Off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot charged with attempted murder after trying to stop engines mid-flight

return2ozma@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 395 points –
Off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot charged with attempted murder after trying to stop engines mid-flight
nbcnews.com
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Can you imagine if he successfully stopped the engines and the pilots safely glided to a landing?

Okay, I imagined it. What next?

Now, rotate a cow in your mind.

Rotating is too much work. It’ll be right side up in the end anyway so I didn’t do it. Now what?

I'm pretty sure all commercial airplanes have to be able to do this. And I'm even more sure that a gliding landing is part of their aircraft certification training

Yea. Planes can glide. Airline checkrides don’t typically include gliding.

All aircraft can glide, of course. They also have a ram air turbine to power control surfaces even with engine or APU power. And it has been done before such as Air Canada Flight 143 (the famous Gimli Glider), and Air Transat Flight 236 (the Azores glider)

But you can generally at best go 12 times your altitude, so even at cruise altitude, you need somewhere within 60 miles or so to put down. It certainly would have been far harder to put down unpowered.