Why do plane and helicopter pilots have to pysically fight with their control stick when flying and something goes wrong?
In: Engineering
Plenty of great answers already so I’ll just add there’s a very interesting podcast that answers questions like these and talks incidents called Black Box Down!
Answer: Former helicopter mechanic and crew chief here. Helicopters have a mechanical linkage from pilot input to control output. These linkages are hydraulic assisted. In emergency situations, you may lose or have to disable the hydraulic servos. As you can imagine, the feedback from the rotor blades can make it quite difficult to smoothly operate.
As an example, when you drive your car, stick your hand out the window and feel the air flowing. Your muscles are the servos controlling your hand. Now imagine you didn’t have control of your finger but still control hand overall. It’s a rough, but you can still keep your hand more or less in place, even if the finer details aren’t the same.
we don’t. you’ve been watching too many movies.
most of the time the pressure from your pinky is enough to make all flight adjustments.
if there’s moderate to heavy turbulence, I’ll hold on with my hand
If it’s heavy or more, I’ll stay home.
Helicopter pilot here. Our controls are “boosted” meaning that our physical inputs get amplified by hydroelectric motors. If we lose boost, then it’s just our physical inputs controlling the aircraft which sometimes is insanely difficult and strenuous. Some helicopters like the MH-53 are impossible to control without hydraulic boost.
Probably the same reason in NASCAR movies the cars have 73 gears and that final majestic last gear that only the hero uses to win the race when all the other drivers were afraid to do so.
In other words: pure bullshit purely for the sake of cinamatics.
Another pilot here. All the controls in my plane are directly connected to the yoke and pedals (manual). When airflow is low, especially during slow flight such as during landings, controls require exaggerated expression. They don’t have much lift being generated to cause a change.
Alternatively, very strong winds in lighter aircraft can definitely cause you to fight. They can quickly push you and change your pitch, yaw, and roll (these are the axis of motion). In this case you have to counter the effects of the wind.
Most of this is experienced extensively by all pilots in training. But it can take real physical effort (without much return from the controls). Usually however, you fly with “two fingers”. A light touch will do it 9 times out of 10 if you’re trimmed in (tuned controls to stable). Remember, flight is across long distances and you generally navigate on 10° increments (eg 010° – 360°) or smaller so planes must fly on small movements and corrections not grant turns like you see on movies.
The only times I’ve ever done movement like that when not training and with passengers was during some landings where the wind goes dead on me or once with an engine out on takeoff with about 400 feet below me to return to runway.
Do they? Or is that just what you’ve seen in movies?
It depends on the failure, if you lose an engine in a twin then you have to step on the running engine with the rudder otherwise the plane will yaw in the direction of the failed engine due to the power imbalance – and you have to do it very quickly. Novice pilots will instinctively push the throttle forward on the still running engine (which you need to do to maintain power) but will forget to step on the rudder. Twin engine-out training is one of the most challenging and dangerous parts of flight training. It accounts for a large share of deaths in general aviation and a good chunk of them are during training.
The other factor is that often the autopilot will shut off during a catastrophic failure and you need to make up for whatever the autopilot was doing for you. It isn’t normally very dramatic, though, either in engine out or auto-pilot disconnect situations. The pilot will grab the controls and make fluid and firm inputs to the controls to keep the aircraft in balanced flight.
Helicopter pilot, answer is you don’t unless the hydraulic system has failed. This is less likely the larger the helicopter as they have multiple independent hydraulic systems so one failing has no effect at all. Smaller helicopters like Jetrangers or Astars are harder to control with a hydraulic failure but not even that bad, we train to land with the hydraulics off by flying real aircraft with the hydraulics turned off, it isn’t considered dangerous to do so. For a large helicopter if you somehow had all hydraulics fail at the same time depending on the type it is a major emergency and possibly unrecoverable.
There is one plane crash (can’t remember which one ) where the two pilote were inputting opposite order on the stick, basically fighting each other
Edit: it’s [AirAsia Flight 8501](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia_AirAsia_Flight_8501)
Don’t know if the two sticks are linked
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