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> Eventually, the pilots regained control and, escorted by a pair of fighter jets, flew south to an airport with good weather and landed safely. Anyone know ho

by jabo 5y ago

> Eventually, the pilots regained control and, escorted by a pair of fighter jets, flew south to an airport with good weather and landed safely. Anyone know how being escorted by jets helps in a situation like this?

fastball 5y ago
The jets can shoot you down if you're on a trajectory to crash into something worse like the WTC.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  There is no need to do that. The pilots can crash the plane easily enough using literally any working flight controls or engines. They were out over the ocean until they gained control of their plane. In the US, the aircraft sent up are not armed. There is no need for them to be. During the 9/11 attacks, if Flight 93 hadn't crashed, one of the proposed plans was to ram the airliner with an F-16.
  - Lammy 5y ago
    > During the 9/11 attacks, if Flight 93 hadn't crashed, one of the proposed plans was to ram the airliner with an F-16. To be fair they were also very limited in possible responses on that day. There were only 14 armed fighters in the continental US with a couple hundred others off in Alaska playing war games with a simulated Russian attack: http://web.archive.org/web/20020917072642/http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20020917072642/http://www.aviatio...
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    The ground track in the article does not show them as over the ocean at any time during the flight.
    - jhugo 5y ago
      If you listen to the ATC recordings, the Air Astana pilots repeatedly asked for vectors to the ocean with the intention of ditching the aircraft. They had trouble following headings provided by ATC, though, and then eventually regained enough control that they abandoned the idea of ditching.
      - dmurray 5y ago
        It's amazing how they couldn't control the aircraft accurately enough to set a course for the ocean - something that covers most of the Earth's surface and was available 50 miles to the southwest, west or northwest - but then recovered enough to line up with a 50-metre wide strip of tarmac. That's an improvement of three orders of magnitude!
        jhugo 5y ago
        Yeah, the initial issue was that they couldn't hold any heading at all, because the autopilot wouldn't stay connected (and would not have worked correctly even if it had), and the control reversal [1] meant that in manual flight, any course correction they attempted didn't have the intended effect. [1] It was actually even worse than control reversal, because this aircraft (like many modern jets) uses the spoilers as part of roll control, and those controls were not reversed, while the ailerons (primary roll control) were. The resulting aerodynamics are... complex! So even if they'd been told exactly what had happened to the controls, the pilots still likely would have had to figure out some modicum of control by trial and error as they did.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        They turned off the autopilot very early. Their difficulty is better revealed by the altitude and airspeed trace than the ground track. By the audio recording, just keeping the plane flying was so hard they couldn't afford attention to know what direction they were going, or even wanted to go. Report is that the plane was actually landed by someone who had been jumpseating. Whether that is because he was a more versatile pilot, or because he was not completely exhausted by just keeping the plain flying for two hours, is not said.
  - belter 5y ago
    They did not plan to ram it. An order was given to shoot it down. From a moral standpoint it was an example of a real life Trolley Problem. "Trolley problem": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem" The consensus on these type of problems leads to the conclusion the order was immoral. "Behind the 9/11 White House Order to Shoot Down U.S. Airliners: ‘It Had to be Done’" https://www.history.com/news/september-11-attacks-shootdown-order-cheney-bush https://www.history.com/news/september-11-attacks-shootdown-...
    - DuskStar 5y ago
      It wasn't a trolley problem - that would be "sacrifice person A to save B, C and D". This was "person A is going to die, no matter what. Killing them now instead of in 30 minutes saves B, C and D". The subtle but crucial difference is that A is not an uninvolved bystander, but instead someone who was dead either way
kayodelycaon 5y ago
The jets guided them in. The airline pilots didn't need to deal with navigation, they just had to follow one of the jets. The other jet could do visual checks of the outside of the airplane.

by jabo 5y ago

fastball 5y ago

The jets can shoot you down if you're on a trajectory to crash into something worse like the WTC.

kayodelycaon 5y ago
There is no need to do that. The pilots can crash the plane easily enough using literally any working flight controls or engines. They were out over the ocean until they gained control of their plane. In the US, the aircraft sent up are not armed. There is no need for them to be. During the 9/11 attacks, if Flight 93 hadn't crashed, one of the proposed plans was to ram the airliner with an F-16.
- Lammy 5y ago
  > During the 9/11 attacks, if Flight 93 hadn't crashed, one of the proposed plans was to ram the airliner with an F-16. To be fair they were also very limited in possible responses on that day. There were only 14 armed fighters in the continental US with a couple hundred others off in Alaska playing war games with a simulated Russian attack: http://web.archive.org/web/20020917072642/http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20020917072642/http://www.aviatio...
- ncmncm 5y ago
  The ground track in the article does not show them as over the ocean at any time during the flight.
  - jhugo 5y ago
    If you listen to the ATC recordings, the Air Astana pilots repeatedly asked for vectors to the ocean with the intention of ditching the aircraft. They had trouble following headings provided by ATC, though, and then eventually regained enough control that they abandoned the idea of ditching.
    - dmurray 5y ago
      It's amazing how they couldn't control the aircraft accurately enough to set a course for the ocean - something that covers most of the Earth's surface and was available 50 miles to the southwest, west or northwest - but then recovered enough to line up with a 50-metre wide strip of tarmac. That's an improvement of three orders of magnitude!
      - jhugo 5y ago
        Yeah, the initial issue was that they couldn't hold any heading at all, because the autopilot wouldn't stay connected (and would not have worked correctly even if it had), and the control reversal [1] meant that in manual flight, any course correction they attempted didn't have the intended effect. [1] It was actually even worse than control reversal, because this aircraft (like many modern jets) uses the spoilers as part of roll control, and those controls were not reversed, while the ailerons (primary roll control) were. The resulting aerodynamics are... complex! So even if they'd been told exactly what had happened to the controls, the pilots still likely would have had to figure out some modicum of control by trial and error as they did.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        They turned off the autopilot very early. Their difficulty is better revealed by the altitude and airspeed trace than the ground track. By the audio recording, just keeping the plane flying was so hard they couldn't afford attention to know what direction they were going, or even wanted to go. Report is that the plane was actually landed by someone who had been jumpseating. Whether that is because he was a more versatile pilot, or because he was not completely exhausted by just keeping the plain flying for two hours, is not said.
- belter 5y ago
  They did not plan to ram it. An order was given to shoot it down. From a moral standpoint it was an example of a real life Trolley Problem. "Trolley problem": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem" The consensus on these type of problems leads to the conclusion the order was immoral. "Behind the 9/11 White House Order to Shoot Down U.S. Airliners: ‘It Had to be Done’" https://www.history.com/news/september-11-attacks-shootdown-order-cheney-bush https://www.history.com/news/september-11-attacks-shootdown-...
  - DuskStar 5y ago
    It wasn't a trolley problem - that would be "sacrifice person A to save B, C and D". This was "person A is going to die, no matter what. Killing them now instead of in 30 minutes saves B, C and D". The subtle but crucial difference is that A is not an uninvolved bystander, but instead someone who was dead either way

kayodelycaon 5y ago

The jets guided them in. The airline pilots didn't need to deal with navigation, they just had to follow one of the jets. The other jet could do visual checks of the outside of the airplane.