The F-106A That Flew Itself – After the Pilot Ejected, Landing Gently in a Field
warhistoryonline.com
warhistoryonline.com
Another very interesting case of a plane flying after the pilot ejected happened with a Soviet MiG-23 in 1989, which flew from Poland to Belgium, before crashing into a house and killing a man [1]. The map of its flightpath is interesting [2], imagine being one of the F-15 pilots that intercepted it. It would be nerve wracking having to intercept a plane heading straight into NATO airspace, and then completely bizarre when you discovered there was no pilot on it.
[0] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/52862/if-a-pilo...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgian_MiG-23_crash
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20120426041634/http://images3.we...
There's a fair amount of OP's that pretty apparently start when someone takes a resource cited in a comment and makes a new top-level post out of it.
I don't keep track of who and what. I just see a new post and think/remember, I saw that in a comment 3 hours ago - 1 day ago. (Sometimes, quicker than that.)
The behavior doesn't seem to be overwhelming HN (maybe the moderators throttle it?), and often significant conversations seem to ensue, so, as they say, "what the hey..."
One person will post a link, then somebody who reads the linked article will do some further reading, discover something interesting, and then post a link to their interesting discovery to HN, and the cycle continues.
I rather like it. It happens at a low enough level, as you mentioned, that it provides a nice stream of information on a particular topic.
His opinion was that most planes have a better idea how to stabilise than the pilot does, and in fact when taking us through emergency recovery manoeuvres in the air, he used to suggest in most cases the first reaction should be "hands off stick and throttle" (obviously only where altitude and time permitted) just to see if the airplane would self correct, before applying any inputs ourselves.
Although I remember many years ago when a RAAF Macchi jet crashed here during a training exercise. It was found that pilot error was the cause of the incident, and the instructor & student I believe lost their flying status, but there was a concerted campaign by a old lady in the city where the crew were based to get them to pay for the lost jet via garnishing their wages. I don't think she got her wish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit#Ac...
You probably get classed unfit to fly until medical exam.
If you were flying one of the 60s fast jets you may lose a kneecap on the way out.
Then you get the enquiry/court martial.
Especially irritating the the last sentence "The result was amazing".
Is there a word for describing this type of writing in English?
As I see you can split the question/answer in two, first the anthropomorphising of the plane and the events that happened. And second, something I see a lot on sites like "Hack a day", seems to me like the need to add more to the story, because the journalist otherwise cannot justify publishing it as a story. As it would only be a summary of the events already documented in the sources.
Bad writing.
But I don't think I'm using the term quite right, this seems to be a more specific issue in fiction.
http://aviadejavu.ru/Site/Arts/Art9093.htm
More morbid was the WW2 92 Sqn Spitfire that nearly made it back to its home airfield with a dead pilot at the controls. It landed in treetops near Biggin Hill after flying all the way back from France where he had been killed.
I remember one famous story of a doctor in a beechcraft who passed out from hypoxia -- only to awaken hours later by the jarring of the airplane bouncing along in a cornfield. The plane's autopilot had kept the wings level until it ran out of gas. Then it slowly descended into a field.
What a story that guy had to tell! I wonder if he flew very much after that.
So I opened it on my actual iphone. adguard blocked all of the ads.