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Ural Airlines is preparing to fly a stranded Airbus A320 out of a field
- skunkworker 3y agoReminds me a little of TACA Flight 110. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110
- dredmorbius 3y agoThe pilot of that flight (well, the landing portion, Boeing apparently supplied pilot and copilot for the take-off), Carlos Dárdano, just retired earlier this year: <https://www.aviacionline.com/2023/09/mission-accomplished-carlos-dardano-the-one-eyed-pilot-who-landed-a-boeing-737-in-the-mud-retired/ https://www.aviacionline.com/2023/09/mission-accomplished-ca...>
- neurotech1 3y agoThey took off from an adjacent prepared road that used to be a runway. > Following an on-site engine replacement, the jetliner took off from Saturn > Boulevard, a road which had previously been an aircraft runway at Michoud. > The aircraft was subsequently repaired and returned to service until it finally > retired in 2016. From the linked Wikipedia page, which explains why the takeoff wasn't as wild as it first seemed.
- athorax 3y agoThe solution is so obvious! 1. Lift plane up real high with helicopters 2. Start up engines 3. Detach 4. Either fly home or ride to Valhalla /s
- forgotusername6 3y agoI think at some height that becomes possible, but just going up would probably beyond the maximum altitude of most helicopters. However if the helicopters were to fly horizontally, the plane would develop its own lift and it could engage the engines and continue.
- mwint 3y agoVso on a transport category aircraft is way faster than a helicopter is going to carry it. You’d be better off just dropping it at a real airport, if you can lift it anyway.
- chmod775 3y agoUsing multiple helicopters (OEW of the aircraft is 40 tons, so you'll need at least two helicopters) to lift the same weight makes you run into physical problems that haven't been overcome yet. It's really hard to reach some sort of stable equilibrium in such a configuration. Russians are likely the people who have the most experience with that so far, and they opted for other solutions despite throwing spaceflight-money at the problem: https://www.buran-energia.com/documentation/documentation-akc-air-transportation.php https://www.buran-energia.com/documentation/documentation-ak... Maybe with modern technology and computer-controlled flight it could be made safe, but getting into that would completely defeat the point, which is to find a cheap way to move the plane.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago> Russians are likely the people who have the most experience with that so far If would be in the need of a good Valhalla track, I would volunteer for the airstart of a civilian pax hauler brought airbourne by a pack of Mi-26s
- sidewndr46 3y agothe issue with dropping an airliner from height is by the time it gains enough airspeed, it no longer has control authority to pull out. Airliners are not really designed to go through a dive like that and come out in one piece. Glide restarts of engines are possible (if not core locked) but it also isn't something done very often.
- 00N8 3y agoAs long as it doesn't end up in a flatspin an airliner should be able to pull up from a dive. For an extreme example where this was tested in practice, in the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_006 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_006 incident, a pilot lost control of a 747 & ended up diving 30k feet at speeds approaching/potentially exceeding mach 1, then pulled 5 Gs leveling off at 10k feet once he regained situational awareness, & they were still able to land safely, although there was some damage IMO the bigger problem would be needing multiple helicopters pulling together - wind or the jet's engines might pull the helicopters enough that they'd crash into each other, & you'd definitely want to start the engines before freefall..
- Modified3019 3y agoOr perhaps bring in a giant treadmill we can put it on
- kirrent 3y agoOr a lot of hot air balloons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSfMNEEnPoc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSfMNEEnPoc
- ilamont 3y agoIn World War 2 there was a portable/temporary runway technology known as Marston Mats consisting of perforated metal plates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marston_Mat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marston_Mat). They are very durable - near my grandfather's home there was an emergency landing zone made up of these rectangular plates, and they were still there 40 years after the war. Is there a modern equivalent that could be brought to bear?
- avar 3y agoThey're in a relatively flat field and can rely on the ground being frozen solid sometime soon. If its insufficiently flat wouldn't it make more sense to smooth out those parts of the field, rather than "paving" the whole field with steel mats?
- resolutebat 3y agoI'd be very worried about the wheels sinking into the dirt, which steel mats would help prevent. But if the ground freezes sufficiently hard, it should also do the trick.
- fsckboy 3y agomoving aircraft do not have spinning drive wheels, and they start having increasing lift from the wings right away with increasing speed. I think sinking into desert sand, maybe, but not dirt on a field. A bigger concern would be excessive bumps/ditches and/or soggy bogs.
- TylerE 3y agoThe wings on an airliner aren't producing much lift below 100mph or so. You're on the wrong end of v^2
- b112 3y agoedit: sorry, I just realised you were talking of a one off, for this plane. Naturally it'd be fine frozen, but you'd have to wait a bit, until the ground froze a bit. eg, not just the surface. Here that usually takes a month or more, because the ground takes quite some time to cool. -- The road gets warm in the winter, even at -40C, if there is a lot of traffic. Snow is smushed, it is warmed by the tires, due to friction, and even sublimation happens. If there is enough traffic, frozen ground can become thawed. Especally at a mere -10C. The dirt road in front of my house confirms this in winter, with potholes and wet spots, and not from salt. Landing events have even more friction. And many aircraft are far heavier than cars. Rare teaffic would be fine I guess, but a mildly busy airfield might be different.
- lastofthemojito 3y agoI wonder who will be the "lucky" pilot who gets to attempt the take off? Do they get massive hazard pay? Or will be it management's least favorite pilot?
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoAre you kidding? They'll probably all be jockeying for the chance to do it.
- leetrout 3y agoDoubt it will be hard to find someone. There are plenty of test pilots and ferry pilots or other special flight circumstance pilots that would love to have this on their resume.
- oldbbsnickname 3y ago4-pronged approach: A. Lighten the load as they're already doing. B. Prep the runway surface with steel matting and wait until the time of year when the soil is hardest. (January) C. Field (literally) replace the main gear with double bogie assemblies borrowed from Air India.[1] The single bogie gear risk collapse or sufficient rolling resistance preventing attainment of V1. D. A rejected takeoff (RTO) contingency plan. Firstly, the runway surface should be twice as long as anticipated. Secondly, firefighters should be available to extinguish brake fires to prevent any wildfire or airframe damage. References: 1. https://www.airliners.net/photo/Indian-Airlines/Airbus-A320-231/63659 https://www.airliners.net/photo/Indian-Airlines/Airbus-A320-...
- Stevvo 3y agoThose gear assemblies were scrapped years ago. I expect they will just let some air out of the tires.
- oldbbsnickname 3y agoChecking with my sources, enough of Air India's former A320-221 fleet survives mostly intact in France in storage. Letting air out of the tires and going now isn't a viable solution because they're going to land on a regular runway. They'll wait for winter when the ground is harder.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- culebron21 3y agoIn January, there'll be 50 cm of snow and the ground will be frozen. Pour water on the ground, smooth it with tractors, let it freeze and be covered with a bit of snow for friction. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/101015/ https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/101015/
- oldbbsnickname 3y agoIt's rarely economically feasible to tank in enough water to form an ice runway for heavy aircraft. They will need to rely primarily on heavy snowfall and then prepare that as a hard surface that can bear the pressure load of the aircraft takeoff roll. If there are large wood mills nearby, pykrete reinforcement maybe an option. And they better plan for EMAS at the end of the usable length of this or that plane is likely to skid off into the woods. Interesting read: Improving Construction and Performance of a Runway in Nuiqsut, Alaska. ASCE. 2021. https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/9780784483589.026 https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/9780784483589.026
- pipes 3y agoCould it be flown with remote control?
- ksherlock 3y agoOne part of PPL training is soft/rough field takeoffs. Usually you go through the motions on a paved runway but maybe you're flying off a grass runway. Anyhow, use flaps to increase lift, apply back pressure to reduce the load on the nose wheel, rotate early, and use ground effect to accelerate. Maybe they'll stick bigger tires on it or use a JATO rocket to help with the acceleration.
- nradov 3y agoI don't think there's any place to attach rockets to an A320. Probably they'll just lighten the aircraft as much as possible by stripping out all unnecessary equipment, and do some construction work on the field to turn it into something vaguely resembling a runway.
- buildsjets 3y agoThere is no JATO option available for the A320. There is, however, a "high flotation" landing gear option with 4 wheel bogeys, which was only purchased by Air India, instead of 2 wheel bogeys that the majority of A320s have. However since Russia is under embargo, it seems unlikely that they would be able to get parts and Airbus support to do this kind of modification, and it is probably unneeded if they wait for the ground to freeze. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/39237/why-do-some-a320s-have-double-bogie-landing-gear https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/39237/why-do-so...
- culebron21 3y agoClimate allows making a hard runway just like ice roads in winter, with ground being frozen more than 1m deep. A summary here: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/101015/ https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/101015/
- jimmcslim 3y agoPut the airplane on a long treadmill, Mythbusters style?
- justsomehnguy 3y agoJATO
- bscphil 3y agoA treadmill wouldn't help the plane take off. What Mythbusters showed was that it's not a hindrance to the plane, because planes don't need ground traction. They do need to be moving forward, relative to the air they're flying through, in order to generate lift. A treadmill, if it pushed the plane backwards, would not allow it to take off "in place", and actually the fact that a treadmill wouldn't push the plane back is the whole reason a plane can take off on a treadmill. Or to put it differently, the only treadmill an airplane could take off on would be the length of a runway.
- dredmorbius 3y agoAn aircraft could take off using a treadmill which is operation in the direction of movement, if the wheels are locked to that treadmill. That's effectively an aircraft carrier's launch catapult.
- jojobas 3y agoMythbusters didn't get it. The whole point is for the treadmill to accelerate so it could exert a force on the wheels due to wheels' inertia. Sure that kind of acceleration is somewhat unrealistic, but ignoring the task conditions is just bad.
- bscphil 3y agoMost people wrongly believe that the situation is similar to that of a car on the highway. If a car is capable of going ~80 miles per hour, and you put it on a treadmill going 80 miles an hour in the other direction, the car will run in place on the treadmill. The takeoff speed of a jet is something like 160 mph, so the picture most people have is running a treadmill at -160 mph, and they picture the airplane running in place just like the car. As Mythbusters showed, that's not what will happen, the plane will just move at 320 mph relative to the treadmill. Of course you could imagine a situation that's not analogous to the car at all, in which we just dictate that however fast the treadmill needs to move to exert a force on the jet equal to that of the engines, it will move that fast. That means we've defined the situation in just a way that by definition, the airplane will not be able to move forwards. What most people don't realize, though, is that doing this is not like stopping the car on the highway. In fact the force exerted by the ground on the wheels during takeoff is so small that to effectively stop the plane, you'd have to spin the treadmill fast enough to destroy the wheels and carriage. And maybe even that wouldn't do it!
- gumby 3y agoSeems like if it fails they are not much worse off than today: either way they are short one aircraft. The cost of trying to fly it out much be a lot <<< less than the value of the plane. Good luck to the pilot though -- if it doesn't work the result could be fatal!
- alex_young 3y agoLooks like the minimum take-off runway length is just around a mile: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/94671/what-is-the-minimum-runway-required-for-an-a320-under-72-000-kg https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/94671/what-is-t... A mile of roadway costs ~ $1M to pave: https://www.roadbotics.com/2019/12/18/how-much-does-it-cost-to-pave-1-mile-of-road/ https://www.roadbotics.com/2019/12/18/how-much-does-it-cost-... Unless they pave 1 mile of runway to accommodate this, I anticipate this going pretty poorly. A quick search prices A320s at around $100M, seems worth the effort.
- buildsjets 3y agoIt's Siberia. When December arrives, the mud will become self-paving.
- regnull 3y agoDecember? Ha! It's probably self-paving right about now.
- grecy 3y agoNot yet, there's barely snow on the ground in the Arctic Circle right now, not much below freezing overnight. Give it another month, then we're talking.
- gojomo 3y agoSeems to me that soon as there are consistent nighttime freezes, pumped water could create a level & sealed frozen surface.
- lxgr 3y agoInteresting question: Can a jet take off from a (very) low friction runway? Seems similar to the classical problem of whether a take-off from a conveyor belt is possible :)
- Bluecobra 3y agoDoes Airbus have their own version of Boeing's AOG crew? Either way I guess with the sanctions they won't be to help anyways. sorta related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37691057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37691057
- kotaKat 3y agoAIRTAC, which does have a China-specific division; however of course sanctions will of course still keep them from the incident. I still suspect someone at Airbus AIRTAC is probably shitting themselves over this because some day this will come back for maintenance... https://aircraft.airbus.com/en/customer-care/aog-and-aircraft-care https://aircraft.airbus.com/en/customer-care/aog-and-aircraf...
- lukevp 3y agoThis kinda feels like how after an auto accident, if the car needs like 15k of body work and the frame is warped, but not enough to total loss it… and they try and repair the car, but afterwards there’s always little things wrong… alignment gets slightly off, weird creaks and squeaks you never had before, sudden phantom electrical issues. I’m not sure id want to ride in a plane where they “cleared out all the mud and straw” from the engine and they say it’s good to not be refurbished.
- tokai 3y agoTo me it says something about the value of a busted plane, to Russian airlines in the face of sanctions. Maybe that's reading too much into it and Ural's leadership are just miserly.
- gonzo41 3y agoExcept it's a plane. And that just freaks me the hell out. That third dimension with flying is the scary one
- dredmorbius 3y agoI'm fine with that third axis. It's the axis intercept that's most bothersome.
- function_seven 3y ago> It's the axis intercept that's most bothersome. Real quote from my grandmother: "I'm not afraid of flying or anything. I just wish they didn't have to get so close to the ground before landing!"
- dredmorbius 3y agoThe faster the sink rate, the less time you're close to the ground!
- jojobas 3y ago
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoThere is currently a scandal around undocumented parts making it into American planes [1]. I’m curious to when we’ll be able to look back at the safety and maintenance records of officially-maintained planes and those flying Russian style. [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/delta-says-some-overhauled-engines-contain-parts-with-improper-documentation-2023-10-02/ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/delta-say...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jsjohnst 3y agoReminds me of the time a 747 Dreamlifter[0] accidentally landed at the wrong airport (a tiny public airfield). Boy was that crazy what they had to do to get the plane back in the air. Edit: [0] - thx to commenter below for the reminder it was big bertha (aka the 747 Dreamlifter) and not just a 747. Been almost a decade and I forgot.
- gascoigne 3y agoIt was not a 747. Worse! It was a 747 Dreamlifter. https://simpleflying.com/boeing-747-dreamlifter-wrong-airport/ https://simpleflying.com/boeing-747-dreamlifter-wrong-airpor...
- esaym 3y agoThe vortex that is formed sometimes at the front of jet engines will not mix well with a dirt field me thinks. https://i.stack.imgur.com/u9AZW.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/u9AZW.jpg
- gojomo 3y agoTThough unmentioned in the article, their thoroughness (& the value involved) implies they'll have a fix in place before attempting take-off – perhaps some form of quick/temporary pavement, perhaps assisted by seasonal freezing. (Might a glassy-ice surface, created with pumped water, under durable winter freeze conditions be ideal? Does a jet need – or even necessarily want – any ground traction to take off?)
- ledauphin 3y agoit does not need ground friction and what you're proposing could absolutely work if water could be sourced in sufficient quantities. in that region, maybe they get enough snow that they don't need to truck in water....
- dredmorbius 3y agoAn aircraft needs no ground traction to take off. Ground traction is, however, quite useful in aborting a take-off.
- WalterBright 3y agoMy dad worked at Galena AFB in Alaska during the Cold War. They had big problems with the runway icing up, and it was pretty much a 24 hour operation keeping the runway free of ice. One person proposed coating the runway with linseed oil to keep the ice from forming. Desperate, the AF tried it. It did keep the ice off. However, the first jet that rolled onto the runway and came to a stop, slowly but surely slid off the runway. Then they had an even more expensive operation to remove the oil. Some traction is needed until the airplane is moving fast enough so the control surfaces work. Otherwise, off the side of the runway you go.
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- phkahler 3y agoOMG soft field technique in an Airbus! I'm sure there is no published flap setting for that. I wonder if the company would even hint at a best guess. I suppose similar to short field which probably is in the book. I want video... from the cockpit!
- jacobgold 3y agoThe Wright brothers' original vision for airplanes was that they could pretty much take off and land from a basic field. And they did seem to consider the idea of heavily prepared airfields something of a failure case. There are very good reasons things didn't go that way. But, as is often the case, the original vision had a very pure and strong idea in it that has been somewhat lost. It's still alive in helicopters, and some other air vehicles, but it'd be cool if future aircraft were more robust in this way.
- WalterBright 3y agoThe 737 was originally designed for unpaved short runways. There was even a rock shield attachment for the nose gear.
- m4rtink 3y agoGliders are made to land in random fields without major obstacles (like cows, fences or hay bales) and regularly do that when they can't manage to glide to an airport. You need to disassemble the plane afterwards (a routine operation, gliders are built that way) or possibly even have a powered airplane land nearby and aero-tow you back up if the field is good enough for that. :-)
- sbierwagen 3y agoThe Wright Flyer massed 274 kg. Of course it could take off from an unprepared field-- with a modern engine, it could be doing nine foot takeoffs like in STOL competitions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMVjYT6laKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMVjYT6laKo The modern equivalent to a Wright plane would be something like a paramotor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvQ9DjJNal0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvQ9DjJNal0
- stevespang 3y ago[dead]
- ChatGTP 3y agoI hope I never have to fly Ural Airlines :)
- efitz 3y agoIt’s too bad that HN doesn’t allow multimedia responses; I’m imagining a bunch of memes of farmers busing passengers wearing peasant garb to the plane in a hay trailer behind a tractor, or passengers boarding via a grain elevator hehehe
- et-al 3y agoIt’s great HN doesn’t allow responses like these because there are already plenty of other places for said memes.
- thsksbd 3y agoThe Russians have the best offroading equipment (kamaz) in the world. Get a couple of steamrollers on the scene, flatten out a couple miles of dirt and wait until the weather cements any would be debris onto the ground.
- dmckeon 3y agoAnd keep doing that until you get to a paved road, and use that as a runway.
- ostbender 3y agoGetting on a flight Russian flight seems like a hilariously bad idea nowadays.
- type0 3y agoIt's one of those 400+ airplanes that Russia has stolen from Western leasing companies, most likely if will be just cannibalized for parts.
- dfadsadsf 3y agoIt’s open question who stoled from whom with leasing companies refusing payments and all Russian assets frozen in EU/US.
- type0 3y agoNo, it is a closed question, it has been for a while. They had the contractual obligations to return the airplanes, no one gave them the right to buy those https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_lease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_lease
- dfadsadsf 3y agoEssentially due to western government sanctions, leasing companies are forced to break the lease (law of the land). In retaliation, Russian government sanctions are blocking airlines from returning the planes (law of the land too). Both are just following laws and rules in their respective jurisdiction. And with western countries confiscating assets belonging to private citizens just because they have Russian citizenship (with only tangential relationship to Russian government and zero influence on Ukrainian war), EU/US are not exactly in a place to get on high horse.
- alhirzel 3y agoWonder if they thought about de-icing...
- culebron21 3y agoHere's my summary of how to even the field and make it hard enough with water (like zambonis work) and letting the ground freeze deep: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/101015/ https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/101015/
- oogabooga13 3y agoFrontline PBS has an eye opener of a short doc about aircraft maintenance being farmed out to 3rd parties. Worth the 20 minute watch: https://youtu.be/sw0b020OFj4?si=mqfVRkco6rzgrVra https://youtu.be/sw0b020OFj4?si=mqfVRkco6rzgrVra
- whycome 3y agoCan they just do "ice-road aircraft" and make a reality show out of it? Or some kind of documentary. It's super fascinating to follow along with the decisions (and reasoning) in real-time and it would be amazing to see the attempt/payoff with all the risk that remains. Flood field, ice-road?