Originally Posted by
Birdstrike737
To those of you admonishing your colleagues for tossing around first-impressions while “bodies are still warm,” THAT’S WHAT WE DO! WE’RE PILOTS! This thread is not a news organization, it’s a crowded pub. It’s OK to put your bets on the table about what happened before the investigation has even begun, much less ended.
Hear, hear! Of course it is OK, especially if one's opinion is based on misunderstanding of the aeronautical fact one has heard in some pilot pub, left to ripen in a vat of runaway imagination. A pinch of desire to get attention by fearmongering also helps. Some contributions to the discussion are qualitywise getting close to the heights attained by Chapman, Palin, Cleese et al in 1970s.
Just in case you are really here for information and not, like dirty old me, for entertainment:
Maybe there were aeroplanes of Vought F7U generation that could be stalled at any speed, but to achieve that one needs sturdy airframe that can reach stall before structural limit, powerful elevator that can generate high alpha at high speed and low stick force gradient so the pilot can pull the Gs, all of which transport aeroplanes are lacking. Forget about high speed (high speed as in "significantly higher than 1G") stalls in airliners.
Children of the Magenta is one of the most abused video in the history of the PPRuNe. It's point is not that today's pilots don't know how to fly, it is that over-reliance on the systems we don't really understand can happen to anyone and that pilots should always be ready to go into downgraded GTFOH mode.
Changing of control feel or efficiency is not an issue in itself on any airliner, happens rather frequently and extremely often ends up in successful landing.
STSon NG is nowhere near FBW Airbus autotrim by its speed & authority and it's only half-useful (methinks I'm overcrediting it here anyway). Quick blip on trim switch will stop it doing whatever it thinks is appropriate for the situation. I have no idea if some of its arcane faults can really introduce pitch trim runaway but then it doesn't mater: if it does, memory (or recall if that is your parlance) items for runaway stabilizer include activating both stab trim cutout switches. If it doesn't help, grab and hold the trim wheel. Haven't done MAX conversion yet but I really doubt the mighty MAX is anything but grafting of some new fancy displays and engines on old, tired, 1960ies basic airframe.
Not everything is automated today (taxiing isn't for sure) and even automation fails regularly so why do we have to wait for quite a lot between the crashes so the resident PPRuNe experten get the excuse to air their "we got it wrong and we have to return to the straight aeronautical path" pet theories, despite the humongous growth of air traffic? Well, it's not just about the modern systems being far more reliable than those of steam gauge era. Pilot of yesterday who knew how to fly, unlike the flying youth of today, is mythical creature. Quite a lot of them lost: control or idea where they are or how much fuel they still have and quite a few time we didn't even bother to figure out what happened or when we did, we would just say it was pilot's error while letting the airline that had failed to provide relevant and meaningful training of the hook. Accident rates of today's Indonesia or Africa would put those of USA in 1950ies to shame. Modern pilots (even the dreaded MPLs) are well trained and cope successfully with instrument/system/automation failures on daily basis (collectively, that is), flying manually just fine. Most of the incidents don't make it even as far as AvHerald and remain buried in company safety bulletins. Those ending in tragedy tend to be outlying ones where pilots do something so contrary to their basic training that currently we have no psychological tool to explain what the heck they were thinking. Now faced with the things we found dangerous and explicable, and fearing them for a few quite good reasons, we come up with pretty interesting and somewhat flawed solutions. The authorities promulgate the truth that aeroplane can be stalled at any attitude, which is not whole truth as the aeroplanes that recently ended in "any attitude stall" did so with quite active help from their crews in achieving and maintaining stall. Some of the concerned PPRuNers are suggesting more technology, such as AoA indicators, as if the pilot unable to keep the proper attitude will somehow magically be snapped out of his detachment from reality by yet another gauge. While I'm hoping that someone, somewhere will come with the plausible explanation of recent LoC accidents, I'm not holding my breath.