As this is the festive edition of Directions there are a few changes to the usual line-up; the real-world news which often features mishaps and disasters is turned on it’s head and instead praises the pilots who stared disaster in the face making it look away in shame and includes stories of heroism at times when aircrew had truly been caught with their pants round their ankles! Plus a few humorous tales to boot.

In the video section you may want to get a drink in hand and a few nibbles by your side before you settle in as we have two relatively long programs to watch taking you behind the scenes of aircraft construction. The first follows a Boeing 747 as it undergoes the most intensive checks it will ever take in service - a level-D check. The second film is at the home of Learjet and the stages involved in building a performance aircraft.

Inspired by a forum thread started by Ben I have complied a list of my most useful and used installed add-ons and recommended software, feel free to send me a quick dit on anything you think should be included and I’ll make a second list later.

Some of the regular features are here - Ben (thanks) sent in a few screenshot’s which I’ve played about with in Flash, plus the regular competition and jokes. Look out for the next Directions in 2013 and keep the blue side up!

Wishing you all a very...On advice from the UKDirect legal dept. the phrase “Merry Christmas” may offend and instead offered the following:

Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, winter solstice holiday,  practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion  of your choice, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others  who choose to practice their own religion as well as those who choose  not to practice a religion at all;

Additionally,
a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2012, but not  without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose  contributions have helped make our society great, without regard to the  race, creed, color, religious, or sexual preferences of the wishes.

(Disclaimer: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It implies no  promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for  her/himself or others and no responsibility for any unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to those not caught up in the holiday spirit.)

Merry Christmas from Newshound aka Mark UKD171

Ben UKD122 sent in a series of photos of UKD aircraft. First up is the A380 followed by Boeing's 737-800 and 767-300.
I’ve then ruined them by putting them in a Flash slideshow and adding the snow effect!

Do you have a screen shot you are proud of and wouldn't mind seeing messed up on here? Please send it in and share it with us.
To enter in the next e-magazine send your entries to Newshound: mark[at]planecrazy.me.uk

Admit it: At one time or another, you've thought, Man, being an airline pilot seems like a pretty easy job. And even they'll tell you that airliners pretty much fly themselves. For most of the trip, the pilot is there to make sure nothing goes wrong.

But sometimes, things do go wrong. Way wrong. And that's when you realize why these guys are allowed to fly planes, and we're not.

American Airlines Flight 96

In 1972, American Airlines DC-10 Flight 96 was on its way from Detroit to Buffalo. Shortly after taking off, there was the sound of a massive crash. Pilot Bryce McCormick, known for having the most piloty name in history, thought he'd just been in a mid-air collision.
Then, in the rear passenger area, a fog suddenly formed. Just as the crew was realising this meant sudden decompression, the floor of the cabin started to collapse into the cargo hold. What the ....?
All the throttles suddenly went to idle and the right rudder pedal jammed forwards. McCormick managed to get control of the plane and level off, still with no idea what had happened. He used left aileron to counter the jammed rudder but the tail mounted engine had shut down and its throttle stuck.

It turned out the baggage handlers had not properly closed the rear cargo door, and as the aircraft climbed the pressure inside the fuselage ripped the door off, ejecting it into the left elevator rendering it useless. The explosive decrease in pressure in the hold caused the passenger deck above to collapse crushing the control cables running underneath to jam which forced the rudder to maximum right deflection and the controls to NO.2 engine cut and shut down.

He decided to turn around and go back to Detroit, passengers were told to brace themselves for an emergency landing, and to put their yellow oxygen masks on. Trouble was, the oxygen bags hadn't dropped because they only deploy when the plane is above 14,000 feet, and they were a few thousand feet under that window!

With most of the rear elevator removed by the cargo door the only real option to control descent rate was to vary the engines thrust but they were coming in too hard and too fast, the sluggish controls putting the plane on a collision course with the hard surface of the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. McCormick fought to level out the plane, and managed a safe albeit heavy landing, only to see the plane go veering to the right and off the runway.
The first officer, Peter Whitney, applied full reverse thrust to the left engine and idled the right steering the plane back to the runway, the plane finally coming to a rest with two of the three landing gear sitting in the grass off the side of the pavement. The result: a few minor injuries. Amazing, considering an identical cargo door accident outside Paris resulted in the deaths of everybody on board.    Wikipedia American_Airlines_Flight_96

Miracle on the Hudson

In 2009, US Airways Flight 1549, just after takeoff from New York, hit a flock of Canada geese. The birds obscured the windshield, which would be bad on its own but they also fodded both engines, and the plane lost all power.

What makes this story different from any other on this list is that there would be no limping back to the airport for a hard landing on the runway. They weren't going to have the power to get back to an airport. Captain "Sully" Sullenburger radioed traffic control and told them as much.  He was going to have to set the plane down, which meant finding something other than a runway. In this case, all they had was the Hudson River.

If landing an airliner on a river wasn't bad enough, well, the situation was actually worse than that. Right ahead of the plane was a little obstacle called the George Washington Bridge. It happens to span the Hudson River right across the spot where Sullenburger's plane was going to make its descent. No one was more surprised than Sullenburger, by the way, who in all the excitement had forgotten the bridge was there (which is understandable because his windshield was covered in dead goose).

At this point, his instruments started screeching warnings about how he was about to crash into something huge and bridge-shaped.
Amazingly, the plane cleared the bridge by less than 900 feet, which had to be a nice wake-up call to the drivers on the bridge who looked up to see this hulking plane suddenly blotting out the sun.

Sullenburger guided the plane down. Finally it slammed into the river at about 150 miles per hour, but the plane held together, and everyone survived.
Rescue boats rushed to the scene and pulled everyone out of the freezing water. Sullenburger was the last one off.
Wikipedia UA1549  for more info and a video of the event!

United Airlines Flight 232

Warning: this is the only story here where not everyone is so lucky.
In 1989, a United Airlines DC-10, Flight 232 took off from Denver for Chicago. About an hour into the flight, an engine's fan disk failed due to a fatigue crack. The result was the engine blew out, damaging the stabiliser and sending shrapnel into the plane's hydraulic lines and severing them.
By the way the DC-10 uses hydraulics to operate the flaps, rudder, stabilizer and every other control surface of the aircraft!

Since hydraulic fluid was now leaking at a pretty serious pace, the controls of the plane became weaker and weaker. Pilot Alfred Haynes began to pull the throttle to idle, but there was another problem -- the damage to the plane had the throttle stuck on full power.  The crew had to cut off some fuel to the engine to get it to slow down, at which point they discovered that the yoke wasn't working either.  In short, they now had no normal control of the plane whatsoever. Improvising, Haynes and his crew had to manually rev the remaining engines up and down to try to manipulate the rudderless aircraft and get it back to something close to level.

The crew called United Airlines' maintenance base using one of their radios, but as a total loss of hydraulics on the DC-10 was considered "virtually impossible", there were no procedures or guidelines for dealing with such an event. Air traffic control (ATC) was contacted and an emergency landing at nearby Sioux Gateway Airport was organized.  Haynes kept his sense of humor during the emergency, as recorded on the plane's cockpit voice recorder (CVR):

        Sioux City Approach: United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, the wind's currently three six zero at one one; three sixty at eleven. You're cleared to land on any runway.
    Haynes: [laughter] Roger. [laughter] You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?

As they came in to land, the crew managed to get the landing gear down and announced to the passengers that they should brace for impact. With no hydraulics, they were unable to control the speed at which the plane could land. A normal landing is at 140 knots, Flight 232 was coming in at 240 knots, which is less like landing and more like crashing at an angle. Is now a good place to mention that at the time, no plane that lost all hydraulics ever landed safely? And that, in fact, no one had ever survived that situation?

The wing of the plane hit first and burst into flames. The plane bounced violently and the tail section snapped off. After skidding further, the other wing came off and the plane ground to a halt, with fire and emergency crews rushing to the scene.  A third of the passengers lost their lives (many weren't because of the crash, but from inhaling the smoke that filled the cabin) but the efforts of Haynes, co-pilot William Records, engineer Dudley Dvorak, and a  DC-10 instructor Dennis E. Fitch (flying as a passenger), saved the lives of 185 people.

Wikipedia UAL232

British Airways Flight 5390

In 1990, British Airways BAC 1-11-500, Flight 5390 had just taken off from Birmingham on its way to Spain. However, right as the flight attendants were about to wheel out the food cart, part of the windscreen of the plane suddenly failed. Pressurisation blew the windscreen outwards sucking everything else not bolted down out too - unfortunately for pilot Tim Lancaster that included him - the only thing keeping him from flying off into the distance and plummeting to his death was a flight attendant, who ran in and grabbed Lancaster by the belt.

This, by the way, is precisely the reason why planes have co-pilots. And here's where one Mr. Alastair Atchison stepped up to the plate.

It wasn't going to be easy. Aside from the flight attendant next to him clutching the pilot's legs with all of his strength, the sudden decompression also pulled the cockpit door into the cockpit, which blocked access to the throttles. When Atchison tried to get on the radio to declare an emergency, he couldn't hear the response due to all the chaos erupting around him.

It took several minutes to get emergency landing permission from Southampton airport, all the while with the pilot still outside the windshield from the knees up, being pushed against the plane at 500 miles per hour, suffering from frostbite and about to lose consciousness due to the thin air. The flight attendants believed the pilot was already dead but held on to him due to concerns his body would hit the port engine and cause an engine fire or failure which all agreed wouldn't be a good thing..

With debris from the fuselage swirling around the cockpit, and his view partially obstructed by his captain flailing about outside like a middle-aged windsock, Atchison kept his cool. He guided the plane to the ground, and gently landed 35 minutes after the windshield failure started the madness.

Amazingly, the pilot not only survived, but had only a few bone fractures and some frostbite to show from his exterior plane ride. The only other person injured was the first flight attendant who hung onto him during the ordeal, also suffering from frostbite.

Wikipedia BA5390

British Airways Flight 9

British Airways Boeing 747-200, Flight 9 was flying from Heathrow to New Zealand in 1982, and was on one of the last legs of the trip, going from Malaysia to Perth, Australia. An electrical anomaly known as St. Elmo's fire suddenly erupted on the windscreen. The passenger cabin then began to smell of sulfur and, one by one, the engines started surging and flaming-out for no apparent reason.  After all four engines had ground to a halt, the flight engineer yelled, "I don't believe it, all four engines have failed!"

At this point, the falling aircraft had about 23 minutes of glide time until it hit the ocean. The crew frantically tried to restart the engines in mid-air. With a crash landing possibly only minutes away, the pilot, Captain Eric Moody, made a breathtaking announcement over the PA: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."

The plane continued to lose altitude and the oxygen masks dropped in the passenger compartment. The crew was about one minute away from having to make an emergency landing in an ocean with a 747 -- something no one had ever tried.  Moody and his crew continued to try restarting the engines ... and it worked. The engines spun back to life, one by one. They climbed to avoid a mountain range but as their altitude increased the engines surged and flamed-out again.

Unbeknown to the crew the aircraft had flown into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung and had choked the engines until they stalled.  As the 747 descended they cleared the ash cloud and the remaining ash fouling the engines cooled and fell out allowing the engines to be restarted. Naturally when they started to climb up into the ash cloud for the second time the process had begun again!

After recovering for the second time Capt. Moody suspected some problem with the plane at altitude and this time leveled the plane at 12,000 feet, and headed towards the nearest airport in Jakarta.

As Flight 9 approached Jakarta, the crew found it difficult to see anything through the windscreen, and made the approach almost entirely on instruments. But when your down on your luck it isn’t going to be as simple as that! They couldn’t land just by autopilot and instruments as part of the ILS system was inoperative and the first officer had to call out the distance and required height for Moody to aim for. In the captain's own hilarious words, it was "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse."

Finally, with the sound of 248 unclenching passenger buttholes, the wheels touched down, no lives were lost. However the windscreen was so fogged up that they couldn’t see to taxi, the runway lights blinding the pilots. The ash cloud had effectively sand-blasted the windscreen and ‘frosted’ it so the passengers had to disembark by emergency slide anyway.

FYI Flight 9's engine-less flight entered the Guinness Book of Records as the longest glide in a non-purpose-built aircraft!

Wikipedia Flight 9

Chinese Airlines Flight 006

And finally, a story that gives us all hope that being a pilot might not be beyond our dreams or “what can happen when you don't do your job properly”...

In 1985, Chinese Airlines Boeing 747SP, Flight 006 was flying from Taiwan to Los Angeles when the no.4 engine went out on the starboard side of the plane. This engine had failed twice on previous flights but restarted shortly after -- which, according to traditional aircraft maintenance guidelines, is totally just as good as actually working (you'll find out as this entry goes on that back then, Chinese airlines maintenance practices was slightly relaxed).

The flight engineer tried and failed to restart the engine at 41,000ft contrary to procedure which states 31,000ft as the maximum. As the plane lost forward speed the autopilot  tilted the plane 23 degrees to port to compensate for the asymmetrical thrust. As the plane lost more momentum it overcame the autopilot and started rolling to the right. Pilot Min-Yuan Ho, drawing from his years of experience, determined that commercial airliners don't normally do this and instead of applying a left rudder input he disengaged the autopilot!   As you'll see the pilots are just as capable as the maintainers. By the time he disengaged the autopilot (by now the only thing making any effort to keep the plane the correct way up), the plane had rolled 60 degrees to starboard, and was falling fast.

So now he was plummeting toward the ocean, blinded by clouds and relying on instruments. As the artificial horizon doesn't normally indicate a 60 degree barrel roll and a 90 degree nose-dive in normal flight he assumed it was wrong. The 747 lost 10,000 feet of altitude in less than 20 seconds and passengers experienced upto 5g's of force.

Min-Yuan Ho managed to wrestle the aircraft under control with about 20 seconds to spare before it would have splashed down.  Only after breaking through the bottom of the clouds at 11,000 feet (3,400 m) could the captain orient himself and bring the plane under control, leveling out at 9,600 feet but they weren't out of the woods yet. The landing gear had been forced out and was now stuck down, and the drag that it was causing meant they wouldn't have enough fuel to get to Los Angeles. They diverted to San Francisco, after plunging 30,000ft in less than two and a half minutes but at least now the flamed-out engine would start!  The flight crew didn't even announce their landing as any kind of emergency and actually reported to air traffic control "condition normal now" to the stunned air traffic controllers.

It was only after learning of injuries on board that the tower declared the jumbo jet to be an emergency. Incredibly, it landed safely even with massive damage to the  horizontal stabiliser (large parts of it was missing, plus all its hydraulic fluid had been lost) with only two seriously injured passengers which, given the operational standards of the airline, was probably well within normal guidelines. Structural checks later showed each wing had been permanently bent upwards by 2 inches each!!!

Wikipedia Flight006

Time to get that grey matter working!. Email answers to ukd “at” planecrazy.me.uk or use the message facility on FS Airlines.  Answers will be posted in the next Directions but if you email me your guesses I will reply straight away (in confidence - so no need to worry about embarrassment.

1> When taxiing a moving light aircraft on the ground, how do you make a right turn?

a)   use differential braking
b)   turn the control yoke to the right
c)   right rudder pedal forward
d)   the plane will follow the towing tug

2> What does VOR stand for?

a) Very high frequency Omnidirectional Radio/Range

b) VHF Operations Radar

c) Vehicle Operations Radio

d) Variable Oscillation Radar

3> What does CAVOK stand for?

a: Chartered Air Vehicle Passed OK

b: Cessna Aviation Verified Owners Klub

c: Common Air VHF Omnirange Kaleidoscope

d) Ceiling and Visibility OK

Answers to last Directions quiz:

1. The force that opposes the forward motion of the plane is called: drag
2. When flying with FSAirlines which statement is true: answer b:
   Max Taxi speed is 30kts, landing lights must be switched off before passing 10,000ft, max indicated speed is 250kts below 10,000ft
3. Concorde was the first supersonic passenger plane, but in what year did it first fly? answer b. 1969  Thats 43 years ago!
   http://www.planecrazy.me.uk/html/concorde.html

My Favourite Addons

This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means but it does include the programs I use the most. On the list are others I bought recently and in one example - one to avoid! I haven’t included any aircraft here, maybe I will in a later Directions.
 

• DBS Studio’s Follow Me Service for FSX. You may see from time to time that some airports employ ‘follow me’ vehicles to guide aircraft to the terminals or runways as appropriate. This software emulates that and I had high hopes for it, instead of following large floating yellow arrows from the default ATC I expected this to be much more realistic. However after purchasing it earlier this year I have had nothing but frustration whenever I try to use it. In fact I don’t bother anymore. When it didn’t cause my pc to crash (and lose my FSAirlines flight before it was logged) it would drive off way too fast and occasionally I would lose sight of it. There is a menu option to adjust it’s speed which just doesn't work for me so I try to follow it anyway - it’s going at 35 mph - and it should wait if it gets too far ahead, but if your at a large, busy airport then it can be waiting out of sight. It works ok at smaller airports but then whats the point?
   
• FXAA Tool   www.assembla.com/spaces/fxaa-pp-inject/wiki 
  “FXAA Tool adds different post processing methods to games, like Anti Aliasing, Sharpening, Bloom, Color Tones etc.  It  does so by adding the post processing to the game engines last rendered  image, and works for all graphic cards that can provide some descent  shader calculation performance.  FXAA is a cost effective Anti Aliasing process done in one single pass,  which means that it has virtual no impact on the overall system  performance.”  I find it improves the look of flightsim with no impact on frame rates, and as a bonus it’s FREE!
   
• REX (Real Environment Extreme)  realenvironmentxtreme.com
  This program will replace all your textures with much better defined ones. It works by downloading the real weather for your trip (you can load your flightsim-generated flightplan into it) and choosing the most suitable textures for the weather. As such it has a giant library of textures to draw upon. It does more than the weather though, it will also upgrade your airports, runways, roads, rivers and seas.
   
• FSUIPC   www.schiratti.com/dowson
  This is almost a necessity if you want to use 3rd party software/add-ons and a free version is available with some limitations that is more than adequate for most users. The full priced option is a very handy program if you want to build your own cockpit or tweak the internal workings of flightsim. For instance your battery can now hold a charge for longer than it takes to open the cockpit door!
   
• UK2000 sceneries  www.uk2000scenery.com
  If I had to choose just one scenery it would be from this range. UK2000 covers most of the British Isles from small grass airstrips to large multi-runway  international airports. They are so good there is very little freeware or payware scenery for the UK, as they can’t compete! UKDirect pilots are entitled to a 20% discount on UK2000 Extreme scenery airports, drop me an email to get it.
   
• Flightsim Commander (v8) www.fscommander.com
  FlightSim Commander is a professional flight planner, GPS, Moving Map and navigation tool for Flight Simulator 2004 and Flight Simulator X . Being a stand-alone program, FlightSim Commander can also be used in a network or with single-monitor or multi-monitor systems. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIP-0sez_aU   I use it for route planning and import it into Flight Simulator.
   
• FSPS Extreme FSX   www.tweakfs.com
  I’ve been using this family of addons for years and updating as new releases become available. The biggest boost to frame rates I’ve ever seen came from this software, far more than from a super-dooper graphics card upgrade.
   
• Accu-Feel: Global FSX Enhancement  www.a2asimulations.com
  Accu-Feel is a program written for FSX that uses additional physics and sound to elevate almost your entire aircraft collection, both default and 3rd party. It works at the core of FSX, and therefore does not make any changes to any of your aircraft files. It makes the sim more immersive with sounds and movement. Just before you stall in flightsim there is no warning unlike flying in the real world, Accu-feel shakes the cockpit and creates the sounds which are more pronounced the closer to the edge you fly! It does a lot more besides and they're all very subtle effects, so much so that you don’t really notice them but it all combines to make the experience more realistic.
   
• Radar Contact (v4)   www.jdtllc.com
  Radar Contact is the most complete Air Traffic Control (ATC) add-on for  Microsoft Flight Simulator. Whether you like flying the heavies, such as the 747 or the Airbus 340, turboprops, or general aircraft, RC allows you to fly Departure Procedures, will accurately handle  emergencies, give you the option to file and fly specific approaches, and allow you to fly to your  alternate airport when the weather is below minimums. Fantastic ATC but requires a bit of effort to learn, however once you have its amazing. Forget the American only accents of default ATC and fly with European rules.
   
• A2A Sim 3D Lights Redux  FS2004/FSX www.a2asimulations.com
  3D Lights cast realistic light out into 3D space, creating stunning visuals and a more immersive flying experience. FEATURES Over 40 new lighting effects including strobes, beacons, navigation, and runway lights Fully-realized 3D landing lights actually cast light into space. Vintage, halogen, and modern xenon lights included Installs into all default aircraft and can be added to other 3rd party planes. They look good in screenshots and light up the ground realistically.
   
• GSX Ground Services for FSX   www.fsdreamteam.com
  GSX simulates several operations on ground, like Marshalling, Catering, Boarding/Deboarding of passengers and Baggage, Stairs, Refueling vehicles, Pushback with realistic behavior, Folllow Me cars, Docking System and more, all featuring many native FSX animations and believable human characters. I’m cheating a bit with this one as it’s Ben UKD122’s recommendation! However I think I will take the plunge.  www.youtube.com