@hawkeye10,
hawkeye10 wrote:
Quote:A dead stick landing at Laguardia might have been possible, however the down side to any misjudgement would likely have been a fatal crash into urban structures. The distance in the chart looks deceptively favorable to the Laguardia option. However it still would have required a 60 plus degree turn and possibly more to correctly line up with the runway. The effect of a turn on reducing the gliding distance is very strong -- a fairly standard disaster scenario in such cases is an unwise attempt to turn back to the point of departure. Moreover, the field landing would have required that the flaps and landing gear be lowered - both actions would have very substantially reduced the aircraft gliding distance - in addition to the turn - and it is not at all clear that the aircraft could have made it.
actually it looks more like 45 degrees, and he would have had a 13 knot tail wind to help get him there, and had he not lost 1200 feet just after the strike he would have had lots of alt/speed to play with. He is a glider pilot so a run way landing should have been relatively easy for him, and he had enough room to do s curves to get down to the correct momentum.
I am not an expert, which is why I say that this needs to be run through the simulator, but I would be shocked if a runway landing at LGA would have been a problem. It would have also been the better odds choice I think. Hopefully the report will get into the choices made, and whether the pilot made errors in judgement or actions. We just don't know.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion, however, as you acknowledged you are not an expert. Indeed, if I am not mistaken you have never flown an aircraft at all and are not an aeronautical engineer- in short you lack even the most basic elements of proficiency and knowledge of the reality of the situation and the tradeoffs involved. It is at least interesting that none of the real aviation experts overseeing the investigation has raised a question about the suitability of the pilot's choices in this matter. Perhaps you should volunteer your services to them.
Lack of airspeed, altitude and energy was a far more limiting problem than an excess. I don't think the rather crude chart & track you linked permits the exactitude you claim for the turn required, and you appear to be overlooking the very real problem of lining up with the runway and the energy-consuming maneuvers it entails. Within limits, S turns & other techniques can indeed be used to bleed off excessive energy, however there is no remedy at all for a deficit of energy, and the turn back to the field would have quickly precluded any fallback option. A dead stick landing on a runway with a 13kt tailwind and a heavy aircraft with nearly the initial fuel load offers its own significant potential for a crash & fire - even if all the other, far greater, uncertainties are overcome. One of the long-standing bits of aviation folklore is the all-too-often fatal trap of misjudging the energy required for a turn back to the takeoff field after multiple engine failures.
Alternatively, the ditching in the Hudson was clearly possible with the available energy and the pilot had ample room to make a controlled smooth water landing. In addition this option completely eliminated the hazard to people in the buildings below.
Much has been made of the need to be wings level at the moment of impact. The only critical element here is avoiding an initial impact with a wing tip. Given the dihedral angle of the wings themselves that is relatively easy to achieve and well within the normal control limits for such maneuvers. The key part was flying the aircraft so that it touched the water in a nose high, wings level attitude with a minimum sink rate, at just above stall speed - all at the same moment. That was difficult. ( Difficult but not extraordinary, I hasten to add. However, the chips were really down and the stakes really high - and the pilot delivered when it counted.)
