Safe engine-out landing of a passenger plane under the wind conditions

The engine failure, according to the flight safety inspection of the Federal Air Transport Agency, caused 4 of 6 aviation accidents in 2017, including 2 air disasters. In general, from 2001 to 2017, events related to the engine failure became the second most frequent cause of aviation accidents (13% of aviation accidents and 12% of air disasters). The worst consequences are associated with the engine failure at the most difficult and crucial stage of the flight landing. For example, it was the engine failure on the final approach that caused the crash of the L-410UVP-E20 RA-67047 aircraft near the Nelkan airfield on November 15, 2017. The article discusses a limiting situation in some sense – the landing of an aircraft with all failed engines under the wind conditions. The authors have proposed for this situation a methodology of calculating the landing approach of an aircraft under the wind conditions in case of failure of all engines of its power plant to an aerodrome equipped with an outer marker. The key features of such methodology are, firstly, the absence of necessity to link the path to the landmarks in the landing aerodrome area, and, secondly, the simplicity of the synthesis and the implementation of the aircraft control based on the proposed methodology during landing in both manual and director or automatic modes. To calculate the approach using the proposed methodology, the crew only needs to know the following values: the minimum drag airspeed on final approach, the height of the flight over an outer marker before landing and spiral approach leg. The content of the methodology in the article is illustrated by the results of the approach calculation when all of the main engines of the Russian short-medium-range MS-21 aircraft fail under the wind conditions.

1. Kiselevich, V.G., Petrov, Yu.V. and Tsipenko, V.G. (2015). Analiz osobennostey letnoy ekspluatatsii samoleta IL-96T na vzlete pri otkaze dvigatelya po rezultatam vychislitelnykh eksperimentov [Analysis of the characteristics of the flight operation of the Il-96T at take-off in case of engine failure based on the results of computational experiments]. Sbornik XXVI nauchno-tekhnicheskoy konferentsii po aerodinamike [Collection of Scientific Papers of: XXVI Scientific and Technical Conference on Aerodynamics], pp. 133–134. (in Russian)

2. Kiselevich, V.G., Kublanov, M.S., Tsipenko, V.G. and Chernigin, K.O. (2014). Development of flight operation recommendations of il-96t aircraft with engine failure at takeoff. Nauchnyy vestnik UVAU GA (I) [The Scientific Bulletin of The Ulyanovsk Civil Aviation Institute], no. 6, pp. 17–23. (in Russian)

3. Kiselevich, V.G., Kublanov, M.S., Tsipenko, V.G. (2013). Modeling of approach and landing of plane Il-76 with different landing masses and failures of engines. The Scientific Bulletin of the Moscow State Technical University of Civil Aviation, no. 188, pp. 7–9. (in Russian)

4. Kiselevich, V.G. (2015). The development of flight operation recommendations for IL-96T at aborted take-off. The Scientific Bulletin of the Moscow State Technical University of Civil Aviation, no. 211, pp. 79–84. (in Russian)

5. Kiselevich, V.G. (2015). Peculiarities of IL-96t flight operation at prolonged take-off. The Scientific Bulletin of the Moscow State Technical University of Civil Aviation, no. 211, pp. 128–131. (in Russian)

6. Tikhonov, D.V. and Tikhonov, V.N. (2015). Forecast of flight severity situation with an engine failure on the ascending maneuvers based on computational-experimental data and expert judgement. The Scientific Bulletin of the Moscow State Technical University of Civil Aviation, no. 212, pp. 90–97. (in Russian)

7. Kublanov, M.S. and Tsipenko, V.G. (2018). Issledovaniye vozmozhnosti posadki samoleta IL-96-300 v usloviyakh nizkikh koeffitsiyentov stsepleniya i ogranicheniy po bokovoy sostavlyayushchey skorosti vetra [The research of the possibility to land the Il-96-300 aircraft under conditions of low friction coefficient and limiting the cross component of wind]. Upravleniye dvizheniyem i navigatsiya letatelnykh apparatov: sbornik trudov XX Vserossiyskogo seminara po upravleniyu dvizheniyem i navigatsii letatelnykh apparatov [Collection of proceedings of Russian discussion group of air traffic control and navigation], part 1, pp. 159–162. (in Russian)

8. Zhelannikov, A.I. and Ushakov, S.A. (2017). Vliyaniya bokovogo vetra na vzlet i posadku vozdushnykh sudov na parallelnyye polosy [Cross wind influence on the take-off and landing of aircraft on parallel runways]. Sbornik Materialov XXVIII nauchno-tekhnicheskoy konferentsii po aerodinamike. Tsentralnyy aerogidrodinamicheskiy institut im. prof. N.Ye. Zhukovskogo [Collection of papers of XXVIII scientific and technological conference on aerodynamics. Zhukovsky Central aerodynamic Institute], pp. 128–129. (in Russian)

9. Babych, Ya.O., Bochelyuk, A.O. and Polukhin, A.V. (2017). Features of landing approach for aircraft in automatic and yoke control modes in conditions of vertical wind shear. Problemí ínformatizatsíí̈ ta upravlínnya [Problems of informatization and control], vol. 4, no. 60, pp. 5–11. (in Ukraine)

10. Grebenkin, A.V. and Kostin, S.A. (2016). Avtomaticheskaya posadka samoleta na VPP peremennogo sostoyaniya v usloviyakh silnogo bokovogo vetra i otkaza kriticheskogo dvigatelya [Automatic landing of the aircraft on a variable conditions runway with strong side wind and critical engine failure]. Trudy MIEA. Navigatsiya i upravleniye letatelnymi apparatami [Proceedings of Moscow Institute of Electromechanics and Automatics. Navigation and aircraft control], no. 12, pp. 22–24. (in Russian)

11. Mazur, V.N., Melnikova, Ye.A., Khlgatyan, S.V. and Ardalionova, A.Ye. (2015). Upravleniye samoletom pri posadke v usloviyakh izmenyayushchegosya prodolnogo vetra [Aircraft control during landing with variable longitudinal wind]. Trudy MIEA. Navigatsiya i upravleniye letatelnymi apparatami [Navigation and aircraft control], no. 10, pp. 20–28. (in Russian)

12. Kasterskiy, S.M. (2012). Longitudinal Plane Movement Optimal Control in the Landing Mode when Wind. Journal Information-measuring and Control Systems, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 10–14. (in Russian)

13. Kiselev, M.A., Levitskiy, S.V. and Podobedov, V.A. (2019). Reckoning technique of passenger airplane approach procedure in case of all main engines failure. Civil Aviation High Technologies, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 91–99. (in Russian)

14. Levitskiy, S.V. and Sviridov, N.A. (2008). Dinamika poleta [Flight dynamics]. Moscow: VVIA im. prof. N.Ye. Zhukovskogo [Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy], 527 p. (in Russian)