Originally Posted by
Bend alot
Not exactly as per the AD issued - My bold, seemed more an option(al extra) not a mandate.
Hi Bend a lot.
The AD only says go to RUNAWAY STAB PROCEDURE if you have any undesired stab trim. I agree it does not specifically say "trim back into trim if you are out of trim" because, I assume they believe that you have already tried that. Boeing are being accused currently of expecting pilots to know how to fly in difficult situations. Well, I can only say that I have always believed that that is why they sit where they do.
The QRH STAB TRIM runaway does not specifically say to "trim back to
normal trim" because that is what you do when you get out of trim and it is what I was taught, and generations of pilots before and after me.
It does say TRIM USING MAIN ELECTRIC TRIM AS NEEDED which means back into trim. It cannot really mean anything else.
Moreover, the QRH is a synopsis of procedures most of which are covered during training using the Boeing Flight Crew Training Manual and the Supplementary Procedures which are much more extensive in giving advice on how to cope with abnormal situations. You are supposed to have digested and retained the information therein. And practised it in the sim. until your are sick of PM calling "Runaway Stabiliser" and you can do it with your eyes closed.
And here we have the problem, as I and many others have seen it from the start. Training is not covering such matters in anything like the detail they used to. And that applies from Flight School right through MPL and type rating and annual and bi-annual check rides on the sim.
On a Piper Cub if the trim gets heavy, you trim it out. It is instinctive. But not if you believe that the automatics do all that fancy stuff for you and you keep trying to engage the autopilot when the thing to do is just fly the plane before it slowly and surely heads downhill until it becomes unrecoverable. I am not saying this is what happened in the two recent crashes. I am saying that given a situation like this, it IS covered in the manuals and it should be recoverable - and was the day before the first fatal crash.
Like most of us I am very keen to see how the Final Report handles the fact that the day before, on October 18th, the third pilot who did not even work for Lionair managed to save the day. Perhaps he was Chuck Yeager in disguise. Reincarnated. Or just a guy who worked for an outfit that taught him properly? Or inspired? We don't know because nobody is talking about it.
Or will that be left out because it is simply not possible to include such a story in a report written by the national AAIU of the country where a major national carrier is involved and it happened at your main base in your own country. A bit like the Final Report on Concorde.
We know that the excellent crew of QF 32 saved the day with first class airmanship and training, and they had an extra flight crew member who had been involved in the introduction of the plane to QF. An above average crew I would say even for QF which is itself a first class airline with an enviable safety record.
The fault was a dodgy fuel pipe / oil pipe - doesn't matter. It was something that was catastrophic and shouldn't have happened, just like MCAS. It was way outside the box and produced something over 50 separate faults which all had to be prioritised and dealt with. Talk about "startle factor" but these guys just got on with it. Not because they were super human but because the had been trained.
Imagine, hypothetically a month later another carrier flying the same plane has the same fault and they crash. The focus would by massively on why the first one didn't and the second one did, with the self same fault, and especially since the crew of the second plane had read all the reports about what caused the first one, and had been forewarned?
Don't see that happening at the moment and if any reader has info. on that please do let us have it because I have genuinely missed it.
Cheers
Yan