Originally Posted by DozyWannabe
It's drilled into pilots from their first flight - trust your instruments over all else.
That part of learning curve is something IR pilot has to get over quickly. It is only intended to make sure that he understands that when it comes to flight, instruments are more reliable than human senses. Next obligatory step is understanding the way the instruments can turn their backs on pilot and learning not to trust them blindly but to keep crosschecking. TC-GEN on her last flight apparently started doing what no transport aeroplane is capable of; accelerating while climbing with low thrust. It is severely tragic that the crew didn't realize that basic fact and accordingly disregarded readout of ASi No1 and alerts connected with it. IIRC report mentions that the pilots' 757 systems knowledge was quite deficient.
Originally Posted by BOAC
Again leaving HF aside, it has been argued that the RadAlt #1 failure on the AMS 737 should have been more readily flagged to the crew - the 'subtle' inference of the failure was not appreciated by many 737 operators.
Once again, RA did not fail-dead, it failed-live with realistic readout. Realistic during taxi, take off and landing, that is. It's just the aeroplane wasn't taught to check RA vs baro so didn't find it odd. As mentioned before, teaching it would only increase complexity and introduce a host of new problems, most of them insolvable. Do we really need something more readily apparent than the number that shows your vertical distance to ground going to zero with the aeroplane still flying? It's written in pretty large numbers on the bottom of the ADI, just above heading index where it's easily crosschecked yet it didn't make much difference to sysop who even forgot the maxim of flying in heavier than air machines: speed is life.
Originally Posted by BOAC
The system 'knows' that the AoA of the 2 sensors is incorrect v IAS and weight.
It does not! It detects discrepancy between the two but is unable to determine whether weight or AoA is wrong. Only intelligent enough system can resolve that and currently only one that is (occasionally) up to job is human brain.
Regarding the 7 probes needed to satisfactory deal with two of them freezing, there is an easy way to defeat that "engineering" solution. Just wash the aeroplane with all 7 unprotected. If water penetrates 3 of 7 probes, the system will be compromised and if it gets into 4, it will be totally f-ed up.
There is a simple and cost effective solution, though:
Follow the rules. If you don't understand why you have to follow some of them, take comfort in knowledge that there is enormous chance that someone smarter than you wrote it to prevent you from killing yourself, others or both.
Put appropriate (and that's really appropriate) covers over anything that needs to be covered while washing the aeroplane.
Don't use forklift to get CF6 onto wing with pylon attached.
Don't ever put your altitude selector below airport elevation.
Check the results of your FMA actions against basic flight instruments. Don't hesitate to use big red button if you don't like what you see.
If lost in descent - level off immediately.
Use appropriate margin every time you go flying. Things don't always go as planned and you might find yourself needing every last inch of it.
etc.
etc.
Oh, I found interesting post, made day after the accident:
Originally Posted by Strongresolve
But no one is going to test alpha prot at 1000´, isnt it?