No Flight Controls

In a situation reminiscent of the United Airlines DC-10 landing without hydraulics in Iowa in 1989, the crew of a DHL A300 hit by a missile relied solely on engine power without flight controls to land at Baghdad.

Pierre Ghyoot, secretary general of the Belgian Cockpit Assn. (BeCA), told Aviation Week & Space Technology that the pilots were able to guide the aircraft to a safe landing on Nov. 22 using only engine power settings. The aircraft lost all three hydraulic systems and all flight controls. Ghyoot said his organization is already planning to give the crew a safety award.

According to one aviation source familiar with the incident in Baghdad, the incredible feat of airmanship is explained partly by a safety seminar the DHL/European Air Transport (EAT) captain attended in Brussels earlier this year. In a stroke of luck, one of the speakers was retired Capt. Al Haynes. In 1989, Haynes commanded a United Airlines DC-10 in which all the hydraulics had been lost due to a center engine rotor burst in cruise. Using engine thrust alone, the United crew was able to crash-land the crippled aircraft at the Sioux City, Iowa, airport, and the majority of the passengers survived.

After the DC-10 accident, studies and flight tests by McDonnell Douglas and NASA Dryden Flight Research Center showed engine thrust can be a control in some cases and that practice before landing is extremely valuable (AW&ST June 24, 1991, p. 43). NASA research pilot C. Gordon Fullerton noted the primary job is to damp roller-coaster phugoid oscillations in pitch and find a stable attitude. Adding thrust with underslung engines like the A300 tends to pitch the nose up. "You have to devote maximum attention to the position of the nose and keep pitch rates low," Fullerton said. Turning the aircraft is done with differential thrust.