Originally Posted by
LivingInMEM
Fuel exhaustion? For the dual-engine failure, I was actually talking about a failure of an engine that is accompanied by an associated transmission problem (uncontained blade failure, shrapnel, etc) - misspeak on my part, should have said combined engine/transmission failure. In that case, the both the core engine and the transmission are damaged, preventing power transfer from the opposite engine. Auto-rotates are n/a due to the lack of inertia in the rotors, and what kind of glide do you really think there is with those wings?
My understanding is that you can't auto any helicopter with a true tranny failure. EPs in Rotorcraft for impending tranny failure are 'land immediately'.
The glide ratio is 4.5 to 1. Considerable redundancy (triple in the case of flight controls) and the fact the aircraft is in APLN mode 98% of the time make a dual engine failure during the other 2% of flight time an extremely rare occurance. It can actually auto, just not that well.