Flight with disabled controls

For instances, in several incidents an engine broke apart, causing the failure of main and redundant hydraulic systems, which disabled all control surfaces.

This creates higher lift on the faster wing, resulting in a rolling movement, which helps to make a turn.

Early attempts to add the ability to real aircraft were not very successful, the software having been based on experiments conducted in flight simulators where jet engines are usually modelled as "perfect" devices with exactly the same thrust on each engine, a linear relationship between throttle setting and thrust, and instantaneous response to input.

More modern computer systems have been updated to account for these factors, and aircraft have been successfully flown with this software installed.

In these incidents, a failure of structural components (bulkheads, doors, struts, mounts, spars, hull) subsequently damaged control systems.

In these incidents, there was a failure of control system components themselves (e.g. cables, hydraulics, flaps, slats, ailerons, rudder, stabilizer, trim tabs, auto-pilot).

In the Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident on 20 December 1943, a Boeing B-17F Flying Fortress of the 527th Bombardment Squadron was tasked with carrying out a bomb run on Bremen, Germany, in formation with other B-17Fs.

The B-17F was then attacked by over a dozen enemy fighters (a combination of Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Focke-Wulf Fw 190s) of JG 11 for more than ten minutes, causing the pilot to lose consciousness and putting the B-17F into a steep dive.

[22][23][24][25] 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.

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.

"[31] NASA personnel at Dryden Flight Research Center worked on the design of an aircraft control system using only thrust from its engines.

The All American returning to base after its collision with a Messerschmitt Bf 109s
A monochrome photograph of a biplane parked on an airfield, with a man posed leaning against its fuselage with his hands in his pockets
The XCO-5 , an experimental observation biplane flown in altitude tests
The MD-11 Propulsion Controlled Aircraft (PCA) lands for the first time under engine power only on Aug. 29, 1995, at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California