PFD:
As I was told, Airbus didn?t feel it necessary to make such a visual check mandatory for their f-b-w a/c. So we are back to famous Mr. Murphy and his law?
I tend to see it your way (in this regard): »seeing is believing« or »only sign off what you've seen with your own eyes«. However, if the fight-control check would have been performed on the F/O side only (as with the LH incident a/c), the deflection would have been consistent with the expectation?
Yes, you maybe right that here the »option« of the priority switch made the day, despite that I was told by numerous (civil) technicians that it would be quite impossible to screw up the flight control cables on a conventional airliner and reverse them without detecting it before being airborne.
Apparently the mechanic (1. safety guard), the inspector inspecting and signing the work off (2. safety guard) and finally the pilot during his preflight checks (3. safety guard) would not be able to move the stick. - I?m aware that it had happened on some kind of military aircraft though and there are many cases in the general aviation field.
So given this in respect to our scenario here at hand I believe the comparison and conclusion is not appropriate (- my personal opinion) and I feel that askcv is right with his remark.
askcv:
I?m very well aware that Lufti has many company procedures quite unique to their operation. I very well recall some aspects we found in the aftermath of their landing accident at WAW. For example it was company procedure to use a higher speed addition (for the family) when crosswind was to be expected. The LH SOP asked for 15kts more, despite the AI procedures recommended only 10 kts. This resulted in a higher speed on final approach at WAW where there was no x-wind during the landing but in fact a nice tailwind adding up the final approach speed.
Looking further in the procedures we found another interesting issue in regards to the V1 calculation. It was at that time that LH had introduced the »go-decision« instead of V1 and they did it for all fleets. What got lost in this change was the fact that the A320 had been certified according to the new certification requirements in those days. These required to include the »reaction time for the pilot« in case of an abort decision after V1 and before Vr. Now AI went ahead and calculated their V1 accordingly, but without giving it a lot of publicity. I interviewed their former Senior Vice President of Engineering, Bernard Ziegler and he confirmed that, adding: »?we considered V1 to be critical and we did not give any ?publicitee? to that as we are safety minded and we would like the pilots to ignore that they have a higher safety margin.« (well?hmmm...). Anyway this resulted in LH reducing their V1 a second time by their go-decision calculation. Not a very big deal as long as we don?t come into the regime of Vmcg and we still have enough runway to clear the threshold by the required altitude. I believe LH changed that as well after they became aware.
I think you?re right that sometimes the management believes they know everything better. The root of multiple problems in this area is as well associated with a lack and/or defective communication between manufacturers, operators and pilots, as Streamline rightly commented. I?m sure no one acts deliberately or out of pure arrogance, but the potential danger for safety relevant implications is given under such conditions.
Back to the incident at EDDF:
So far we have identified three different company procedures for the flight control checks on A320 a/c. - Strangely, LH does it during taxi. For other operators this is a clear ?NONO? out of obvious reasons associated with the safety during taxi (let stand alone the SQ 006 scenario?).
I would be interested to learn from the Airbus pilots among you (A320 family, A330 and A340) how your flight control check is performed and when (after eng start up, pushback, taxi) and if there is any x-check between CM1 and CM2, according to your company procedures.
Are there companies still performing a solid flt/ctr check with somebody outside, for example at the first flight of the day?
I feel that there might be more than three alternatives out for the same aircraft and among the entire Airbus product variety.
Comments highly appreciated.
Regards
TvB
(independent) aviation editor
www.aviationsafetyonline.com
[This message has been edited by TvB (edited 05 June 2001).]