Comment by dylan604
> It’s less of an issue on a four engine aircraft with a single engine out as they can increase thrust on the remaining engine on the side with the engine out.
Do they also decrease the opposite engine to help with this as well?
> It’s less of an issue on a four engine aircraft with a single engine out as they can increase thrust on the remaining engine on the side with the engine out.
Do they also decrease the opposite engine to help with this as well?
That's an option.
Aircraft with disabled flight controls have occasionally steered / maneuvered utilising variable engine thrust alone. A notable instance is UA 232 (1989), Denver Stapleton to Chicago O'Hare, which crashed on landing at Sioux City, Iowa. Despite a nearly completely disabled aircraft and a violent landing, there were 184 survivors of 296 souls, including the pilot Alfred Clair Haynes (he died in 2019, aged 87).
The aircraft, a DC-10, suffered an uncontained fan failure which severed all three hydraulic control systems, disabling virtually all flight control surfaces (elevators, ailerons, rudder), and the pilots (with assistance from a dead-heading pilot/instructor passenger) controlled both horizontal and vertical orientation using engine thrust alone.
I've heard and read numerous times that in simulations of the incident afterwards few or no pilots managed to land the plane. Haynes was an absolute master pilot.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#Att...>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Haynes>