My take so far
My take so far.
Hoping to not offend every person on the site. If I do not then I have failed.
I’m just starting to formulate my pretty close to final assessment on the crash. Not much different than all previous feelings.
The Pprune blogs and discussions raise some interesting points and while careful to not ruffle any sensitive feathers, the bulk of what I’ve read so far is pretty much way out of line and off base but nevertheless informative in getting a handle on what the outside world feels about it.
The problems I see are that when you get too deep into the minutiae you miss the forest for the trees.
Among the problems (in no particular order) are the events themselves;
1) In icing which in turn causes pitot tube failures – all 3 of them. So, a triply redundant system fails all at once.
2) This airplane, so reliant on the info from the probes simply shuts down – robbing the pilots from desparately needed information upon which to take action.
3) The auto-pilot and auto throttle click off.
4) The pilots are left with no cogent understanding of which system is controlling the aircraft and unable to figure out the level of control they do have.
The bloggers have a different opinion on the same systems and no one seems to know for sure what controls what on the airplane, and who is doing what to whom.
Further, they have the luxury of sitting in a warm comfortable chair looking at a computer for days and weeks on end trying to analyze what the pilots should have done at the very time they are dis-organized, scared, bouncing around in the middle of the night in a horrendous storm, who must act within literally seconds to analyze and figure what went wrong, what works and what doesn’t, and hopefully do something right.
The test pilots themselves stated that they never contemplated a plane going into a deep stall, and therefore were never able to train pilots to deal with it. Even in the safety of a simulator which never leaves the ground. The emphasis always was to train pilots to veer away from the “approach to a stall”. Simple enough.
5) What has never been addressed is to me the key element: the 7000 ft per minute climb to close to 38,000, when the plane itself could barely maintain it’s maximum level of 35,000 (even though they mentioned wanting to climb to a higher altitude but could not because the temps at their altitude were too warm.)
Note: A normal climb in instrument conditions is a moderate 1000 feet per minute climb. Which I do not know if the plane could attain at that altitude and weight.
A 7000fpm climb could only occur if the pilot nosed up and traded speed for height. First of all an insane maneuvar If it was intentional. Because the result would be running out of speed and altitude at the top which in fact it did.
Alternatively to me it is likelier that an updraft pushed the airplane up. Note in the meteorologists analysis he speculated that there were updrafts that could be as high as 60-70kts which translate to 6000-7000 feet per minute. Whether or not in fact that was the case.
I do know (know?) that powerful thunderstorms are capable of very strong force winds that can easily toss a plane around a lot. Many crashes attest to that.
I’ve personally been involved in strong winds that I could barely overcome. But fortunately in anticipation always carry excessive speed and so far successfully evaded them. But this is close to the ground where the air is thicker and therefore more responsive.
6) One more question I’ve never seen addressed is, when things go awry, or components fail, with time permitting we have checklists that spell out what to do and in what case. Of course some things occur that require instant action, but here with so many things going wrong, it is essential to do the right thing at the right time.
A more comprehensive read out of the Voice Recorder will give us clues to what they were thinking and trying to do.
(note- Not sure if you are familiar with a Quantas A-380 that landed in Australia with multiple failures. They had 5 qualified check captains in the cockpit and it still took 45 minutes to resolve all of the failures and run all the checklists. It ain’t simple.)
(I must respond to the Ministry of Transportation’s analogy of the flat tire: It is more likened to not a flat tire, but the car rolling over and over and the driver covered in blood and then trying to navigate a road with the bridge out. What does he do and when?)
7) Finally to me one thing is certain. If they didn’t fly head on into a thunderstorm, none of this would have happened. Cost more money? Perhaps. Take more time? Perhaps.
Fly a different route? Why not? Land at an alternate? Cost money, Takes time, but ask the passenger, what does he think?
And finally again for a bigger question: What to do about all of this? Scrap the airplane? Scrap the technology? Impossible. And way too costly.
However, there are some homilies that apply. Be careful. Any port in a storm. Better safe than sorry. Penny wise and pound foolish.