Well I was away from my computer and forgot I had started FSX to test the new All Nippon Airways 700WL paint and noticed the plane had already taken off without me! I looked at my screen and noticed about a couple of hours passed by and was bouncing on the ocean. I regained control to gain some altitude and speed to get back to land. I pulled the map up and it showed I had departed from KSFO, but somehow made a looping right turn on take off taking me straight out to the ocean. I decided to just continue flying to make it back to land. I choose KLAX as the closest airport because it was just a few degrees east of my current position with about 500NM left to travel back. I climbed up to 40,000FT for cruise since I had a long distance to travel and in case of engine failure or fuel shortage i would have enough altitude to get back to land. As i scanned my instruments a yellow caution light illuminated on my main panel. I checked for the low fuel as it had indicated, and sure enough this plane was airborne for a while. I decided to continue flying. After less than 300NM and on course at 40,000FT I noticed my fuel was at 0.3. After the 0.2 mark I noticed a multitude of failures back to back and the engine indicators showed engine fail on both engines. I immediately lowered the landing gear as that was the main priority. I really believed failures were suppose to start at 0.0 but as in the cessna this plane also has a limit of no-usable fuel and came too early for me to prepare. I now had inadvertently created an emergency situation and decided to continue flying the jet instead of quitting and starting over. With more than 200NM left to KLAX over water and at around 30,000ft. I was reaching speeds of no more than 180KTS. With land in sight but still too far off to drop altitude. I decided to divert to the nearest airport which was KSBP. I was about 10,000FT over the airport, by this time all my instruments had failed except for my visual on the airport, trim and slight aileron control. i was slowly making turns of less than 10 degrees bank almost like in slow flight as I lined up with the runway. The controls were very irresponsive as there was no hydraulics to move the ailerons and no power for flaps, even the alternate flap switch was not working. I remember my instructor telling me that if somehow there is no control over the elevator use the wheel trim for elevator control. Sure enough i had enough control of the plane to use the trim and came down very smoothly on the runway with only a few feet of runway left and full brakes. I hope I never have to live through that experience in real life but, as the saying goes "any landng you can walk away from, is a good landing."

That beats all failures that a person can program or generate :D. Did you consider deploying the RAT? Also, if you deploy GEAR at a such a high altitude, wouldn't it affect ur speed? I recall there being a restriction on altitude for GEAR deployment, but hey, u made it to the rwy didn't ya :D

Im still unfamiliar to the systems so i wanted to drop the gear down as soon as possible because if the gear needed power and was unable to lower then yeah i would've had to belly land, and since the engines stopped it was discharging the battery and had no ability to lower flaps. I was surprised i was able to land it AND move the trim just right to land softly, actually even better than hand flying with no emergency! I expected a heavy fall but no smooth, very smooth landing. My speed was keep very low around 150kts in order to avoid damage to the gear. But then again i don't know the actual limit so stay safe i kept it low all the way down as speed never increased above 200kts.

The 737 does not have a ram air turbine...Andrew

The 737 does not have a ram air turbine...Andrew

767 yes instead, why do 737 miss it ?

The 737 does not have a ram air turbine...Andrew

Ya know, I thought about it after I posted it...been reading about buses too much.Interesting thought about the gears Raul.

Personally, I'd consider being over the ocean a higher priority than the gear. Even assuming you can't get the gear down, it's safer to do a belly landing on a runway than it is to do a gear down landing on the water. By a factor of like a trillion.-stefan

If you lose both engines at cruise I think the last thing you want to do is drop the gear. The NGX is a big time glider even more so than the 767-300. Read this story about the Gimi Glider.http://www.wadenelson.com/gimli.html

If you lose both engines at cruise I think the last thing you want to do is drop the gear. The NGX is a big time glider even more so than the 767-300. Read this story about the Gimi Glider.http://www.wadenelson.com/gimli.html

Or even better: Watch this documentation:

I would have just considered the flight a failure when I saw the plane bouncing on the ocean! (unless your 737 has floats or some amphibian prototype)Or better yet when the plane somehow took off without you. How dose the plane taxi to runway and takeoff without you knowing?

Ummm the above Video is Copyrighted.

Or even better: Watch this documentation:

That was one of the best airplane emergency stories I've every heard off. No engines because fuel was boarded in LBS instead of KGS, then the engines failed because the airplane was out of fuel. They glided to the nearest airport, then it turned out the airport was now a dragrace track! OMG, then the captain had to do a slip to reduce speed. They landed succesfully without a nose gear, and then when braking, suddenly there were two children cycling in front of the airplane! OMG, just like in the movies!

yeah dropping the gear is a really really bad idea when you loose both engines.

I wonder how come you didn't have elevator control... the 737 should have fully controllable ailerons and elevators even with a complete hydraulic failure. The manual reversion system should be able to provide full stroke control on these surfaces using pilot muscles, mechanical cables, and power tabs. That's why the 737 was not in a great need for a RAT. This should be tough, but there is no way to simulate that toughness without a force feedback joystick, which means that finally you should have normal elevator control with the NGX at such conditions. Will PMDG clarify this?On another side, the pitch trim should not work I guess on total loss of fuel, as it is mainly controlled by electric motors, which should have no power now to operate. Instead, the pitch trim can be controlled manually by rotating the handles on the pedestal. The trim switches should have no response. Did PMDG link the pitch trim wheel to the trimming command in case of power failure? This should be too slow as well I guess.I guess we can use some clarification from PMDG, or other experiences users / pilots.

Personally, I'd consider being over the ocean a higher priority than the gear. Even assuming you can't get the gear down, it's safer to do a belly landing on a runway than it is to do a gear down landing on the water. By a factor of like a trillion.-stefan

Well i brought the gear down, because i had seen i was high enough to bleed off speed and was going a steady 1200ft/min descent toward land. Yeah it would be useless over water but i was close enough to glide to that airport using manual trim wheel as my Saitek Yoke was somehow programmed for electric trim rather than manual trim so i used my mouse wheel to move it and bring her steadily down.

I would have just considered the flight a failure when I saw the plane bouncing on the ocean! (unless your 737 has floats or some amphibian prototype)Or better yet when the plane somehow took off without you. How dose the plane taxi to runway and takeoff without you knowing?

Yes, I had considered quitting it and starting over, but what better way to see if you could land the plane without a good challenge? The 737-700 handles like a dream when hand flying, so i can say i never really had to practice landings on this plane. The plane took off as I had full throttle on the controls and crash settings off (some airports NEED to have it enable or you can expect to restart your plane everytime you spawn at that airport). I also had never seen what happens when the plane runs out of fuel, and in a complex plane like this, i can expect a cascade of events unfolding as one thing fails followed by another. This has taught me just a little bit more on what to expect in a failure, had I not taken this flight then I would still be wondering why would fuel be of importance not just for engine function but for other systems as well, APU for example.

I wonder how come you didn't have elevator control... the 737 should have fully controllable ailerons and elevators even with a complete hydraulic failure. The manual reversion system should be able to provide full stroke control on these surfaces using pilot muscles, mechanical cables, and power tabs. That's why the 737 was not in a great need for a RAT. This should be tough, but there is no way to simulate that toughness without a force feedback joystick, which means that finally you should have normal elevator control with the NGX at such conditions. Will PMDG clarify this?On another side, the pitch trim should not work I guess on total loss of fuel, as it is mainly controlled by electric motors, which should have no power now to operate. Instead, the pitch trim can be controlled manually by rotating the handles on the pedestal. The trim switches should have no response. Did PMDG link the pitch trim wheel to the trimming command in case of power failure? This should be too slow as well I guess.I guess we can use some clarification from PMDG, or other experiences users / pilots.

Yes your correct. I had no way of trimming the plane electrically. I guess the trim is set for electric trim for the plane. Anyways, I used my mouse wheel to slowly and carefully adjust elevator pitch as I said I had pulled completely on my yoke in every which way i can think of to get a better response than a 10 degree bank, but a no go. I will look up manual reversion as i came across it looking for a procedure for failure of both engines. Do you know when the landing gear should be dropped in an emergency with a discharging battery? Is there even a way to manually drop the gear if there is no electrical system? I mean i want to learn this plane very well but failures are what keeps me wanting to find out what to do to fix them. Until AOA pumps out with more videos...this is the only way to learn right now...hands on.