I want to be careful not to drag things off-topic, so I think I'm going to limit myself to one reply here...
Originally Posted by
SKS777FLYER
Hello Dozy,
Yes getting all the knowledge you can is great in theory, somewhat difficult in application, particularly in the early 90's thru the early years of this century.
Possibly, but I'm talking about things that should be easy to discover by judicious use of the manuals - such as :
- Unlike the 737-300 model, the 737-400 model takes it's aircon input from both engines (Kegworth)
- Inputting a single letter into the FMS of a 757 will give you a list of options, and hitting "Enter" twice will give you the first (Cali)
- Holding the A/THR disconnect switch for more than 15 seconds will completely disable A/THR, and it can only be re-engaged on the ground (Habsheim)
- Popping a CB related to the nosewheel will also disable Takeoff Config Warnings (Spanair Madrid)
Things of that ilk. While there has been no shortage of expressed opinion that losing the F/E (and thus an extra pair of eyes) may have negatively affected safety, I think that what may be more important is the loss of the career progression which meant that a lot of pilots spent some time as F/Es at the beginning of their careers - and spent that time having to learn the inner workings and foibles of their aircraft. That learning can still be done without spending time as an F/E, but when the business case is to get newly qualified pilots into the right-hand seat (and thus getting the airline a return on investment) as quickly as possible, it may be a dangerous thing to neglect.
Also, we're in the second decade of the 21st century now. Even senior pilots in their 30s and 40s will have spent at least some of their formative years around computers. Computers occupy a place in the human world that no-one could have conceived back in the '60s and early '70s, when they occupied a space in culture where computers were room-sized devices pored over by men in white coats (or later, coffee- and pizza-stained T-shirts), or largely informed by sci-fi stories about rogue computers trying to take over the world. Pilots who qualified back then would naturally have been very suspicious of such a device sharing the cockpit with them to the extent it was when the A320 first hit the market. These days we're more aware of their usefulness, their limitations, and what they are and are not capable of.
The A320 has spawned a successful series of aircraft which carry millions of people around the world every day, and Boeing's latest models, even while they retain the "classic" flight deck controls and "pilot-centered" philosophy, are reliant on computer-driven feedback to acheive the feel they do.
I can assure that no pilot I encountered in line flying over the decades and just a very select few in the nether regions of the training and flight ops centers had the vaguest clue that at less than maneuvering speed (AA accident A300 was flying at, I believe significantly less than maneuvering speed) that it was remotely possible for a pilot to cause the vertical stabilizer of a modern jetliner to separate from the fuselage..... particularly the latest flight control computer assisted aircraft. We were trained about the protective safety provided by rudder limiters, etc. etc.
It was not until AFTER the tragedy that Boeing, and probably AB as well provided information in flight manuals about weak tail feathers on jet transports, weak as related to ANY rudder doublets, and rudders only suitable for use in relatively low speed single engine flight.
Then that was a failure of the industry as a whole - and in a way we come back to a possible desire for pilots to have some grounding in engineering. The BOAC 707 that practically disintegrated in mid-air near Mount Fuji should have been a warning that the stresses an airliner can be subjected to in mid-air can in very short order cause a catastrophic failure. The story of the DH Comet was a salutary lesson in the dangers of material fatigue - that if you apply pressure in opposite directions over a period of time, materials can fail. The knowledge was out there, but it appears few put two and two together in this case.
Also, since the story of the DC-10 and the "Gentlemen's Agreement" was made public, it's also been common knowledge that manufacturers will go to any length to downplay potential problems with their product - so while you can usually trust them when they tell you how to fly the thing, it's probably a good idea to keep in the back of your mind that they may not be telling you the whole truth.
So if it became common knowledge that in an aircraft configured in the manner of the A300 (which seems to be the standard configuration of most modern large jet transports these days), that if you push the rudder pedal one way, then the opposite way - and repeat this action enough times - that the VS will break off, there'd be a public outcry. Which manufacturer would risk being the first to admit that was the case? Their orders would dry up before you could say "commercial suicide"!
You don't get any shivers when you learned that the vertical stabilizer of the aircraft that crashed in NY had already flown beyond it's design limit a fact learned by Airbus, but not shared with its' customer??
It's certainly not an ideal situation, and if it had turned out to have any impact on the AA587 incident itself, then I'd be at the head of the group calling for investigations and prosecutions. But on the other hand, you can speculate that Airbus had sufficient data to conclude that the previous incident would not have had a detrimental effect on the lifespan of the airframe (which, given the VS stayed on past Ultimate Design Load, the evidence suggests strongly was indeed the case).
As to getting the most knowledge about the aircraft a pilot flies, I might remind you that Airbus AND Boeing BOTH were putting together composite tails in those early days with insufficient knowledge of the composite assembly process; otherwise they would not have encountered delamination of layers of composite material, which they BOTH used a bandaid technique of basically clamping the delaminated structures back together with rivets during the build.
But as yet there has not been the loss of a transport-class airframe due to composite failure alone, and it seems that they're getting to grips with the peculiarities of this new material over time, just as they did when aircraft manufacture went from wood to aluminium. Indeed, it was the loss of the Comet that woke the industry up to the fact that aluminium was not a panacea when it came to strength in aircraft construction (though it's likely some engineers probably nodded sadly to themselves when the cause of those crashes was discovered).
Ultimately, the passengers put their lives in the hands of the pilots and crew, and even the best pilot is, to some extent, putting his or her life in the hands of the engineers who designed the aircraft they are flying. Ultimately it becomes a matter of trust, and the sad truth is that commerce cannot cheat physics. With that in mind it is encumbent on pilots and engineers to do the best they can with the knowledge that's available.