Originally Posted by
Fox_one
A really tragic accident. Lots of lessons to be learned though. A couple of things that stood out for me:
Fatigue
If it’s not reported then there is no problem.
Between 2009 and 2016, flydubai performed 450,000 flights and had 70 fatigue reports. Seriously, 70 reports, that’s a report rate of 0.015 %. There’s your problem right there, clearly a culture where people do not feel able to report fatigue.
It really highlights why FTLs are not fit for purpose and offer no protection against the effects of fatigue and tiredness. How can a safety critical industry just ignore scientific and medical studies? Oh yeah, because if you are tired, or fatigued you just say so. Well that doesn’t work in all airlines (or any airlines IMO) does it? See above!
Pilot Training
I still find it unbelievable that professional airline pilots do not need to do stall training in a jet or upset training (in an aircraft) or be subjected to G force. We could all be faced with a situation like this. At the end of a long duty, on a dark, crappy night either our control inputs or some upset expose us to confusing and previously unknown psychological effects such as G force and within seconds we are completely disoriented. Already tried and under high stress and now we subjected forces and feelings we’ve never experienced, and guess what we probably won’t do such a great job.
This was an experienced crew who had been making decent decisions and within a few seconds, the PIC lost all spacial awareness and flew a perfectly good aircraft into the ground. But oh yeah, training like that would be pretty expensive so let’s just tick the box in the simulator and pray.
And no, fully autonomous aircraft are not the answer. Properly trained crews, with sensible rosters and the best tech is.
It is not possible to recreate the forces that occur at the seat station In simulator. The arm from the cg is considerable and high rate pitch or yaw associated accelerations are not reflected within constraints of 6DOF motion systems. They are good, they are not exact. Doing such manoeuvres in a light jet also gives a considerably different qualitative outcome to the real aircraft.
Undertaking stalls in a large transport adds substantial buffet related loads to the tail of the aircraft, physical maintenance inspections are called for in most types due to theses loads on the structure.
Sim training is a good start, but the crews need to be aware of the limitations in fidelity as to loads experienced in the seat.
Having stalled transports in test, and having used light military jets, heavy pistons and 1 or 2 seat Pitts etc for continuity, I'm not sure that anything more than a decathlon, CAP or RV is needed to maintain a semblance of proficiency in handling. The sim gives benefits but only within the constraints of fidelity.
To achieve -1. 4g recorded at the cg requires a considerable pitch rate.