when the fly by wire system on a plane goes blank, what happens?

Answer 1

Gee the aircraft crashes? The A330 that ran out of fuel off the Azores had a complete blackout and was still flyable.

The 737 has cable connected flight controls. When the electrics fail the pilots use manual reversion as it's called. Other aircraft have different systems.

Answer 2

Most likely the aircraft crashes.

Which is why they design the systems to have enough redundancy for there to always be a fly by wire channel operating. They also have backup electrical power to ensure the system can operate even if the aircraft runs out of fuel (how the Air Transat A330 that ran out of fuel was able to keep flying).

Mechanic Flight controls are a lot more likely to fail than a Fly By Wire (i.e. they actually have failed and left an aircraft with no control what so ever).

Answer 3

Most Fly By Wire Systems use3 separate and redundant computers. If one goes down the next takes over while the 1st reboots. If the 2nd goes down the 3rd takes over. There has yet to be a case where all the systems have failed at the same time or in cascade.

Answer 4

I've read there are 4 backup systems should the fly by wire system fail. It hasn't failed on a plane yet. it would have to be extremely reliable to fly a plane of that caliber.

Answer 5

There are so many backup systems that it should never happen. Fly by wire aircraft are basically unstable so the if the aircraft tries to depart from the desired path the computer reduces the error to zero. Thus if all the computers fail the aircraft is unflyable.

So, if I was so unlucky it happened to me I would return to base , care of Martin-Baker !!

Ian M

Answer 6

With the FBW gone, there are no control surfaces available, the plane cannot be controlled. Thats the reason why redundancies are given, so that one channel failure will not incapacitate the system. Most of the time it will be quadruplex redundancy, meaning four different cablings and atleast two flight computers. Have no worries, there is yet to be a failure.

In fact this is one of the major argument in favor of traditional mechanical control. Mechanical systems will not have instantaneous system degradation as projected in case of FBW systems.

Answer 7

If the FBW systems goes blank, you cannot activate any of your control surfaces. This, howver, is a multi million to once chance, since all FBW systems are at least triple redundant. Further, avionics has reached such an advanced state that chances of failure are remote.

Answer 8

youhave severla backups of the FBW, the final one being the classic rod controls. Large aircraft which have too big forces on the control surfaces to be managed by human, use the human control input onto the triming surfaces - these are a small elevator like fins at the end of the real elevator. the control input needs to be reversed, since pilot pulling must be translated into trimmer "pushing" which in return forces the elevator to "pull". this is how I've been taught. of course this needs the freely moving elevator /with no linkage to the common controls.

Answer 9

4 backup systems

if the last one freezes up the pilot must do a CTRL ALT DEL immediately following a beer

of course if its motorola powered thats different

Cheers

java...

Answer 10

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