The Pilots Who Pushed The Limits And Paid The Ultimate Price | Bombardier 388

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This is the story of the bombardier test flight number 388. On the 26th of july 1993 A CRJ 100 was undergoing some test flights from wichitas mid continent airport. Now If youre familiar with the CRJ program that timeline might not really make sense to you. The CRJ 100 started flying passengers on the 19th of october 1992 with lufthansa. So if the plane is already in service then why are they doing flight tests now. Well this test flight was part of the Regional Jet Performance Improvement Flight Test Program, thats a pretty good descriptive name if i ever heard one. This test program was basically designed to redo most of the planes initial certification flights so that the plane could have some expanded capabilities. Once the tests were done bombardier could submit the data to the FAA and transport canada and the plane would be certified.

On the 26th of july the the flight tests included testing a multitude of things. Things like a new flap setting and a lower reference operating speed among other things. Since this was a test flight the pre flight briefing was quite rigorous. The crew of this flight was among the best of the best, the captain started his career as an enginner and then he was a flight engineer. And then he became a first officer and then a captain. The first officer was also very experienced, he joined the flight test program after9 years in the canadian airforce and he was an instructor and check pilot in the airforce. This crew was the best that there was. The flight crew engineers, technicians and aerodynamicists all got together to talk about how the tests should be done and how they expected the plane to behave during the tests. As they poured over the data for the flight it became apparent what they needed to do for the day and boy did they have their work cut out for them. They needed to do a steady heading sideslip manuever at the lower reference operating speed with flaps 8. Yeah thats a lot of words lets break down what all of that means. A steady heading sideslip is a test of lateral and directional stability. It is performed by stabilizing your plane at a steady speed and then kicking out the rudder in one way and then using the ailerons to counter the rudder input in such a way that the plane would stay on a constant heading. Why is this useful you ask? Well as per a NASA paper I found a maneuver like this is very useful in calibrating and validating multiple systems on the plane and this is absolutely essential in getting a plane certified by the FAA. The test is designed so that the more rudder you put in the more your nose will deviate from the direction of flight and to get out of the sideslip you just have to ease up on the controls.
Since this was a test flight everyone was guessing about the performance of the plane, they knew the stall characteristics for flaps 20, 30 and 45 so they could make an educated guess about the stall characteristics for the plane at flaps 8. So the aerodynamicists told the pilot to ease off the controls at the onset of the stall warning or when the nose was at a 15 degree angle. They also did not want the pilots to push the plane so far that the stick shaker activated. That was a regime of flight that they did not want to be in.

On the ground the pilots were ready to start the test flight, the captain cycled the arming of the anti spin parachute. Once in the air the pilots did some trim tests to make sure that the plane was ready for the test. As they entered the test area the flight engineer briefed everyone about what they were about to do, the captain and the first officer acknowledged. At 12,500 feet the captain started putting in some right rudder, the first officer started reading out the Beta angles or the angle of the nose of the plane to the oncoming air. As the plane neared 12 degrees of

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