could an airliner recover if it stalls?

Question

I was flying a 747 on FS2004, on approach and about to disengage the air brakes at 250 knots and 5,000 ft altitiude , is this a simulation glitch?

Answer 1

Stalls are problematic on swept-wing airplanes. It is the swept wing that makes a stall more dangerous or unmanageable in an airliner. A swept wing stalls in stages, and the secondary stall may be much more forceful than the initial onset of the stall.

So jet airliners have stick-shakers and other safety devices to help the crew avoid stalls. However, if it should happen, it is not necessarily a total disaster. A big tin angel like a 747 has much more momentum behind it and will tend to continue in the direction it is going much further than, say, a Piper Cherokee will do.

So the bigger the piece of machinery you have got, the more you must stay ahead of it. But 5,000 feet should be enough to recover from anything the airplane can stand. I would not recommend a loop, though there is a rumor that one captain did a barrel roll in a 747-300. Didn't see it myself, but they are rugged machines, and I can't swear it would be impossible.

Answer 2

Airliners can recover from stalls, however they require more altitude than your normal small civilian plane. They are very heavy and have small wing surface area for their size. This is so they can be efficient at high altitudes. However this is a disadvantage when you are in a stall. The stall can be broken by gaining the airspeed back by pointing the nose down. Once the desired speed is reached, then you can recover. However, as I said, this requires altitude, which in your case was marginal. Simulations can't be trusted for everything so I can't say if it was a glitch or not, but it CAN stall and CAN be recovered. From 5,000 feet? Depends on the situation, but usually, yes.

Hope this helps.



EDIT: For thoes of you who heard the rumor about the 707 doing a roll... It's true here a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vHiYA6Dmws

Quite amazing

Answer 3

Yes, airliners or just about any aircraft can recover from stalls. Stick shakers and Stick pulls will prevent most from actually developing into a fully developed stall.
Tex Watson rolled a 707 on a demo flight right in front of his boss! If you ever watch the Discovery channel you will hear about it sooner or later. Any aircraft will roll. It's a 1g manuver DONE CORRECTLY!

Answer 4

At 250kts you shouldn't have had any trouble. In X-Plane 8.6 with a 747-400 at 700,000lbs and 5800ft agl I throttled back to idle and extended the spoilers one notch. Speed dacayed rapidly and pitch came up until she stalled at around 200kts. Rate of descent started to increase and nose up pitch also increased. I applied full throttle as I decelerated through 180kts and recovered with little further loss of altitude.

Second time I let speed fall to 160kts and left power at idle until rate of descent had exceeded 3000fpm before applying power. With full throttle she powered out of the stall with little further loss of altitude.

At 875,000 pounds she stalled at 225 with the spoilers deployed and idle power, I let the autopilot try to hold altitude and she descended through 3,000 feet at 4,100fpm and 190kts. I applied full power and she recovered easily before 2,500 feet.

Even without stowing the spoilers she still recovered.

Simulators aren't the real thing, but I think FS4 is way off in this case.

If the 747SP survived what China Airlines did to it, and it did, then a barrel roll shouldn't be a problem with reasonable air speed. See the link to see what China Airlines did. I've seen the tape of the 707 rolling, but a loop is much harder because you'd gain a heck of a lot of speed coming down off the top. In the 747 starting at Vne at 15,000 feet I couldn't pitch up more than 50 degrees at full power before I stalled out, the limit on the rate I could pull up was that I kept reaching the stall as I pulled 'g'.

A barrel roll at 300kts was no problem.

I'd be interested to know if the x-plane 747-400 behaves anything like the real thing. I'm not holding my breath.

Answer 5

A Barrel roll with a 747? that's a nice action... rumor goes over a looping with a 707 but I doubt it (ever heard of load factors).

Only stall that's really dangerous is a deep stall. In deep stall, the horizontal stabilizer stalls. This means toss of the airstream over the elevators so they loose a majority of their effect. This makes it very hard to decrease your angle of attack so you hardly recover from it.

Answer 6

well, if you are at altitude of 5k feet, there is aboslutely no problem to recover from stall. even though read this carefully: when you are flying your small cessna, a stall is probably "not too bad", because the aircraft gives you the advice that you are on a "bad trip".
while a stall on a commercial plane can be really dangerous, and you should normally never have a stall or a "near stall", because that is a really serious matter.
however, you can always get out of a stall and if you are at 5k feet that is no problem.
just put the nose down, let the speed increase and don't loose that much height.

Answer 7

Yes, u can - airliners often recover from stalls

Answer 8

First of all you can recover. Here is how, Increase your throttle and nose down a bit, lower your flaps.
Remember when you slow your aircraft down less air goes past the wings reducing the lift on the wings. In order to prevent this from happening you need to lower your flaps in increasing increments until you have enough lift on the wings.