Flight with disabled controls

• LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055, an Ilyushin Il-62M, on 9 May 1987. According to the Polish investigatory commission, the cause of the crash was the disintegration of an engine shaft due to faulty bearings inside engine No. 2, which seized, causing extensive heat. This in turn caused the consequent damage to engine No. 1, rapid decompression of the fuselage, and a fire in the cargo hold, as well as the loss of elevator controls and progressive electrical failures. Zygmunt Pawlaczyk decided to return to Warsaw Okecie Airport using only trim tabs to control the flight of the aircraft. He lost his struggle to land about 5 km from the runway in the Kabacki Forest. All 172 passengers and 11 crew members perished.[2]
• United Airlines Flight 232, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, on 19 July 1989. A fan disk in the No. 2 engine fractured, severing most of the flight controls. Dennis Fitch, a deadheading DC-10 instructor who had studied the case of JAL Flight 123, was able to help the pilots steer the aircraft using throttle differential. Despite the break-up of the aircraft on landing, 175 of 285 passengers and 10 of the 11 crew members survived.[3]
• Baikal Airlines Flight 130, a Tupolev Tu-154, on 3 January 1994. When starting the engines before takeoff, the pilots noticed a warning light signaling dangerous rotation of the starter in engine #2. Believing the warning to be false, they decided to take off anyway. During the initial climb, the starter failed and a fire broke out in the #2 engine. The fire damaged all three hydraulic lines, rendering the plane uncontrollable. After 12 minutes of the crew trying to control the sliding trajectory of the plane, it eventually crashed into a dairy farm near Mamony town at 500 km/h, killing all 125 people aboard and one man on the ground.[4]
• Eastern Air Lines Flight 935, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, on September 22, 1981. Suffered an uncontained failure of the No. 2 engine on takeoff from Newark, NJ. The crew were able to land the aircraft safely at John F. Kennedy International Airport with some limited use of the outboard spoilers, the inboard ailerons and the horizontal stabilizer, plus the differential engine power of the remaining two engines.[5]

• American Airlines Flight 96, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, on 12 June 1972. The failure of the rear cargo door caused an explosive decompression, which in turn caused the rear main cabin floor to collapse and severed flight controls. The pilots had only limited ailerons and elevators; the rudder was jammed. The number two engine also ran down to idle at the time of decompression. The aircraft landed safely at Detroit-Metropolitan Airport.[6]
• Delta Air Lines Flight 1080, on April 12 1977, a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar suffered a structural failure of a bearing assembly controlling the aircraft's left stabilizer, which caused it to jam in a full trailing edge up configuration. The plane pitched violently upwards and the pilots could not counteract the pitching force even when pressing the control column fully down. This caused the plane to lose speed rapidly and nearly stall. The pilot managed to regain control by using the Tristar's tail engine at maximum power and lowering the thrust on the wing engines in order to generate differential thrust. The airliner landed at Los Angeles International Airport, with all 41 passengers and 11 crew being unharmed.[7]
• Japan Airlines Flight 123, a Boeing 747, on 12 August 1985. A faulty repair years earlier had weakened the aircraft's rear pressure bulkhead, which failed in flight. The vertical stabilizer and much of the aircraft's empennage was blown off during the decompression. The decompression also ruptured all four hydraulic lines which controlled the aircraft's mechanical flight controls. The pilots were able to continue flying the aircraft with very limited control, but after 32 minutes the aircraft crashed into a mountain, killing 520 of the 524 people aboard in the deadliest single aircraft disaster in history.[8]
• Turkish Airlines Flight 981, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, on 3 March 1974. Similar to American Airlines Flight 96, the flight experienced an explosive decompression, when flying over the town of Meaux, France, caused by a rear cargo door failure. The rear main cabin floor collapsed and severed all flight controls. While the plane went into a vertical dive, the captain called for "Speed!" meaning increasing engine thrust to pull the plane's nose up. The plane began to level out, but had lost too much altitude and slammed into the Ermenonville Forest. All 346 people on board were killed upon impact, and it became the worst single aircraft disaster without survivors, and the fourth deadliest aviation death count ever.[9]
• Reeve Aleutian Airways Flight 8, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, on 8 June 1983. Flying over Cold Bay, Alaska, the plane's number 4 engine propeller separated and cut a hole in the plane, causing an explosive decompression, jammed flight controls, snapped throttle cables, and left the flight deck crew of three with only autopilot that had no lateral control. After managing to wrench the ailerons and elevators into minimal working condition, the crew tried to land at Anchorage at high speed. They had to make a go-around, but landed on the second attempt, saving all 10 passengers on board.[10]
• Northwest Airlines Flight 85, a Boeing 747-400, on 9 October 2002. Midway through a flight from Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport to New Tokyo International Airport, the aircraft suffered a rudder hardover event due to metal fatigue, jamming the lower rudder fully to the left. By manipulating the upper rudder, the crew was able to perform a successful landing at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport with no loss of life.
• Air Midwest Flight 5481, a Beechcraft 1900D, on 8 January 2003. On takeoff from Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, it pitched up into a vertical ascent and stalled, only 37 seconds later smashing into a US Airways hangar, despite the captain applying full elevator down. There were 21 fatalities. The NTSB found out that the plane had been overweight and that during maintenance, the tension turnbuckles that governed elevator movement had been set incorrectly by an inexperienced mechanic. This caused the elevators to lose control upon takeoff.[11]
• Air Transat Flight 961, an Airbus A310, on 6 March 2005, catastrophic structural failure: the rudder detached from the aircraft with a loud bang. The pilots regained enough control to land the aircraft safely.[12]

• Philippine Airlines Flight 434, a Boeing 747, on 11 December 1994. The hydraulics were damaged by a bomb in the passenger cabin.[13]
• DHL shootdown incident in Baghdad on 22 November 2003. The Airbus A300 DHL aircraft, hit by a surface-to-air missile, was the first jet airliner to land safely without any hydraulics using only engine controls.[14]

• Pan Am Flight 845, a Boeing 747, on 30 July 1971. When taking off from San Francisco International Airport, the plane struck the approach lighting system after taxiing onto a much too short runway. After the impact, the plane continued into the takeoff roll, though its fuselage, landing gear, and 3 out of 4 hydraulic systems were badly damaged. After making a full circle over the Pacific Ocean for an hour and 42 minutes and dumping fuel, the plane made a hard emergency landing at San Francisco, ending on its tail. All 218 passengers survived with a few minor injuries.[15]

The XCO-5, an experimental observation biplane flown in altitude tests

On October 10, 1928, U.S. Army photographer Albert William Stevens and Captain St. Clair Streett, the chief of the U.S. Army Air Corps Materiel Division's Flying Branch, flew the XCO-5 experimental biplane to achieve an unofficial altitude record for aircraft carrying more than one person: 37,854 feet (11,538 m); less than 1,000 feet (300 m) short of the official single-person altitude record.[16] Stevens snapped photographs of the ground below, warmed by electrically heated mittens and many layers of clothing. At that height the men measured a temperature of −78 °F (−61 °C), cold enough to freeze the aircraft controls.[17] When Stevens was finished with his camera, Streett found that the aircraft's controls were rendered immobile in the cold, with Streett unable to reduce throttle for descent. The aircraft's engine continued to run at the high power level necessary for maintaining high altitude. Streett contemplated diving at full power, but the XCO-5 was not built for such strong maneuvers—its wings could have sheared off. Instead, Streett waited until fuel was exhausted and the engine sputtered to a stop, after which he piloted the fragile aircraft down in a gentle glide and made a deadstick landing.[17] An article about the feat appeared in Popular Science in May 1929, entitled "Stranded—Seven Miles Up!"[17]

• The aircraft designer Roy Chadwick was killed on 23 August 1947 during a crash on take-off of the prototype Avro Tudor 2, G-AGSU, from Woodford airfield. The accident was due to an error in an overnight servicing in which the aileron control cables were inadvertently crossed.
• X-15 Flight 3-65-97, a NASA test flight piloted by Michael J. Adams, on 15 November 1967. Adams was killed after an electrical disturbance caused the degradation of flight controls in his North American X-15 upon ascent. At 230,000 feet, the X-15 entered a Mach 5 spin. Adams used the minimal manual controls he had along with backup controls to attempt an emergency landing at Rogers Dry Lake, but only served to throw the aircraft into a pilot induced oscillation and a Mach 3.93 inverted dive. The plane began to break up 10 minutes and 35 seconds after takeoff, destroying the X-15 and killing Adams instantly.[18]