Emergency Decent

[WWEfan]

I dont let my co-pilots fly the airplane during normal operations let alone during an emergency. But all kidding aside, the AP is a useful tool. Use it.

 

[Spinplate]

The CRJ's outflow vlaves have a safety feature not to alllow the cabin altitude to exceed 14,250 ft. +/- 750 ft. if there is a pressurization SYSTEM malfunction. So if there is a cabin depressurization, it wont be major UNLESS the bulkhead is failing somewhere, hence the structural failure. (or some stupida$$ passenger actually got the pax/galley door open in flight)

 

[Captain X]

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?

AF

You obviously don't have much user time with Honeywell's wonderful excuse for IAS Hold in a VMO/MMO descent on the ERJ

It's not the work load that I'm concerned with.....it's the G load, 'cuz the work load may go right out the window (literally) when the a/p get's too excited that it sees a red line and loads the airplane up overzealously as it tends to do. I'd rather not take that gamble with a airplane with potential structural integrity issues.

And yes, IMHO a human will fly the aircraft more gently in the case of an ERJ in an emergency descent in IAH Hold. That being said...and like I said....I would probably use the A/P except in that one situation.

 

[LegacyDriver]

Don't set MMO/VMO. Set something reasonably below it. It's not *that* rough... 240 or 300 depending...

 

[pilot1704]

I did do it with A/P

I think only way to do it is with autopilot!

Done that and it worked well! We had smoke in the cockpit, so we were unable to see aircrafts attitude , speed, etc.... We got masks on, pulled paxs masks out. We cranked altitude alerter to zero, then went up 10 clicks, worked for that location up to 10000ft. With autopilot on,command nose down, in our ac hold wheel 10 seconds and should give 10degrees nose down I also pressed heading putton and turned little bit to the left away from airway. We pulled power idle, speedbrakes out, notified controller, finished rest of the memory items, at that point we started to see something, we were through 17000ft. And biggest hurry was behind us.

If we would have disconnect autopilot I dont know what would have happend. Maybe unusual attitude, structural damage, stall, CFIT... that is scary tought.

So I stick with autopilot!

 

[Spinplate]

I think only way to do it is with autopilot!

Done that and it worked well! We had smoke in the cockpit, so we were unable to see aircrafts attitude , speed, etc.... We got masks on, pulled paxs masks out. We cranked altitude alerter to zero, then went up 10 clicks, worked for that location up to 10000ft. With autopilot on,command nose down, in our ac hold wheel 10 seconds and should give 10degrees nose down I also pressed heading putton and turned little bit to the left away from airway. We pulled power idle, speedbrakes out, notified controller, finished rest of the memory items, at that point we started to see something, we were through 17000ft. And biggest hurry was behind us.

If we would have disconnect autopilot I dont know what would have happend. Maybe unusual attitude, structural damage, stall, CFIT... that is scary tought.

So I stick with autopilot!

In that situation yes of course, you would NEED the A/P, it is completely situational as when you should or shouldnt use the A/P in an emergency descent.

 

[pilot1704]

You got that right it depens from situation!

Personally I think that for years all the schools and training I attend have told us to disconnect A/P and dive!

Only about 2 years ago I was tought in training to use A/P.

It still seems that the habit is to disconnect and get distracted with all the stress and workload!

My best experience is that once we had this situation and we dropped masks for pax and minute later Pax came to cockpit and was asking me whats going on! Needless to say what was my answer!

crap down and shut up and mask on!


Safe flying!