Originally Posted by
stilton
Pretty incredible you’d blame the AMS crash on anything other than pilot error
If you’re so clueless you don’t recognize airspeed decreasing without an appropriate response from The autothrottles, then take over and correct you are incompetent, a passenger not a pilot
Funny, we flew aircraft for decades without AT, how did we survive?
Originally Posted by
hans brinker
I disagree. The only reason we still have pilots is for when **** hits the fan, anything else can be automated. The radar altimeter failed and that led to the auto thrust to go to idle. The FO pushed the throttle up, let go, it went back to idle, and for the next 100 seconds all 3 of them sat there while the thrust was at idle, and the speed dropped to 83kts, 40kts below Vref.
Same for the China airlines flight. They just sat there, never used rudder trim, let the speed drop until the autopilot gave up, and barely made it out alive.
If we can’t handle stuff like this we don’t deserve to get paid to fly.
Respectfully, I think you've both missed the point. I guess you would both argue that AF447 was solely the result of the crew, rather than the fact they lost the airspeed in the first place...
Yes, the crew screwed up (in both AMS and AF447...), in a massive way. I am not disputing that fact at all, nor trying to absolve them of that claim.
But...
Amsterdam was not, in itself, the fault of mode confusion, or automation dependency. The crew recognised the decaying speed, and that the throttles retarded automatically. They then pushed them up, and believed (and
this is where their lack of systems understanding failed them) they would stay there - and through lack of basic airmanship, let the speed decay to a point where the accident was inevitable.
Consider the case of Scandinavian 751. Engine surge on the initial climb, pilot does the right thing and reduces power. But the autothrottle restored power on the engine, resulting in dual engine failure and the ensuing crash. The pilot knew nothing about that 'feature', nor did the airline. Is it still their fault for not noticing the increasing power? The moral of the story is, pilots screwup certainly. But rarely does that, in itself, cause an accident and it is fatally simplistic to simply lay the blame for a prang at the feet of the crew.