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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 troub

by 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.

by jhugo 5y ago

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.