Legendary Captain

Chapter 128 A Sales Pitch That Risks Life

Passenger aircraft are inherently difficult to enter a spin due to their inherent instability. Therefore, Xu Qing deliberately brought the aircraft into a deep stall before applying full rudder input, allowing it to enter a spin. Under normal circumstances, even with such maneuvering, a passenger aircraft would not be able to enter a spin.

This uneven stalling of the two wings poses a danger not only to large passenger aircraft but also to smaller, more maneuverable aircraft. Once an aircraft enters a deep spin, it may be unable to recover.

For large passenger aircraft, even a stall is strictly prohibited, let alone a spin, which carries an even higher risk factor. This situation, where one wing stalls before the other, causing the aircraft to yaw towards the side that stalled first, is only permitted for training on certain highly maneuverable aircraft. For less maneuverable passenger aircraft, this would essentially be catastrophic.

During a spin, a passenger plane experiences tremendous stress on its structure. With each rotation, the speed increases, and the pressure intensifies, eventually causing the airframe to break apart due to the inability of the structure to withstand the stress.

Back then, Han Qi was most famous for accidentally turning his plane into a spin, which he eventually managed to recover from. However, the horizontal stabilizer, vertical tail, and wingtips all suffered structural fractures, with large amounts of hydraulic oil leaking out from the fractures, almost paralyzing the aircraft's control system. It was with this nearly uncontrollable aircraft that Han Qi managed to land the plane safely.

Xu Qing was certainly aware of Han Qi's famous airliner spiral incident. Han Qi was probably the most qualified to speak about the structural damage that airliner spirals could cause to an aircraft.

When Xu Qing continued to pull the stick, causing the plane to stall, Han Qi roughly knew what Xu Qing was trying to do, but he couldn't believe that Xu Qing was so audacious.

However, who is Han Qi? If Xu Qing dares to do it, I absolutely dare to follow suit. If I stop Xu Qing halfway through, wouldn't that weaken his momentum?

Han Qi felt no competitive spirit towards others, but he was different with Xu Qing.

Since he rose to fame, he has been constantly compared to Xu Qing, always falling just a little bit short. Many people believe that if Xu Qing hadn't retired, the title of the number one person in civil aviation would never have been his.

Therefore, Han Qi's lack of competitiveness towards others stemmed from the assumption that they were all inferior to him. However, he did not possess this arrogance in front of Xu Qing.

However, even with mental preparation, Han Qi still couldn't help but twitch his eyelids the moment Xu Qing stepped on the rudder.

In terms of sheer courage, Han Qi felt utterly inferior to Xu Qing. When it came to things like rotating passenger planes, they were quick to act.

From the bottom of his heart, Han Qi said coldly, "You're really something!"

Xu Qing's lips curled into a smile: "I'll take that as a compliment!"

Just as the two finished speaking, the plane, with a sharp angle of attack, began to plunge to the right. It was as if the plane had entered a deep-sea whirlpool, spinning and diving downwards.

Sitting in the back, Wang Tianliang felt a chill run through him from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, as if all the blood in his body had stopped flowing. Even Han Qi, at that moment, was also gripping the rudder with his hands and feet on the rudder. When it came to matters of life and death, Han Qi was more inclined to trust himself, regardless of who was sitting next to him!

When an aircraft enters the initial stage of a spin, its speed is not yet very high. At this point, the aircraft is still in the initial stage and, strictly speaking, has not yet officially entered a spin state.

Generally speaking, an aircraft will only truly enter the spin transition phase after it has made two full rotations, after which comes the most dangerous vertical spin phase.

During this stage, the aerodynamic forces and inertial forces acting on the aircraft have not yet reached equilibrium, and the aircraft still has a tendency to automatically de-spin. For aircraft with poor maneuverability, this means greater stability; as long as the aerodynamic forces and inertial forces have not reached equilibrium, the aircraft has a tendency to spontaneously regain stability.

However, Xu Qing never released the right rudder, which prevented the aircraft from self-correcting its deflection, and the aircraft continued to experience large sideslip.

At this point, the aircraft's speed remained slightly below the stall speed, and the sideslip indicator began to show a rightward sideslip. The sideslip status displayed on the sideslip indicator indicates the direction of the aircraft's spin.

The three people in the cockpit first looked up at the sky, then kept turning right and moving down, and finally began to look straight down.

After the plane completed its first 360-degree rotation, Wang Tianliang couldn't hold back any longer: "That's enough, let's get it sorted out!"

During normal training, recovery maneuvers typically begin after one or two full rotations. This is because after one or two rotations, the aircraft hasn't fully entered a spin, making recovery relatively easier. However, as the rotation progresses into the transition phase, or even a vertical spin, recovery becomes extremely difficult. For some types of aircraft, entering this phase means losing the opportunity to recover, resulting in a crash and loss of life.

"Too early!" Xu Qing immediately refused. Seriously? Changing course after just one spin is practically the same as not having a spiral at all! Ending right after the start? That's a joke!

Wang Tianliang immediately turned pale. How did he end up on this pirate ship?

"How many times did you spin that time?" Xu Qing asked Han Qi.

Unlike Wang Tianliang, whose soul seemed to leap out of his skin, Han Qi's face merely twitched, and he coldly uttered, "Four and a half laps!"

Han Qi now understood just how audacious Xu Qing was; he was trying to replicate what he had done back then. However, whether he could still make a comeback after four and a half spirals was truly a matter of fate.

Some things can be done once, but even with the same person, there's no guarantee of success the second time.

If Han Qi were to experience another four-and-a-half-turn spiral, he doubted his chances of survival; for a moment, he even hesitated whether to call for Xu Qing to stop.

However, Han Qi ultimately held back.

Second lap!

By this time, the plane's descent speed had increased significantly, reaching a full four thousand feet per minute, and this was only the second loop. Just then, Han Qi slightly shifted his seat, adjusting to a more comfortable position. Actually, it wasn't that Han Qi was particularly uncomfortable; he was just anxious and wanted to alleviate his worries. Frankly, as the plane continued to circle like this, his confidence in making a recovery would decrease.

At this moment, Xu Qing's expression gradually became serious. The pressure from the spiral state was still there. He wasn't a god, so how could he be completely unaffected?

The third lap!

At this point, the aircraft's descent has become an almost vertical dive. The aerodynamic forces acting on the aircraft are now balanced with inertial forces. The aircraft will spiral and dive with a relatively stable radius around a plumb line. At this stage, the aircraft is approaching a vertical spin.

Once the aircraft enters this vertical dive, the rate of descent skyrockets to 10,000 feet per minute.

What does a descent rate of 10,000 feet per minute mean? It's equivalent to an airplane plummeting at a speed of over 50 meters per second. In other words, at normal speed, the plane drops more than 50 meters in the blink of an eye.

On the central radar screen of the Jiangning area control room, the Qingyuan aircraft, with tail number 1533 and transponder number 4231, stood out from the rest of the radar screen.

The radar screen displays the flight data of the monitored aircraft. Naturally, it also shows the altitude and descent rate of Xu Qing's aircraft.

When the controller in charge of monitoring saw Xu Qing's plane diving down at a rate of 10,000 feet per minute, with the altitude reading plummeting like a dam had been pulled, a sense of unease arose in his heart. He turned to the director beside him, who was also looking at the radar screen, and said, "What are they doing? This rate of descent is too outrageous."

The director's eyelids twitched violently. On the radar screen, one could see not only altitude changes but also flight path parameters. He could see that Xu Qing's aircraft was almost completely stationary, which seemed extremely strange.

Even when an airplane is diving downwards, it's always at an angle. How can it just drop straight down like this? And the rate of descent is just too outrageous!

"Are they practicing spins?" the director guessed. He couldn't think of anything else that matched what he was seeing besides spins.

A spin is another term for a spiral, and the two terms have the same meaning. Because the radius of a spin is extremely small, it is virtually impossible for it to be detected on a radar screen, making the aircraft appear stationary to the radar.

"A passenger plane can still spin? Isn't it forbidden for passenger planes to enter spins?" the controller asked in surprise. "It's not a high-maneuverability aircraft like a fighter jet. Can a passenger plane recover after entering a spin?"

"How would I know? But there's something wrong with what you said! Isn't one of the people on that plane famous after recovering from a passenger plane spin?" The director said with a wry smile, "You're really something, Xu Qing! You've got some nerve!"

"Han Qi?" the controller chuckled. "Chief, could they have accidentally entered a spin? Is there any danger?"

The director scoffed, "Passenger aircraft are inherently designed to be difficult to enter a spin; they have self-correcting capabilities. Except for a very few exceptional cases, passenger planes basically won't enter a spin. Besides, if it were truly due to misoperation or airflow issues causing a spin, do you think the two people upstairs wouldn't have recovered in the initial stages of the spin? Would they have allowed the plane to reach a deep spin? That's a descent rate of 10,000 feet per minute. Don't worry! It's definitely them messing around!"

While the two were discussing Xu Qing and the others in the control room, Xu Qing realized that the time to change course was almost here.

Three laps! Three laps was the range Xu Qing considered controllable. Beyond three laps, he wasn't entirely confident he could make the change.

From the beginning, Xu Qing kept the throttle at idle thrust. Once the aircraft was fully in a spin, he immediately adjusted the control wheel to stabilize it and simultaneously reduced the input of the rudder to return it to a neutral position.

Then, Xu Qing stepped on the left rudder and input the counter-rudder input, stopping the aircraft's tendency to spin.

To input counter-rudder, you first need to determine the direction of the spin. Counter-rudder means applying the rudder in the opposite direction to the spin. This will stop the aircraft's rotation.

However, sometimes the unit is spinning so much that it's impossible to judge the direction of the spiral solely by senses. In that case, you can judge it by the side slip device.

The lateral slip direction displayed on the lateral slip gauge is the spiral direction, which is a hard indicator for judging the spiral direction and is very intuitive.

Xu Qing's anti-rudder input was extremely precise, neither too large nor too small, and he stopped the aircraft's rotation instantly and accurately.

Once the aircraft stops spinning, it is in a normal stall state, which is much easier to recover from.

Xu Qing began to hold the steering wheel, reducing the angle of attack to below the critical angle of attack. On the PFD, Xu Qing maintained the aircraft's attitude slightly below the pitch limit indicator. After several seconds, the aircraft emerged from the stall.

Once the plane's speed had stabilized and increased sufficiently, Xu Qing slowly increased the throttle, gradually lifting the plane and halting its descent.

Finally, Xu Qing stabilized the plane at level flight.

Within three laps, Xu Qing's corrective maneuvers still appeared effortless.

Seeing the plane recover from the spin, Han Qi finally breathed a sigh of relief, lowered his left hand, and moved his feet off the rudder.

If Xu Qing dares to let the plane circle again, Han Qi will definitely intervene and take control, even if Xu Qing disagrees.

"Don't panic, don't panic, I know what I'm doing!" Xu Qing said with a soft laugh as he saw Han Qi looking relieved.

Han Qi rolled his eyes: "I don't believe you dare to change course after four laps! So, don't just rely on your words."

Han Qi always maintained a strong competitive spirit towards Xu Qing, and he didn't want to lose in the slightest, even in verbal exchanges.

"Let's get down to business! Let's get down to business!" Knowing he was in the wrong, Xu Qing didn't continue the conversation but instead pushed the sales pitch again: "Our aircraft's aerodynamic configuration has been modified, resulting in better aerodynamic performance. For example, our approach speed is lower!"

A lower approach speed directly indicates better aerodynamic performance. This is because the aircraft doesn't need additional speed to compensate for the extra lift. A lower approach speed naturally increases safety and reduces the difficulty of handling. This is the most direct advantage.

"And... for example, when both engines are off, the normal 737NG's glide ratio is eleven to one, while ours can reach fifteen to one. That's quite convincing, isn't it!" Xu Qing said excitedly.

The glide ratio is the ratio between the distance traveled and the altitude lost by a glider or airplane during unpowered flight.

When both engines of a passenger plane fail, it is essentially a glider in a sense. At this point, the aircraft's glide ratio directly affects whether the plane can glide to a nearby airport.

"Just talking isn't very convincing, let's actually do it!" Xu Qing said with a smile.

Wang Tianliang's lips twitched slightly, and then Xu Qing eased off the accelerator, simultaneously disengaging both starter levers!

Xu Qing really managed to shut down both engines!

(End of this chapter)