Emergency Decent

[FlyingFerris]

Just be careful someone is still watching the autopilot. Nothing like making a bad situation worse.

Like if both pilots that didn't get their masks on in time and an aircraft falling out of the sky thrust idle? Yeah you may wake up in time, you may not.

 

[FL350]

Well this is coming from a corporate pilot but the Citation 650 has EDM (Emergency Descent Mode). Above FL 34,850, if the cabin altitude went over a certain level (I think 13,500) the aircraft would automatically enter a 45 degree descending bank 90 degree turn accelerate to Mmo/Vmo and automatically level off at 14,500. Pretty cool stuff, of course if you weren't conscious enough to add power at 14,500, things got ugly pretty quick. Of course if you weren't concious when you got down there, you probably didn't care anyway. All you HAD to do was put your mask on and pull power. If you could get the boards out it was gravy.

All that being said, I would still rather hand fly the airplane.

 

[ASH]

I ditto the use of the AP, but I would probably TCS ( touch control system) the nose over to get it going quickly, as the AP likes to make it nice and gentle.

 

[Flyingdutchman]

bumppp

 

[bafanguy]

With the A/P on, set 10,000, select IAS mode, power to idle, boards out. Nothing else to do other than deal with the problem. I'd let the autopilot do the work.

Ding...ding...ding !!! We have a winner !! Some airplanes may dictate different profiles, but in a two pilot, automated airplane particularly, the AP should do the flying with the PF monitoring/talking to ATC and the PNF working the problem.

 

[ArcticFlier]

Ding...ding...ding !!! We have a winner !! Some airplanes may dictate different profiles, but in a two pilot, automated airplane particularly, the AP should do the flying with the PF monitoring/talking to ATC and the PNF working the problem.

Exactly.................some people want to be Yeager or Crossfield.


AF

 

[Captain X]

Probably let the A/P fly it unless I had reason to believe there had been some kind of structural failure

 

[ArcticFlier]

Probably let the A/P fly it unless I had reason to believe there had been some kind of structural failure

How is hand flying going to make a difference if you've had some kind of structural failure? Are you going to be more gentle?

Why increase your work load? You've got a third pilot (A/P) just waiting to fly the plane for you, doing exactly what you tell it to do. Let it. It's what it was made for.


AF

 

[rvsm410]

Question; If the AP is set to 10K cant the FMS also set the IAS once the acft arrives at that altitude?
Point being if for some reason the crew were to have "browned" out up at altitude, it would be comforting to know that the FMS would fly the airplane for awhile by herself while the crew got there act together again.....Assuming ATC was notified by the crew or dispatch of the emergency, they would not have to worry about other aircraft as well...

Just trying to think out the senerio....Of course you would hope there was enough FOB to give significant time to the crew to regain themself's before exhaustion...

 

[bafanguy]

Question; If the AP is set to 10K cant the FMS also set the IAS once the acft arrives at that altitude?
...

In this senario, you wouldn't mess with the FMS. You do what's necessary to set speeds/altitudes on the flight guidance system panel ( takes 2.5 nanoseconds ). This will eliminate any "surprises" from the automation. This way, things will turn out as you need them to turn out.

The guys who allude to manual flying in this situation are trying to say that speed and altitude ( producing max descent rate to 10k/MEA ) are paramount. The question is, how do you accomplish that. Guys with APs they don't trust in rapidly changing conditions will opt for manual flying.

The last thing you want to do is program the magic when the cabin is hitting 14K and the masks are dropping.

In the 727, you flew manually; in the MD80, you used the AP because it did a lot better job than you would in a pinch.