An large aircraft travelling at 37,000 feet looses all power. What happens?
Does it slowly loose all horizontal momentum and fall straight to the groun
d
? Or, can it be “glided” to the ground? What affect do tail and headwinds have? Has this happened and what is the probability of such an event occuring?
It turns into a glider, Chatty is an idiot. A typical jet flying at that altitude may be ably to maintain a glide ratio of 12:1. (even better for some) Assuming the terrain is at sea level, 37,000 x 12 = 444000 feet, or 73.03 nautical miles. From higher flight levels, a loss of both engines is certainly a bad thing, but its hardly a guaranteed death sentence.
Malcolm is also way off base. Typical jet liners have better glide ratios than all but the sleekest of single-engine training aircraft, they just have to move faster to maintain it. i.e. they glide at 280 rather than 65, meaning they cover ground faster.
I’m constantly amazed by how much misinformation is out there being scattered around by people that learned everything they know about aviation from watching “Passenger 57.” Aircraft do not depressurize immediately. The outflow valves simply close (and frankly if both engines fail there will be no source of pressurized air to re-open them, meaning the aircraft will STAY pressurized for some time, necessitating an emergency depressurization prior to landing).
Control surfaces will continue to work, they are not powered by the engines. They are powered by hydraulic actuators. Those are of course powered by electrical systems backed up by an Air Driven Gyro (ADG) which simply uses the ram air pressure of an airplane moving really really fast to generate electricity.
You would not immediately start an emergency descent. There are plenty of other options first.
Didnt your flight instructor tell you to fly your plane first and fix it second? If not he or she should have. You can restart it later, but if you fail to make it to your emergency landing field, it wont matter anyway. Always, always, always fly it first.
As to the last part of this question: the probability of it happening. It is so uncommon that I cannot think of a single US carrier that has ever had it happen. There have been times when aircraft have run out of gas, but that has always been on approach. And there was the crew that pumped all their fuel into the Atlantic ocean and had to glide their A-320 onto an island. (both their engines quit and they managed to glide it to an airport). The odds of actually experiencing a complete loss of power at cruise are so small that its not even really worth worrying about.
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