DozyWannabe
pilots for not taking sensible precautions, like making sure the barometric altimeter was correctly calibrated before take-off.
If you read the article, you will discover that the crew did perform an altimeter crosscheck before departure, and that the error occured between then and wheels-up. It wasn't a calibration error.
Carnage Matey!
Just below and left of the barometric altimeter display is a radio altimeter display. The FO also has an indepent radio altimeter display on his PFD. Not reslving the 70' difference between the two readouts sounds a bit gash too me.
How could that be gash? The article states that the altimeter error occurred after the runway crosscheck. Once the aircraft is off the ground, there is no valid crosscheck between the two (barometric and radio that is).
Again, from the article, the captain had deliberately chosen to NOT use the radalt, his reason being that the altimeter and VSI readouts, being analogue, were easier to interpret correctly.
He was also right to do so so another reason, which is that radalts are prone to jumping around as you fly over ground obstacles. You should NEVER use a radalt as a height reference when flying at low level, unless you are flying in the protected area where it's uses is intended (ie on the final part of an ILS approach).
I'm not trying to excuse the crew, simply to point out that some of the comments regarding this accident are well wide of the mark.
Particularly laughable is the idea that, because C4 may have made a mistake in some of their stories, everything they do is automatically suspect. In these programmes, they used very reliable experts and the actual DFDR information from the accident aircraft (allegedly the accident aircraft, anyway). What Ray Davies found was that when the captain commanded a climb, the software over-rode him and commanded a pitch reduction. No matter what the captain did, he was never going to recover from that position. Of course if it had been a Boeing he might have got away with it, but that is neither here nor there. I don't rate either manufacturer over the other, they both make nice aircraft with, occasionally, fatal flaws.
Not like my favourite 146, not one of those has ever crashed through mechanical or avionic failure... but that is an argument for another day.
