PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - AA757 Near Stall - Recovery Caused Injuries
Old 13th May 2022, 14:24
  #28 (permalink)  
alf5071h
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: An Island Province
Posts: 1,257
Likes: 0
Received 1 Like on 1 Post
This thread is an example of how language can frame issues, biasing opinion, leading inappropriate conclusions.
The thread title ‘757 Near Stall’ does not relate to the safety investigation referring to speed monitoring.
Total flight hours is falsely equated to experience, whereas experience relates to prior exposure to a situation or similar, and embedding that in memory with focussed learning, understanding and relevance.

The outcome of this event was success; a safe landing. The safety issue is with speed awareness and subsequent flight handling.
Previous incidents and more general speed-AT issues suggests some auto-flight complacency. If repeated events are specific to an aircraft type then consider the technology - dated certification, assess if this is compatible with modern environment, training; consider modification. Crews cannot be expected to manage every system weaknesses in every situation, all of the time.

Re recovery; with situation recognition the injuries resulted from aggressive control. With hindsight this maybe judged inappropriate, but the reaction could have been ingrained by training and SOPs requiring urgent aggressive response to low speed or upset events. The point at which the stall / upset recovery no longer applies has to be judged by the crew, but without alternative other than to ‘fly the aircraft’. Judgements are relative, they are not clearcut decisions defined by procedure, and thus should not be criticised after the event. The crew acted as they saw the situation and as required by their recall of training; the points of safety involve what contributed to the situation and crew behaviour.

[For further debate, would a correct, aggressive upset recovery from wake turbulence, with cabin injury, be assessed in the same manner.]

If the satisfaction of blame is still required then consider how crews are trained for unexpected situations, how they are expected to manage technological deficiencies - situations which have probably been seen by others beforehand, but not reported. A professional approach seeks perfection, but rarely acknowledges the human limitation, that we have done our best but circumstance outwitted us.
alf5071h is offline