Can commercial planes fly inverted?

I saw the movie Flight last night, and one of the terrifying sequences is when the pilot, Denzel Washington, inverts the plane to regain control from a sudden plunge.

Hollywood imagination gone wild?

No, as Smithsonian Air and Space says

“Gravity and other forces conspire against conventional flight, but they are positively Machiavellian about inverted flight. Pity the first pilot who rolled inverted and sailed blithely along, only to hear the engine cough and die of fuel starvation when the gas settled in the top of the tank, or have the engine seize when the oil did likewise. Engineers and designers have conspired in return. Here are a few devices that enable inverted flight and transitional maneuvers, or at least make them less of a struggle.”

Here’s the reality, though. Commercial planes do not have inverted fuel systems, so only in catastrophic situations, and only for a minute or two could you fly that way. It’s been done in a handful of real life situations. That is what the movie shows – once they stop their stall with  the inversion, they glide to an emergency crash landing.

And no, I have no desire to be on such a flight.

Comments

[Andrew McCarthy]

There is another significant issue in the case of a commercial jet, which is the fact that it isn't built to withstand the structural loads of negative-g flight. This is different from an aerobatic aircraft or fighter jet, whose fuselage and wing structures are capable of g-loads in both directions. So, in essence, the only way to roll a commercial jet is to maintain positive g forces throughout the manuver. The result is a barrel roll, where the aircraft climbs on entry and then descends while inverted. Passengers with their eyes closed wouldn't know they were upside down. Tex Johnson famously did this in the dash-80 back in the 50s. http://www.airlinereporter.com/tag/tex-johnson/

[Vinnie Mirchandani]

Andrew, air travel is already exciting enough with TSA and all. Glad we don't have to deal with negative-g's:)