Benutzer:TK-lion/drafts/paris 1973

Paris 1973 Tu-144 flame-out

In a PBS Nova show some years ago, the suggestion was made that in response to seeing the Mirage, the Tu-144 pilots might have made a maneuver that caused engine flame-out. That the fix for such flame-out in flight is a steep dive to get enough air though the engines to restart them. I only know this from the Nova show, and don't have any other references, such as where the show producer learned this. If there are references, should this be added to the theories section? Gah4 (talk) 21:22, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

It seems that one reference is here. Gah4 (talk) 21:49, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

No, that's not what happened. The reason can be found in the report of the aviation safety network. Mismanagment by the poltical leadership of the Soviet delegation resulting in an over-ambitious change of the planned display lead to a misconfiguration of the flight control system. The differences of the elevon angles limitations with ex-/retracted canards were unknown to the PIC and the politically correct technician acting in Paris. The competent technician had to stay in Moscow, whatever the reason was. The Russians later on declared, he or she took vacation before the journey?.

The Tu-144 apparently coming in for landing after the officially annouced display seemed to be over, the plane made a very slow flyby just a little bit faster than the stall speed instead, followed by a steep climb under full thrust. After reaching an altitude of about 3,000 feet the PIC tried to bring the nose down coming to a level flight. For that he tried a full AND (A_irplane N_ose D_own) and he retracted the canards (the canards would be torned off, if extracted at higher speed to be reached on level flight some moments later) at the same time, violating the sequence given in the manual. Obviously he tried (or was driven to do) this to impress the audience. Until this moment the flight control system had surpessed the maximum AND to -5 degrees of the elevons (exactly as the limit for extracted canards was inplementd), but after retraction this filter lost its effect, the limit changed immediately to -10 degrees (as implemented for retracted canards). The nose came down much more abruptly than the crew expected and the jet skipped into a steep dive. What the crew did now, could have possibly saved them, the lives of eight others on the ground, and the jet, if they wouldn't overdo this action. The pilot tried to pull out the plane of the nosedive, but he or another crew member additionally extracted the canards again. Meanwhile the speed limit of the canards' hinges has been exceeded. Now in a very fast sequence jet and crew lost their fight. Under the rapidly growing air speed in minimum one of both canards teared of and got ingested by one or two engines on the port side. And now a kind of the flame out came as an explosion of the port engine(s), completely cutting off the port wing first. The plan rolled on the back, disintegrated in the air and burst off in flames. This was the end, finally killing 14 people. --TK-lion (Diskussion) 16:40, 8. Nov. 2019 (CET)