Spiny Norman said:

captain_spalding said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Say if a tail elevator fell off, could a small rocket under the nose keep the nose straight?

SN is the aviator, of course, but my ‘feeling’ is that having the elevators fall off is a non-recoverable situation.

As usual, it depends.
I’ll cut a long story short and tell the tale of when my elevators jammed on me in a POS Metro 2 night freighter on the drop into Archerfield. The elevator was pretty solid, would not move at all. So I just reduced power a little and trimmed the nose down. I figured worst case they’d stay jammed and I’d just land on the 4,000 metre long runway in Brisbane, with all the fire crew ready for the arrival. With some testing I found that I could fly the plane reasonably well with just the elevator trim and I reckoned it wouldn’t be a huge task to get it down on the big runway.
Anyway it came good down in the Archerfield circuit area so I landed there.

I reckon it could be done on something like a 747 but I’d want a much longer runway. If need be full auto-brakes will stop the big plane in only 1,000 metres of ground roll, but that being said a mere 1,000 m in a 747 looks really short out the windscreen.
Oh, and then the 16 brakes catch on fire but that’s okay in the big scheme of things.