation system has a "nearest airport" button that will give you the course and distance to the nearest usable airport on demand.

Even though it is something that essentially never happens, your crew are trained to handle just exactly this situation.  And the airplane is extremely rugged, and can take a rough bump-down or a water landing, even if an airport is not available.

So relax and enjoy your flight.

Answer 6

Commercial jets really don't glide, they need to be in a shallow dive to maintain airspeed and control. Since they fly so high this is not a problem since even in a shallow dive it takes a while for them to get to the ground.

Landing without engine power is not a crash landing its just a power off landing or also called a dead stick landing.

Yes it can be done and has. Pilots train to do them just in case but it happens almost never.

Answer 7

--"Crash landing"?!  Sure, but why not land safely instead?  Safe landings after a commercial jet has lost all thrust have already  been made a few times.

And jets routinely descend at idle thrust.  That is pretty close to zero thrust.

Answer 8

Yes. There have been many famous such situations.

A Boeing 747-400 will glide 15km for every 1000m of height lost on no engine power.

Cruising height is anywhere between 35'000ft (11'000m) and 60'000ft (20'000m).

At 60,000ft, therefore, a fully laden Boeing 747-400 (largest in the world until the Airbus A380) will glide for 300km before reaching sea level.

All commercial aircraft have a ram air turbine. This is a small propeller that spins in the breeze (like a wind turbine) to generate electricity. This automatically deploys in the event of a loss of electricity.

It doesn't generate enough electricity for the whole system. It produces enough to run the instruments, the control systems and hydraulic control surface assistance.

The pilot therefore remains totally in control of his massive glider.

The main problems the pilot (providing his glide will allow him to reach an airport) has are that:

He gets one chance at the landing; and

He has no reverse thrust.

If the ram air turbine breaks, there is a traditional gyro altimeter, attitude indicator and tachometer. His controls are very heavy (and often require two crew to operate) but, nevertheless, they are usable.

If he fails to make it to an airport, he will probably land in the sea. It is almost a given that aircraft break up when hitting water (especially ones with wing mounted engines) but, sometime, people do survive. The most important thing in a water impact is NOT TO INFLATE YOUR LIFE-JACKET UNTIL FREE OF THE AIRCRAFT! You will end up pinned to the ceiling, unable to walk to an exit.

Most crashes actually occur soon after take-off, where the pilot has the benefit of a tiny glide and a very heavy plane. This is because engines, during takeoff and climb, are at full throttle (they are not when cruising). This is when they are most likely to fail, but such failures are normally to single engine (most 2 engine planes will fly on 1 engine and the 747 (if it looses three engines) will have a much longer glide on one engine. Total engine failures are normally fuel or hydraulic faults (althought they are sometimes caused by abnormal substances in air, for example, volcanic ash).

Therefore, total engine failures occur during cruise. Single failures occur on take off.

Either way, aviation is the safest form of transport ever invented!

Sorry if I went on for too long!

Jonathan

Answer 9

Yes, but difficult.

Answer 10

Okay, I think we need to clarify a few things here.

If a commercial airline suffers a complete power failure (like it runs out of fuel) but has not suffered any other type of damage in flight... and if it is within gliding distance of a suitable runway... and if the auxiliary power unit is still working to power the electronics, the electric systems, the hydraulics and all the other sub-systems required (it depends on the aircraft type)... and if the bodies sitting in the two front seats are good enough to make the dead-stick landing... then yes. In theory it can be done and in practice it has been done. But  nine times out of ten it's not going to be pretty and it's not going to be successful.

A good landing is when you can walk away from it. A brilliant landing is when you can use the aircraft again!

Answer 11

It is normally possible for a Jet aircraft to glide to a normal landing dependent on a few parameters.  The most important being power tp controls and secondly proximity of an appropriate landing site within the aircraft glide characteristics.

It's called 'Dead Stick' landing.  Don Hoover perfected it in Turbo props performing a loop on final.  Don is no longer with us indicating it shouldn't be performed for exhibition.

There have been dead engine landings but it is tricky because the aircraft has to maintain controllable airspeed with decent as the prime element.

Answer 12

yes they can - and they are designed to do so. Pilots have to carry out simulated flame out landings (SFOs) during certification for the commands.

Answer 13

yes, depending on the pilot's skill, you might have some minor damage to the plane, but not "crash and burn" damage

Answer 14

Aircraft are better gliders than you think. I know a person who has feathered both props on a turboprop and it only came down 700fpm. That is pretty slow considering they normally descend with power at 1500+fpm. Just because an airliner is big doesn't mean it cant glide.

Answer 15

Crash landings have a tendency to kill people. You said it lost engine power, not the undercarriage, so why should it not land normally?

Commercial jets are not an ideal shape for gliding, and lack the fine controls, especially for gaining height.

In 2001 one set of Canadian pilots set a world record for gliding a commercial jet, displaying award-winning flying skills to do so, after being stupid enough to run out of fuel 200 miles from nowhere.

this site has the original first news report

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2001/08/2...

search for "Azores aircraft emergency" will get you heaps more and later stories

They ran out of fuel because they developed a fuel leak, and mistakenly pumped their other tank of fuel out the leak instead of saving the leaky side's fuel into the good tank...then had to glide 200 miles to the nearest landing strip.

The majority of jets losing engine power end up crashing, not landing.

>>>>

looks like many of you disagree with me...why? because I said they'll mostly crash?

There have been LOTS of safe(ish) landings with not all the engines running, and in most of those have been over land close to an airport AND not at cruising altitude.

The scenario in the question was loss of ALL engines at CRUISE altitude and implied that the engines could not be restarted (because there have been cases of the engines starting again, eg after stopping from sucking in volcanic ash  like after Mount St Helen erupted in 1980)

Even many partial-loss landings end up with injury or aircraft damage. And most power losses due to total fuel starvation don't happen at cruising altitiudes, but in the circuit....far too late to try gliding.

Answer 16

yea its possible

Answer 17

Jet aircraft typically have a glide ratio od 12-16:1.  That means that for every 1 foot of altitude lost, the jet covers at least 12 feet horizontally.

From 35,000' that results in a glide range of nearly 80 miles.  Rarely is an aircraft more than 80 miles from a suitable landing runway.  Even given all the variable of wind, traffic pattern, etc...a typical jet airliner could easily glide 50 miles from cruise and land safely on a runway.