A320 D-AXLA Crash, Nov 2008
Dear friends,
I have posted 10 days ago in the Italian forum the following thread for discussion but it had drawn no attention at all, with only 2 responses.
Surprising as Italians are quite talkative and always ready to comment any subject...
Am submitting it to you, as it made me meditate quite a lot.
There is a debate, following some accidents and incidents on the basic skills level of airline pilots, one of them that catched my attention is from PJ2 "eklawyer" on another thread:
Quote
"Most of the F/O's I flew with were afraid to disconnect the autothrust. I offered, (when traffic and workload permitted) but very few takers. After a few incidents when the autoflight should have been used, (bad weather, high workload, tired crew), the managers tightened up and made it mandatory that the autoflight remain engaged under all circumstances. Company policy permits manual flight (including a/t's) when workload is low but in practise it rarely happens and is not taught or practised in the simulator or on line checks. I frankly don't know anyone now, who is comfortable disconnecting the autoflight system to fly an airplane. I know for certain that there have been a number of "close ones" precisely because of this lack of competency and understanding.
I think professional pilot associations have handed over the keys to management instead of protecting their professional responsibilities and licenses but clearly I am old and out of touch. No one was listening in 1992 when we introduced the 320 and were instead intoxicated with automatic flight, and no one is listening today.
We give ab initio OTS "pilots" a year of simulator and put them in the right seat and expect them to be of some use to the captain who may as well be doing single-pilot IFR. Imagine an MPL in the circumstances that we have recently seen over the last two years. While we were all "new" on an airplane, there was such a thing as an apprenticeship in the military or more commonly, the bush where real aviation was learned with the help of adrenaline and luck.
And, as I posted here a long time ago, (and was dismissed outright), and as Sully just said before Congress, those with the talent, intelligence, drive, discipline and desire to fly commercially are taking a look at what has happened to the airline piloting profession and going elsewhere so they can make a living wage, and have a slightly better chance at a future and those that do come will be second tier, perhaps with aviation stars in their eyes. By the time the accident rate begins to climb again, all we'll hear is the kind of nonsense we're now hearing about the Turkish accident...it was the altimeter's fault. Bullshxt.
In order to lower costs, this industry is putting an entire generation in it's cockpits who will be unable to fly an airplane or think. Wait'll they get into the left seat and the cranky old crocks that keep us alive and not kicking tin are retired.
What cost savings"..
Along these lines it would seem too that the basic flying skills of TRI & TRE's would be lacking , Excerpts from the accident report (BEA France) involving the crash of D-AXLA
http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2008/d-la...la081127ea.pdf
Excerpts from the freshly released crash involving an Airbus A320 on Nov 27/2008 by french "BEA" (Bureau Enquètes Accidents) on a test flight after release following scheduled maintenance at the factory
Airbus A320 D-AXLA.
Crew:
1 instructor pilot, TRI, TRE (Germany)
1 Copilot (Germany)
1 Pilot (New Zealand)
3 Technical engeneers from New Zealand airlines
1 Technical engeneer from New zealand CAA
" The pilot from New Zealand described the actions to take to perform a check at low speed planned in the programme"
"At 15 h 45 min 44 s the maximum recorded values were: PITCH 57 degrees, ALTITUDE 3,800 ft.THE SPEED WAS BELOW 40 kt".
"the airplane BANKED TO THE RIGHT UP TO 97 degrees and its PITCH REACHED 42 degrees nose-down".
"A few seconds after the increase in the engine rpm, all the witnesses saw the airplane suddenly ADOPT A PITCH UP ATTITUDE that they estimated as being between 60 and 90 degrees.
The majority of the witnesses saw the airplane disappear behind a cloud layer. The noise generated by the engines was still constant and regular".
The airplane reappeared after a few seconds with a very steep nose-down angle".
"During the descent, the airplane pitch seemed to increase and the airplane struck the surface of the sea. Some witnesses remember a very loud « throbbing » that they heard until the impact".
CREW:
Captain:
Type rating Examiner
authorisation for A318/A319/A320/A321 (TRE) n°D-196 issued on 2 July 2003 and valid until 2 August 2009. Qualification as instructor for type rating training on A318/A319/A320/A321 (TRI) valid until 18 September 2011.
Rating for Cat III precision approaches valid until 5 March 2009
"""The crew HAD NOT RECEIVED ANY SPECIFIC TRAINING for this type of flight.The Air New Zealand pilot had undertaken two simulator training sessions following the programme described in by the OFC document"".
This seeems also to indicate that a TRI, TRE should not be qualified to carry out flights on the backside (Slow Flight)of the flight envelope.
""""In addition, no documents detail the CONSTRAINTS to be imposed on these FLIGHTS or SKILLS required of the pilots"""""""".
..and that there is no requirement to have the training or the skills to face such situations...
""In the context of their agreement, Air New Zealand and XL Airways Germany had agreed on a programme of in-flight checks based on an Airbus programme used for flights intended for the delivery (acceptance) of a new airplane to a client.
THESE FLIGHTS ARE PERFORMED BY AIRBUS ACCEPTANCE PILOTS AND ENGINEERS".
Would again indicate No flight to be permormed by TRE and TRI on the backside of the flight envelope..
Quite appalling.... in this era of joysticks and glass cockpits, the very essence of stick and rudder basics are gone forever, the above makes me think that virtual sim checks may not be enough, somebody sometimes will need to fly the plane....thank god it's not very often...