Originally Posted by
RetiredF4
This ancient autopilot system and its limitations is easy to understand, if you know what it physically does: It manipulates the yoke with motorized inputs to it like the pilots arm would do, which in turn affects the primary flight control surfaces. It basically is a substitute for the pilots hand on the yoke. It has no control over power and trim, does not control speed, altitude, or vertical speed. It only controls the attitude of the aircraft as long as it is able to do so.
Looking at the videos it is imho obvious that this pilot lacked the necessary system knowledge and at the final stage general airmanship.
Agree with most of what you have stated, and I feel tremendous sadness for the family and friends of this Father and Daughter who loved aviation. I hope the resulting investigation will deliver some lessons that we can reflect and learn from.
Your criticism of the autopilot system is probably and understandably from a modern Jet perspective. However ancient autopilots of the era are not that far removed from modern autopilot function in non-fadec piston engine aircraft, in that they do not control power. This particular autopilot did control altitude, attitude and glideslope, but not trim (which may well have been the cause of the accident), but many autopilots of the era did.. as they incorporated electric trim. This Century 2000 unit was designed for aircraft with no electric trim fitted.
Leaving aside for a moment that the autopilot was probably 35 years old and modern advances in digital electronics, reliability, weight savings have changed the game to some extent.. the function is not that much different if you understand how the thing works.
A reasonably similar fatal accident occurred with a PC12 in February last year with the latest of tech.