FLYING BACKWARDS

[imarai]

This morning on CBC Radio's "Sounds Like Canada" programme, a
mountain climber named Andre Bedard recounted surviving a jump-plane crash years ago in Rhode Island, where in the climb from take-off the engine stopped and the "plane flew backwards" and entered a "stall-spin" and crashed. He said "it actually flew backwards" twice. I wouldn't have given the claim much credit but then he said he was a pilot when the crash occurred, and has since become an airline pilot. Did he just sense flying backwards? .. or is it possible to fly backwards? ..and if so, what are the physics involved? He also credited his survival to an unfastened seat-belt and an extra large parachute pack. Curious, huh?

[hellholeflyer]

It is possible, my instrutor did it with me once. We were facing roughly east and the gps showed that we were taveling 4-6 kts west. Very very strong headwind

[rotorfloat]

I guess if you've got a strong headwind, and are in slow flight you could register a negative groundspeed...

[FL30]

YEG - YYC

in a 172 2002..... winds at altitude were 160 degrees at 85 knts,... took 5 hours to get to yyc with the 172,.... put flaps out, and slow flight,...- backwards at 35 kts....

[Hedley]

There are two different kinds of "flying backwards".

1) aircraft is moving forwards (slowly) with respect to air mass, but since air mass is travelling faster than aircraft, aircraft appears to "fly backwards" from the ground reference. This is really an illusion, because the aircraft is still moving forwards through the air

2) aircraft is really moving backwards through the air mass. This is extraordinarily rare - it is an Unlimited category aerobatic maneuver called a "tail slide", or if the aircraft is rolling, a "torque roll". No normal jump plane that I know of (eg Cessna) is capable of a tailslide or torque roll without sustaining serious damage to it's flight controls.

N.B. The guy likely didn't have a clue what he was talking about, which is as per normal for the media, which specializes in hollow skulls wrapped by lots of hair held in place by enough hair spray to create a fire hazard.

[Out of Control]

Ever heard of the Fort Mcleod circuit?? I think thats how you spell it.

[Blue Side Down]

It sounded like after the engine failure, the pilot stalled the wing (at max wieght and an aft CofG) and the plane started to 'mush' - ie begin accelerating toward the ground while maintaining little forward speed due to a high positive pitch angle- before entering the spin. When you're sitting in the 'backseat' facing backwards, any number of sensations could be felt... hence the 'falling backwards' when what probably actually happened was just that the plane pitched up and decelerated quickly.

The description of the plane made it sound like they were flying a Cessna 206.

[YYC the place to be]

see i did my flight trainning in lethbridge. I know wind. I landed a seneca in 45 gusting 55 knots! that was interesting but flying backwards is easy down in the lethbridge area. I remember having landing competitions with a buddy and our landing rolls would be 50-150ft, in a pa-28, hover landings.
I guess back in the day time air would do trainning in lethbridge with there twotters and do no turn circuits. just take off go into slow flight, have the wind push them backwards and come in and land.

[CLguy]

Not that hard to do in a Beaver. I worked with a guy who is now at Big Red who backed a Beaver over the dock at a couple of hundred feet. Was working real good until the wing dropped. Don't think he ever tried it again after that day but he did survive it and so did the aircraft. Never did find the seat cushion though!!