Not true -
Over the pacific, all the landing sites are suitable. Not so when over land. :D


Hope ya know I'm just josh'n ya here.

Isn't the polar moment relevant as well?

A 10kg ball and a 10kg dumbell both have their CG at the geometric center but they respond differently to certain forces.

Sixto
87 300D

Sure it will, at least to the scene of the crash:devil:

I forgot about the noise issue. I don't recall flying in a tri-jet, but I have flown in C-9's, which have the engines mounted on the fuselage. If you sat near the engines, you got a loud ride.

Every tail skid and/or tail contact incident that I am familiar with (lots, btw) regarding transport category aircraft are related to pilot error, and most are the result of over rotation on takeoff. No relation to where the CG happened to be, nor what factors produced said CG location.

I do know that it doesn’t take much weight movement (location) to drastically change the CG of large aircraft with major results. For instance – If you take all the fuel out of a DC-8 you’d better tie a cement block to the nose or put the tail post (long pole) in place on the rear skid. Otherwise, 3 grown men can walk from the front of the aircraft to the rear and put it on its tail. :eek:

Very weird feeling. :o

Tell Robert Piche and (his first officer) Dirk De Jager of Air Transat and Airbus (A330) that and see what they have to say. ;)

DC10/L1011 were fuel hogs. The MD-11 never met what MD promised in terms of performance and was definately orphaned when Boeing bought MD.

The MD-11 has a spotty history and has had a few nasty crashes of late (Fed Ex in Newark, Narita and recently a MD-11 Freight dog in China) and many owners did not do the upkeep the airframe required (The Varig DC-10/MD-11's that were converted to Freight Dogs were in such poor shape that 1 was written off and turned in to beer cans-my buddy at JAX did the work on 8 of them and said the amount of "wildlife" that was found in the cabins required a major tent and gas job and they were still killing the vermin as they stripped the interior).

Boeing has a definate aversion to anything they didn't design-they killed the MD-90/B717which turned out to be a much desired airframe for certain airlines. Their solution was the 737-900 which does not do it for certain fleets (Airtran for one).

Think about it this way, Northwest/Delta has a number of DC9's that are close to 40 years old that are at work daily. One thing Douglas knew how to do was over engineer their designs for longevity. 40 years! There are Airbus A320's that have been scrapped at 26000 cycles and dumped in the desert and the crews fly home on a 40 year old DC9!

And lets not forget there are DC3/C47's that were built for WW2 that are still flying somewhere in the world...

Only if yer name is Sully.

Thanks to you, I missed a bagpipe performance to read this:

http://www.moptc.pt/tempfiles/20060608181643moptc.pdf

Actually it was worth it and quite an interesting read. I'm surprised it took the crew that long to figure out they had a bad fuel leak, even with the lack of training on the subject. I guess I'm just used to driving stuff that springs leaks a lot.

I remember flying from Cincy to St Louis in an L1011, in the rear, near the center. That center engine was loud! (RR, I think) We left 5.5 hours late and I think the pilot tried to make up all the time. Plane was at an awful angle. Must have had it floored. (Floored?) Poor attendents had a terrible time pushing carts uphill. Poor woman by me was flying with a less than one year old child. She was not having a good time. We of course missed our connection to OKC. I was so mad at TWA, I drove home for the return 4 weeks later.

this happened to flight 232 back in the late 80's.lost all hyd's and had to steer with engine power with the 2 remaining engines.all they could do was make left turns so ended up slowly spiraling down to the sioux city iowa airport.the tail engine fell off and landed about 10 miles from here in a cornfield.

There was a real concern about the DC-9-80 suffering from the exact same condition. With the engines in the tail, the wings are set quite far aft on the fuselage. In theory, a full set of passengers in the rear of the aircraft (upon disembarking) could lift it off it's nosewheel............but, in practice, it hasn't happened.

It's an interesting aircraft from a weight and CG perspective.

His reference was to this specific flight, although it wasn't stated. It happened on a single DC-10 due to a defect in a titanium fan disc. The tail engine did not "fall off".

The reference to all tri-jets suffering from the same malady is completely without merit.

Yes..........floored............:rolleyes:

For your reference, the faster the aircraft flies, the flatter it's angle. If the aircraft was heavily noseup for some reason, the speed would be significantly reduced from the typical operating parameters at that altitude.

The aircraft flies noseup on climbout to achieve the highest rate of climb with the maximum lift...........sacrificing speed to do so.

It flies almost level at cruising altitude.

It flies level or slightly nose down on decent...........depending on speed. If it's fast........it will be nose down...........sometimes significantly so.

On approach, you'll always notice the nose lift upward due to the fact that the aircraft has given up most of its speed and needs the increased angle to keep itself in the air.

Yep, looking at them from the ground on short final they appear to do a funny bobbing nose up/down thing...probably no different that any other aircraft but noticeable on the DC-9, MD-80 because of the amount of fuse in front of the wings compared to what's behind them.

It must be an optical illusion because inside they ride about the same.

I hate the back row seats in them. Noisy and I cannot help but think of uncontained engine failures.

Definitely avoid the last row and the row just forward of that. You and the fan are far too close and personal..............:eek: