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Old 18th Jun 2020, 11:50
  #110 (permalink)  
212man
 
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Den Haag
Age: 57
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Originally Posted by ChrisVJ
Like everyone else here I have flown on lots of fly by wire aircraft and we have built up enough confidence to accept them as an every day low risk means of transport. However this accident, if we take the RCAF statement at face value, appears to be the very scenario that we all worried about when FBW was first installed. According to the statement the aircraft did not respond as expected to the pilot's control input and the RCAF bland assurances about resumption of operations seem disingenuous at best.
We don't know how the RCAF know that the aircraft did not behave as the crew expected - unless there is something recorded in the voice data (like "woah, what's it doing??" recoding ends). Regardless, what the crew expected it to do and what the aircraft was actually being commanded to do may be totally different things, given that the later statement says it was being hand flown with the FD engaged. Maybe they decelerated with aft cyclic then released the pressure and the aircraft tried to regain the original IAS datum, maybe they reduced power using the collective trim and the rad-alt datum reduced too. There could be all sorts of answers that are nothing to do with FBW and there are a number of serious S92 incidents out there, resulting from mishandling of its Flight Director, that testify to that.
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