5 ms·
If fire was the problem, why didn't the pilot just land by sea?
by clwen 13y ago
If fire was the problem, why didn't the pilot just land by sea?
- confluence 13y agoYou clearly don't understand how unsurvivable water landings are.
- jrockway 13y agoThis video demonstrates what actually happens when a widebody airliner attempts to land on the ocean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE2Yn0cipTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE2Yn0cipTY 767s are bigger than A320s and the ocean is a lot rougher than the Hudson.
- tzs 13y agoThat video demonstrates what happens when you try to land in the ocean while you are fighting with hijackers which causes a sudden dip to one side, when you happen to be over a coral reef for the engine on that side to hit. Even with that, the crash was quite survivable. A large number of the fatalities were due to drowning, because people inflated life rafts while still inside, which blocked them in so they drowned when the plane sank. This is probably not a good crash to use as a baseline for predicting what would be typical for an ocean landing attempt.
- chloraphil 13y agoI believe it was people inflating their vests inside, not rafts.
- robryan 13y agoI assume you could probably hit the water at an even lower speed than that without stalling the plane before you got there?
- victorhooi 13y agoThe plane ran out of fuel. The hijackers, who were apparently young, stupid and intoxicated - forced the pilot to try to fly to Australia, even though the pilot said they didn't even have enough fuel to make it 25% of the way. The plane ran out of fuel off the coast of Africa, and the engines died. The pilot used a Ram Air Turbine (basically using airspeed to drive a turbine) to provide emergency power so he could land. However, I assume the hydraulics didn't work at this stage, hence he couldn't use the flaps to slow it down.
- greatsuccess 13y agoWho said anyone attempted to land? If the plane was ditched straight down at full speed, it would in shallow water crater and be underground.