14.07.2010, 04:20
In the course of dangerous missions over pixel occupied territory, I've had planes damaged as everyone else. On rare occaisions there's been significant damage and by some fluke, the aeroplane is still under marginal control. Inevitably though as the flight conditions change, the aeroplane gets away from me and it's wiser to bale out. That's quite realistic.
Even if a pilot retains a measure of control at a given airspeed, a change of condition will alter the balance. Even speeding up or slowing down can be catastrophic, let alone any attempt at manoevering. This brings up a major problem. Assuming an aeroplane is still flying with this sort of damage, as the pilot descends to land (or something similar) he's running out of options, because at some point he will be too low to bale out and if he slows down to the point where his remaining control is ineffective, he's got little chance of survival, and attempting to alight at higher speeds brings an obvious hazard to safe conduct of the flight.
Even if a pilot retains a measure of control at a given airspeed, a change of condition will alter the balance. Even speeding up or slowing down can be catastrophic, let alone any attempt at manoevering. This brings up a major problem. Assuming an aeroplane is still flying with this sort of damage, as the pilot descends to land (or something similar) he's running out of options, because at some point he will be too low to bale out and if he slows down to the point where his remaining control is ineffective, he's got little chance of survival, and attempting to alight at higher speeds brings an obvious hazard to safe conduct of the flight.