Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010)
by yutyut on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @05:25PM
(#20034581)
Must be nice to have that luxury. The same emergency in the AH-1Z basically says "good luck." Granted, a hydraulic failure of two redundant and independent systems is astronomically unlikely (and the outcome will almost certainly be fatal).
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>Granted, a hydraulic failure of two redundant and independent systems is astronomically unlikely (and the outcome will almost certainly be fatal).
Triple system failure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
“The crew contacted United maintenance personnel via radio, but were told that, as a total loss of hydraulics on the DC-10 was considered "virtually impossible", there were no established procedures for such an event.”
Fascinating/harrowing stuff: Despite these losses, the crew was able to attain and then maintain limited control by using the throttles to adjust thrust to the remaining wing-mounted engines. By using each engine independently, the crew made rough steering adjustments, and by using the engines together they were able to roughly adjust altitude.
With no control surfaces, and using the engine thrust they attempted a landing - of the 296 people on board, 111 died.
Cases like that one are the reason that passenger aircraft won't be fully automated any time soon. Autopilots are unable to cope with unexpected system failures.
Well in that particular case it’s probably still a better option than ejecting.
Because it is a helicopter? Ejection seats have been done for those. Explosive bolts release the blades, and then everything proceeds as normal. Here is one such helicopter:
I believe that was literally the first helicopter with working ejection and is newer than the grandparent’s example (Apache)
AH-1Z Viper, a successor to the SuperCobra, which succeeded the original Cobra from the late 60's.
Apache is very different machine.
That proves my point even more if the Cobra is even older. I imagine it would be extremely expensive to add an ejection system to a helicopter that wasn’t initially designed for it.