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Old 26th May 2011, 18:22
  #463 (permalink)  
Lonewolf_50
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
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The answer seems to be simple.... Pilots are no longer trained to interpret AoA indications.
Concorde had an AoA indicator.
I take it from several posts here: so do Navy (carrier-based) aircraft.
So too Navy training aircraft. (And IIRC, USAF T-38, but that may depeond on the mod)
I doubt the average A or B pilot would be able to get any usable info (SA or otherwise) from it.
ChristiaanJ, I respectfully disagree with you in general principle. AoA in certain flight conditions is a useful scan and cross check.

That said, as I mentioned a few posts back, choosing where on an instrument panel one places an AoA, and in what flight regimes you train and expect your pilots to use it, takes some thought with an eye toward the use of the aircraft in question.

Some pages back one of our contributors listed a whole bunch of commercial transport aircraft, one or two of which typically has an AoA gage.

Rather that asserting that "pilot won't get any usable info (SA or otherwise) from it," perhaps what's been done is a task analysis, and a scan analysis.

What I think happened was that a choice was made for the expected operating environment, and that choice was that AoA information is closely enough indicated indirectly via other information that it wasn't deemed of sufficient priority to add a display to limited real estate in the instrument panel. It appears that most air transport pilots get along fine without an AoA gage.

AoA is still measured and used by the robot ... it is useful information, isn't it, particularly on approach to a wet runway?
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