Syrian Air A320 loses stab and rudder in midair

[scarebus]

Chuck328 said:

Hmmmm not too sure about this either.

For starters you can't get 200 pax on a 320.

The rudder also happens to be the one consumer that is supplied by all three hydraulic systems (read into that, how important Airbus place on it).

Not sure where the actuators are but having it clipped like that would make me wonder if this would be another Sioux City malarkey.

Then again, stranger things have happened.....

I think this is very plausible, yes all three hydraulic systems are there but there are such things as shut-off valves that isolate damages, so the hydraulic fluid is preserved to keep the rest of the system operative. Fly by wire system are great at damping uncommanded movements, so the plane should have been quite flyable.

The fin and the rudder are not THAT important. A stub of the fin is enough to keep lateral stability, and the rudder is not needed except to land and take-off in heavy crosswinds, handle an engine failure, and to counteract dutch roll. Day to day we never touch the rudder pedals above 30ft...

Why would this not be real?

The Sioux city incident was extreme, as the whole tail plane was peppered by shrapnel of an exploding engine, maybe airbus engineers have learned from these accidents and made flying safer.

[fatboy69]

thehawk said:

fatboy69 said:

Sad though that the heli crew appear to have died.

Really? Think about that for a while.

Some more photos

http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=...

Edited by thehawk on Saturday 29th September 15:48

I did think about it - it is sad that the two people in the heli died so I don't quite understand your comment 'Really? Think about that for a while.'

[thehawk]

fatboy69 said:

I did think about it - it is sad that the two people in the heli died so I don't quite understand your comment 'Really? Think about that for a while.'

The Syrian civilians they have been killing may not agree.

[anonymous-user]

How do we know it was the rotor disc that did the damage? Persumamably no one in the chopper lived to tell the tail, and the flight crew on the bus couldn't have seen the actual impact. More likely they just collided with the choppers airframe itself (more than enough at ~400KIAS)

[fatboy69]

thehawk said:

he Syrian civilians they have been killing may not agree.

The political thing didn't even enter my head - I merely thought of two people who were killed in the accident.

[eccles]

Max_Torque said:

How do we know it was the rotor disc that did the damage? Persumamably no one in the chopper lived to tell the tail, and the flight crew on the bus couldn't have seen the actual impact. More likely they just collided with the choppers airframe itself (more than enough at ~400KIAS)

I would suggest you look at the photos. Big slashes in the rudder and stab made by a rotating blade. That'll be the fuselage doing the damage then.