Comment by sq_
20 hours ago
Yeah, if they had had more altitude, I would guess that this would have looked even more like the AA 191 crash from 1979, with the left wing stalling and causing a roll and pitch down.
That in turn reminds me of the DHL flight out of Baghdad in 2003 that was hit by a missile [0]. Absolutely amazing that they managed to keep it together and land with damage like that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_sho...
An important factor in AA 191 is that the engine leaving did significant damage to the hydraulic lines in that wing - including those for the leading-edge slats. At the time the plane was not equipped with any mechanism to keep the slats extended, so after hydraulic pressure was lost airflow over the wings caused them to retract, which significantly lowered that wing's stall speed.
After AA 191 the DC-10 was equipped with a locking system: loss of pressure now results in the slats getting stuck in their current position. The MD-11 will undoubtedly also have this system, so a direct repeat of AA 191 is unlikely.
> significantly raised the stall speed
(yeah, it's one of those weird metrics where "bigger is worse", so you're absolved)