Maybe it is time for a summary of the story so far? This seems
about right to me.
Originally Posted by madherb
As I understand things so far:
- the aircraft landed normally (speed, touchdown point) with one reverser inop.
- The engine with the inop. reverser never spooled down, but continued to provide substantial thrust.
- The ground spoilers did not deploy.
- The autobrake system did not operate.
- The pilots attempted to stop the aircraft using the operative reverser and manual braking.
- The runway was wet, and while it had recently been resurfaced, it had not been grooved.
I've been sidetracked by all sorts of technical information concerning the aircraft systems, not to mention the sideshows about Airbus vs Boeing.
This is all very interesting; however the consensus seems to be that the aircraft could have been stopped within the distance available, had some sort of failure/error not occurred which prevented:
- The engine with the inop. reverser from spooling down.
- The ground spoilers from deploying.
- The autobrake from operating.
NB This is
NOT anti-AB, but we
are talking about an AB accident.
I'm certain this will have a large effect on AB training programmes. It appears that a lot of 'traditional' sensory input is now indicated on a screen. I recall well the time it took me to adapt on the 737 to look at the Flight Mode Annunciators to see which mode I was in rather than the button I had just pressed. Are all AB pilots made fully aware of this change of emphasis?
Now we have a clever system with lots of circuits/logic gates and what-have-you chuntering away all the time doing what it thinks the pilot wants. The problem is when what it thinks you want and what you actually want are not the same. We can go back to the beginnings of AB history and see the same problem - the Indian crash, the Strasbourg crash, Habsheim. Each time, I assume, the training system adapted. It appears it needs to again. There was, and often is, not enough time to go through a logical sequence of the 'what-is-it-doing-now' process. We need some memory items that can be drilled into heads so reaction becomes 'automatic'.
Originally Posted by woodvale
I was able to do 3 relight attempts because they were drills etched into my brain and practiced monthly in the Sim, absolutely no thinking required to do them.
Originally Posted by SoaringThe Skies
In aviation, memory items are design to reside exactly here, in procedural memory. Repetition makes memories go there over time. Procedural memory is very fast to access, it's usually very simple stimulus-action type of memory.
These two posts are what we need to think about.
We appear to be down to: either they forgot to retard number 2 OR they did retard it but there was some sort of failure which told the machine that it was not retarded. I do not think we will ever know. It is pretty certain that there was no throttle 'jam', or someone would have commented during the flare/landing. Unfortunately the position of the number 2 TL in the wreckage will not confirm where it was on the runway. Who knows if anyone moved it during those last frantic seconds? Maybe there is something in the FADEC (if it has a 'memory' which survived) or elsewhere in the data banks.
There were certainly a few holes in the well-known cheese.
Lastly, for reference, the latest FDR reading is
here and the CVR translation is
here.
Although a 30 minute loop would probably not give us the landing briefing, I am puzzled by the 'missing' 20 minutes on the CVR? Anyone know where it went?