Originally Posted by
bearfoil
AA695 Cali input one of two identical beacons broadcast from the ground. The one that would have them follow the coast south was not the one selected. The one (of two identical beacons) they selected put them into the granite. Let's be fair.
Again, as I understand it, not true. The beacon they were supposed to select was called ROZO, and to enter that directly they needed to input the whole designation into the keypad (i.e *R*-*O*-*Z*-*O*-*enter*). What they actually did, and in fairness to them their charts were not explicit, was input *R*-*enter* which switched them into a mode which listed all matching waypoints. They hit *enter* again, which selected the first on the list. Unfortunately the first on the list was not the ROZO beacon they wanted, but the Romeo beacon which was somewhere near Bogota if I recall correctly. The only reason this accident is not more prominent in the history of mode-confusion incidents is because the pilots then compounded the initial error by not paying close enough attention to what the aircraft was doing in response to the erroneous entry they had made.
Rightly or wrongly, the Cali accident is primarily attributed to the crew's failure to properly monitor the aircraft's progress once the incorrect input was made. To my mind, if they had paid more attention in that regard, the "What's it doing now?" cry would certainly have gone up.
One rather famous AB developing engineer was heard to say (for the Press) "The Laundrywoman can fly this aircraft." One rather large knock on ABI is its permissiveness in allowing rumour and bunk (of the positive variety, natch) to proliferate without comment. Marketing is for seats, not aircraft, imo.
So now that's 3 different versions I've head of this story, attributing ability to fly the A320 to a maid, a concierge and a laundrywoman. Does anyone here actually have a confirmed, attributable quote, or is this a case of chinese whispers?
At any rate, most attribute the quote to Bernard Ziegler - who was most certainly
not an engineer of any sort on the product (us engineers tend to be a pernickety lot, because we're the ones with our arses on the line if we make unverifiable claims that later prove incorrect - whereas sales guys are expected to add a little
merde du vache), and as I said above I have yet to hear a version of the story where he specifically said that the maid/concierge/laundrywoman would not be able to
crash the aircraft. I don't think even Ziegler, controversial figure that he is, would have gone that far.