Originally Posted by
Lyman
Did the pilots get your memo?
The airframes and mods affected are explicitly listed in the EAD. It only takes a little research to realise that this mod is very recent - being applied from earlier this year. The after-market and custom order Thales AA pitot tube fitting was being done for years before problems were noted.
Originally Posted by
CONF iture
Which part is that confusing for you in the A330 AIRPLANE FLIGHT MANUAL :
At any time, if the aircraft goes to an unmanageable pitch down attitude despite a continuous deflection of the sidestick in the full backward position : APPLY THE EMERGENCY PROCEDURE
I suspect the translation's a little off there, but that doesn't really matter. The point is that based on the way Alpha Prot works (explained in a lovely concise manner by BPalmer here :
http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/50324...ml#post7590234 ), it will take some time for a significant pitch-down attitude to develop from the normal attitude, which is usually nose-up to some extent.
Originally Posted by
Greek God
Why do airbus insist on regarding alternate and direct law "degraded"
Because that's the way it was designed to operate. It was designed to operate that way because technology had progressed to a point where the de facto "traditional" control set up (itself a product of the limits of pre-war technology) was due a revision. With the move to all-hydraulic actuation in the '60s, a lot of effort was put into effectively faking similar behaviour to the old cable-driven designs - so the question was at what point did all this work and the complex machinery involved to implement it become more hassle than it was worth? Airbus decided it was time for a clean-sheet approach and whatever you, I or anyone else may think of it personally, it's been very successful and statistically as safe as anything else.