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Joint Boeing & Airbus Lecture On Jet Transport Stalls


Don Hudson

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A rare joint session between two manufacturing rivals highlights the importance with which the subject of jet transport stalls is viewed by both. Where safety improvement is concerned there are no rivals. Nice to see.

The lecture (in the old-fashioned meaning of the term) is not the easiest to hear and upon first encounter is pretty dry however, those who know their stuff in this business offer the view that this is well-worth listening to for engineers, test pilots and airline pilots alike. The Royal Society introductory page is here, and the actual lecture,

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Royal Aeronautical Society’s Flight Test Group welcome Airbus and Boeing for a joint lecture of Jet Transport Stalls.

On March 14 2013 the Flight Test Group supported an evening presentation by a joint Airbus/Boeing team on Jet Transport Stall Testing. The team consisted of Paul Bolds – Moorehead, currently lead engineer for Stability and Control testing on the Boeing 777/787, Captain Van Chaney, Deputy Chief Test Pilot for the Boeing 777, Captain Terry Lutz, Airbus Test Pilot and Stephane Vaux, Airbus Flight Test Engineer.

The subject of the joint presentation grew out of a desire to ensure that despite commercial considerations, lessons learned from this form of high risk testing were shared between as wide an audience as possible. The speakers first outlined what technically constituted a stall for a large aircraft and how various regulations catered for this before going on to describe the planning, preparation, conduct and results of a full stall testing programme. This fascinating and well attended presentation was peppered with insightful tips and observations.

That two major competitors could combine to ensure that hard-won knowledge and experience was collated and made available to the wider community was both novel and encouraging, particularly at a time when the characteristics of large transport aircraft are under close scrutiny. The evening concluded with an extended question and answer session. (Andy Strachan, Chairman, Flight Test Group).

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Hi Rich - thanks for the reminder on that presentation - I do recall it. The link is http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_03/textonly/fo01txt.html . Thanks too, J.O. I'll be viewing those two as well as finishing the RAeS one. I'm informed by a good friend that about an hour-nine minutes in, the Airbus guy is really interesting.

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Very glad to hear that about the lecture, canadairguy.

There is a conversation going on these days in some quarters, and also implicit in the RAeS Lecture are questions about the loss of this kind of knowledge. The question being asked is, "Why are we having to re-learn this kind of knowledge when for so long we knew it?"

Well, did we know all this or has automation fever inflicted everyone who began flying (or managing at an airline's coal-face) to the point where this knowledge was no longer considered serviceable or relevant, or more likely, is the answer a blend of the two?

We "knew" that we should lower the nose to just below the horizon, apply full thrust and keep altitude loss to a minimum.

Today's wisdom is quite different.

We were taught that the Airbus protected on against the stall, (but didn't do any practice flying manually in Alternate or Direct Law and approached the stall).

This knowledge didn't go far enough.

We knew and it was published in the late 90's about being unable to arrest a high descent rate with power or nose-up attitude and it was time to get the nose down, unload the wing and get it flying again. We "sensed" that it would take a lot of altitude to do this and that we could stall the wing again if the 'g' was too high on the pull-through.

As I type this, I'm thinking, perhaps we didn't know as much as we thought we did and that this lecture is a timely advance in knowledge about what we do. I'm thinking also that it would be a very good thing for air carriers to review high-altitude, high-speed, swept-wing aerodynamics - not to the formula stage!, but the principles because it still is part of the craft and the art.

Don

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