Dead Stick - No Fuel At 25,000'

[FAC257]

This was a first.

Was on a long haul across Brazil at 25,000' yesterday and feel asleep. Woke up this AM to find FSX was paused thanks to AFK catching her at 24K.
Couldn't decide what I wanted to do. Exit the flight and loose the logged hours or risk a dead stick and loose a career if it went badly.

Decided to go for it.

Made sure the gear would extend, feathered the props, and just in case I needed battery reserves for landing, I killed the lights. Started the cork screw down to SBGL.


Trying to decide when to flair to get rid of the serious decent rate.


Slight bounce but down.


Managed to at least roll out of the way.


Worst cost per mile ever. Corporate decided it wasn't my fault. It was determined that the flight engineer failed to wake me up before we were out of fuel.



Classy way to show up in Rio for the Olympics.

[FlameOut]

You saw what happened to me ! LOL

[Piper_EEWL]

Nice job saving the plane and passengers! Man Larry really needs to step up his game for the Conny

[Aymi]

Same thing happened to me in the middle of the pacific but it was oil instead of fuel

I missed the only runway in the 400nm radius by being 200ft too high on the improvised final...

Congratz on your landing !

[addman]

Wow! Impressive save, not the best glider in the world but at least you had some altitude to help you. Very good!

Cheers!/Andreas

[FAC257]

Didn't realize until later on when thinking about what happened, that the out of fuel landing may be less stressful than the running on fume landings.

When your out of fuel, that's it. It's doing what it's going to be all the way down. When doing the long hauls and down to fumes while trying to land, there's always that thought that one or more engines are going to quit any minute. With a glider you already know what to expect.

Think 3 minutes of panic at 24,000' feet, might be a bit better than 3 minutes of panic at 2400'.

Also remembered that we never turned the Seat Belt sign back on. As fast as we were coming down, it must have been a 377 Vomit Comet in the back.
Passengers were moaning, babies were crying, and Heidi was complaining about the cabin being uncomfortable.

[Piper_EEWL]

Also remembered that we never turned the Seat Belt sign back on. As fast as we were coming down, it must have been a 377 Vomit Comet in the back.
Passengers were moaning, babies were crying, and Heidi was complaining about the cabin being uncomfortable.

Well I'm assuming that you lost pressurization too after you ran dry no? Would be interesting to know at what rate the cabin losses it's pressure (or maybe the "climbrate" of the cabin due to power loss) and the resulting descent rate of the aircraft that gets you to a "safe" altitude (like 10,000ft).

[FAC257]

I think there were complaints coming from the back related to both cabin temps and pressurization.
I was concentrating so much on controlling the decent and trying to keep the end of the runway in view as much as possible, that I wasn't paying attention to exactly what was being said.

[Jacques]

Certainly raising the bar for excellence under fire!

[Lewis - A2A]

haha, great save FAC and good to hear the AFK almost the forgotten feature getting a good work out

cheers,
Lewis

[Piper_EEWL]

I think there were complaints coming from the back related to both cabin temps and pressurization.
I was concentrating so much on controlling the decent and trying to keep the end of the runway in view as much as possible, that I wasn't paying attention to exactly what was being said.

I bet you were a bit busy.

Well as said before great job making the runway. And even better job in fooling the airline that it wasn't your fault

[Neon]

Nice flying.

[SunGirl]

How did your engines get wrecked? prop strike on landing?

[FAC257]

No, the landing went really smooth.

I think the overhaul was probably to do with feathering all four engines. Up until the time they ran out of fuel, they were in great shape.

[Eric.]

How did your engines get wrecked? prop strike on landing?

Shock cooling from being shut down at cruise speed and maintaining a reasonably high airspeed through the descent would have made cylinder head temps drop rapidly. In my early days of owning the 377 I practiced an engine shutdown and restart in flight and once on the ground that brand new engine had degraded a lot.