Ask most professional pilots about either the USAir accident in Pittsburgh or the United Airlines crash in Colorado Springs, when the Boeing 737s flipped upside down before impact, and the discussion often focuses on whether it was wake turbulence, a roll cloud or a rudder hard-over that caused the crashes. Make a case for survivability in either of these two accidents and people will raise their eyebrows as if to say, “Are you kidding me?”
Few experts, except perhaps the folks at Boeing and Don Wylie from Aviation Safety Training (AST), believe the pilots could possibly have survived a rudder hard-over, if that was indeed the cause as the NTSB claims. USAir Flight 427’s old analog flight data recorder did not track rudder position. One of the questions that remain, however, is if these pilots could have recovered their airplanes. The simple answer is that they were never trained to recognize and recover from such an upset.
Aviators, especially those who climbed the professional ladder from the ranks of flight instructors, think they have a pretty firm grasp on aerodynamics. But after spending a few days in the company of Don Wylie, most experts will find themselves wondering how well they really paid attention during their early flight-training days.
Wylie, a former Air Force F-4 pilot in Vietnam, saw a parting of the waves, so to speak, after the USAir crash. “You only have to listen to the transcript to grasp the significance of what happened, no matter what turned the airplane over. The final words of the captain to the first officer are ‘Help me pull.’ The USAir Boeing was fully stalled when it crashed.”
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