Originally Posted by
Capt Fathom
Except the pitch wasn’t working!
It looks like the triple AOA inputs had one false input which the other two did not vote out, so the plane reacted. Not much the pilot could do since it was all over in a very short time. But for readers of ET and Lionair who are banking on triple or double AOA inputs solving the MCAS event, it looks like at the end of the day, no amount of automation is going to ensure a safe flight in every situation. Things can happen that nobody had anticipated or just plain go wrong. As in this case.
Here things called
pilots are used. Now, if you don't train those pilots to hand- fly in RAW DATA and MANUAL CONTROL, as seems increasingly to be the case, we enter a dystopian world where if the computers cannot cope in every possible situation - clearly an impossibility, then the outcome is not good to contemplate. I believe that following ET and Lionair there is going to be a rip roaring battle between the automators and the hand flyers. It is much cheaper and easier to stuff in some more software and avoid 100 hours plus EXTRA initial training (although this cost is usually borne by the trainee) and longer Type Ratiing Courses probably involving 15 x 4 hours sessions versus the current 9 x 4 hours sessions. Then perhaps 5 full days of recurrent training per annum versus the current 3 - in some airlines 4. A day in the sim. spent doing nothing else but manual interventions and hand flying would be a good start. But then if the airline has a policy of almost banning manual flight above 400 feet as is often the case on the line, that gets us nowhere.
Oh dear here we go............Took off from Tokyo for Moscow and autopilots would not engage. At all. Flew to Moscow no problem whatsoever. But that was when Pontius was a pilot and of course nobody needs those skills these days, do they!
Happy Flying
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