My dad told me about this one trip he took in a 727. He said that as the plane was flying or coming in for landing a helicopter was taking off and came underneath the plane. My dad then says the pilot quickly rolled the aircraft to the left and did a FULL[:O] roll to avoid the heli. He remembers people falling out of there seats and hitting there heads. He even said that they landed safely and everyone was questioned on what happend.
I don’t think a 727 can do that? Does anybody else have insite on this? I think my father has I bit to much “fluf”[;)]f in his story…
Most aircraft can pull a barrel roll as long as you do not stress the airframe over 1G in the process. Remember Tex Johnston rolling the Dash 80 over Lake Washington? Same thing. He did not push over 1G. The main reason for not exceeding 1G is that commercial planes do not have inverted flight tanks.
A 727 doing a roll? I am going to say yes, I believe it could, but I also believe it shouldn’t[:D] I really have no idea, however, I do know that, that would be a sight to see! I was working on a building about 200 feet from the end of a runway at the Indianapolis International Airport and let me tell you those things going 50 feet over your head is CRAZY! They are HUGE! I would really like to see one do a full roll, that would be just awesome! The FedEx planes were the worst, since their lane (?) was the first turn off the runway, they came in especially low and barely made the end of the runway, or so it looked to me! Scared me a couple times! Sorry for rambling [:D]
The 727 is quite aerobatic for an airliner, I saw one take off and go straight into a near vertical climb and hold it until well after I though it should have come down from a stall (I think that plane was empty when it did that. I certainly think a roll would not be out of the question for it.
As for the story, an event like that would have cost the pilot his license plus it probably would have cost everyone in the tower their jobs and may have even put the airport management in prison for permiting a clear case of reckless endangerment.
When I was in High school we went to Lockheeds facility where they where building L-1011 Tristars. They took us to the simulator and said that it would do anything the real plane could do. I being lucky enough to get left seat climed to 30,000 went in to a step near terminal dive and attempted a loop WELLLLLLL evidently an L-1011 can’t loop!!! But I sure locked up the simulator and told that an Tristar couldn’t loop either! Guess I should have tried it in the real thing but they wouldn’t let us near it after that!
Commercial aircraft can be stressed to more than a singe G. When in level flight it’s subject to 1G, by default. I’m sure most big airliners can go to about 2-2.5 G’s without wing and body deformation, and probabily up to 4 G’s in an emergency (but the airframe would have to be retired). It’s just that most passengers would get very uncomfortable past 1.5 G’s. Most importantly though is that the pilot would want to keep positive stresses on the a/c through the entire roll.
Some of the guys at our local flying field are commercial pilots (although I don’t know for what a/c). Someone told one of the pilots that the aircraft would snap roll aftter reaching stall at high angles of attack (which makes sense, since stall progression on a swept wing aircraft is very drastic). So, on one of his training flights, the pilot stalled the aircraft and it snapped rolled onto it’s back. I think it was more lke a Split-S manuver, since after the half roll it was pointed straight down. The guy said the ground crew was pissed, b/c the lavatories emptied and all the dirt and trash had to be cleaned up. I heard this story second-hand though, so take it with a grain of salt.
lol…1970’s simulators…HA! Anyway, most airliners I have tried to loop, roll, etc. in flight simulator 2004 work, except the 747 taks a while. I do not think this is accurate though.
My younger Brother used to fly the 3-holer (727) for Braniff and always said it flew like a great big fighter. His dream was to slow roll one with a full load of passengers. Of course, he never did it outside the simulater. He said if it was done at night and kept precisely at 1G, the passengers would never know unless they were looking out the windows. Their drinks wouldn’t even spill. In the end, doing it wasn’t worth the jail time it would have brought him.
IMHO I believe this can be done. My uncle flew A-3s in the Navy (1959-62) and was known to “Slow-Roll” the a/c. This was done carefully whilst keeping posative Gs on the a/c. Yhough, rolling an a/c of that type is NOT reccommended but, can be done with a skilled pilot.
as an after-thought… During test flight Evaluations, a/c Stability testing, etc. The a/c are tested in every scenario.
Talked to Dad, he was Capt. on the 3-holer for years with NWA. He said it could be done, but not without a serious loss of altitude. The only acro incident I know of involved a 727 where the slats came out during cruise. The result was a serious pitch-up followed by a nice split-s. Passengers going every which way and a big report on the nightly news. It took the investigators months to figure out what had happened. It “appeared” the the FO knocked the flap lever while getting out of his seat and the incident resulted. I don’t see that as likely since the lever is gated. As for acro airliners, I am told that some of the RJs are very responsive, no experience personally though.
Commercial airliners are a lot tougher than they look. I worked for Boeing in a lab that did engineering testing on the avionics for all their commercial airliners. Sometimes our people would go out on flight tests for the new airliners.
Our people made quite a few flights on the 747-400 when it was undergoing flight test. One day they found a bug in the autopilot the hard way. The pilot programmed the autopilot to descend from 30,000 feet to 24,000 feet and level off. For some reason the plane went into a power dive. As they passed through 19,000 feet, the pilot announced that the plane wasn’t coming out of it on its own, so he pulled 5 gs pulling out. (One of our engineers filled a couple of barf bags during the maneuver.)
The plane was undamaged and is still a company owned test bed aircraft. It doens’t fly all that often anymore, but it is still flight worthy and flies a few times a year.
Older airliners could roll, but as others have pointed out, it would have to be done at altitude and it would have to be carefully done. I had a friend who’s father was one of American Airlines most senior pilots. He refused to fly anything but 727s because he liked an airplane you could fly. He hated Airbus with a passion.
Newer airliners with sophisticated flight computers are incapable of rolling. This is true of the 757, 767, 777, and I believe the 747-400. This is a limitation put into the flight software. It is not a limit on the airframe. If I remember right, the flight software lights up with all sorts of warnings if you bank more than 30 degrees and has a hard limit of around 50 degrees. If the plane is thrown into a steeper angle, the software allows the pilot to right the airplane (obvious safety feature).
The rules aircraft makers have to follow from the FAA and other regulatory agencies is really crazy. Boeing has legions of engineers who spend all their time running bizarre disaster scenarios and trying to prove that the probability of it happening is below some level set by the FAA.
One I remember a friend was working on was a scenario the FAA dreamed up during the 777 development. The scenario was that a fan burst on one engine and a piece of the fan flew through the fuselage and did enough damage to the engine on the other side to bring the plane down. The blade would have to fly out at the right angle to aim towards the other engine. It would have to have enough energy to pass through the cabin (and any people it happened to encounter) and leave the fuselage with enough energy to penetrate the opposite engine and severely damage it.
The probability level they had to beat was something like 1 in a billion. Boeing was unable to prove it that unlikely (though they got close), so all 777s have to carry a piece of armor plate in the inside of the engines to prevent against this happening.
I remember coming into BWI in an American Airlines 727 with no hydraulics once. The pilot had to be ex-navy, because it felt as though we were trying to land on a carrier, coming very steep, and then firewalling the engines and hitting the thrust reversers until we had stoppped completely. Then it took the airport an hour to tow us off the end of the runway. I guess they were waiting to see if we were going to burst into flames or something. [(-D]
The big commercial airliners are aerodynamically capable of doing a 360 degree roll, as pointed out in some of the previous responses. I vaguely rememeber an incident a few years ago where an airliner, I think a B-727 was near Detroit and had a mechanical problem along with some severe weather and wound up doing a full roll to get out of some really bad situation. I can’t remember the details, but the pilot was commended for “saving” the plane and the it got a lot of media coverage for a couple days. A few of the passengers received minor injuries.