Originally Posted by
Tomaski
This has always been a problem with a lot of autopilots in that if you demand more out of them than they are willing to do then they will dump the whole thing back in the lap of the pilot with there own lights and alarms. Classic case of leaving it in vertical speed climb at high altitude it will try to do it while bleeeding off speed until it can’t and then disconnect. Same would probably happen with engine flameout. Pilots are expected to monitor at all times but sometimes they get distracted or are just staring out the window. Agree with you about stick shaker et al. As a previous poster once mentioned, pilots used to have discretions on pulling circuit breakers to take care of this but not so much anymore. I would do it in a heart beat myself but other pilots may not. Hope there is a reommended change to this coming out of these accidents.
Yes the point I am trying to make is that there does not seem to be any code or standards around the state of display and alarms in case of AP loss of situational awareness. I believe that it should be mandatory in any case where the automatics have lost situational awareness to silence any situational alarms on handover back to the wetware! is there a section on AP disconnect state somewhere? if not why not!?
It would appear that with AF 447 the PF followed an erroneous flight director into the initial stall.after AP disconnect ? ??