L337
Quote:
Originally Posted by L337
Quote:
a big updraft would both lift the aircraft without big pitch-up, and cause the AOA to increase
AoA would decrease.
How's that then ?
An updraft would initially increase the angle of attack, and the airplane, being statically stable (one hopes) would react by pitching down in order to regain its trimmed angle of attack. What happens next depends on whether the pilot (or autopilot) attempts to hold altitude against the updraft. It is not correct, however, that an updraft
ipso facto would decrease the airplane's angle of attack.
WRT the Spiegel article, the leak regarding the pilot's statement is extremely interesting, and it is hard to see why BEA would have withheld it from the interim report. Some statements in the article are incorrect, however, for instance the claim that the pax were held in their seats only by their seatbelts. At a steady rate of descent, the pax would experience 1 G.
It is unlikely that a recovery could have been made without manually trimming the THS. At high alpha the elevator is not very powerful compared with the stabilizer. That this was not done suggests that the crew were not aware of the -13 degree THS setting. Doesn't it seem unlikely that if they were aware of it, and had identified the stall, they would have been deterred from using it by their simulator training? They were about to die. Or did I overlook something in the report?