Comments by "John P" (@johnp139) on "Flying WITHOUT Controls! United Airlines flight 232" video.

  1. I had the privilege of meeting Captain Haynes during the SAFE Association 2002 Symposium ( it would have been in mid-September 2001, but something prevented that). Not only did they contact United maintenance, but they also contacted the Boeing emergency center for assistance. All (or most) of those right hand turns were actually uncommanded, and the crew had to correct for them in order to continue to the airport. The aircrew obviously did a tremendous job considering total loss of all three hydraulic systems. However, none of the 4 pilots nor the Boeing emergency center considered using fuel tank transfers to help balance the center of gravity (a question that I asked him). Apparently under stress, this wasn’t considered, but I think that it would have helped to reduce the phugoid oscillations and reduce the right turn tendencies (coming from an AF 30+ year aerospace engineer).
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  2. Loss of 3 independent hydraulic systems is so unlikely, just like the loss of all 3 power cells on Apollo 13.
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  3. So the hydraulic systems obviously WERE NOT SPACED OUT.
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  4. So something EXTREMELY SIMILAR happened on EAL 935 on September 22, 1981. Fortunately, the L-1011 had FOUR (not lights) independent hydraulic systems. This should have prompted the FAA to come up with the hydraulic fuses BEFORE this mishap occurred!
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