Wow - you go away for a few days and the thread almost goes belly-up. From what I see there are now attempts to argue that the BEA's press "note" should be treated as a report, and thus the BEA deserve to be slammed for not releasing enough information (which is IMO utterly ludicrous - why do I get the feeling that the NTSB or AAIB would not be under this much scrutiny?), people still trying to blame the aircraft and systems based on the flimsiest of theories, and many of the same people arguing that to do otherwise somehow equates to "blaming the pilot". Full marks to PJ2 and others who've been trying to keep things shiny-side to the sky.
Originally Posted by
Svarin (emphasis mine)
But the initial 3000 feet climb, 10 degrees and more pitch-up is unlikely to be "pilot error", even though some powers that be, and hordes of blindly faithful technology worshippers would prefer it to be so.
I'd love to know how you've come to that conclusion. I've been reading the therad from the start and I'm pretty sure that other than a couple of interjections, no-one has been arguing that the accident was the result of "pilot error" and leaving it at that. In fact the only people I've seen trying to apportion blame on this thread are the people who are constantly looking for ways to blame the aircraft and the manufacturer based on their own personal agendas. Pretty much everyone else has (wisely IMO) said "wait and see". As I said, very few other air accident investigation units tend to release CVR transcripts until a final report is written - why the undue pressure from some on here towards the BEA?
Originally Posted by
wallybird7
I’m just starting to formulate my pretty close to final assessment on the crash. Not much different than all previous feelings.
Isn't that a bit cheeky, seeing as all we have is a press note and a lot of speculation?
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.
Not unique to this aircraft, as has been said countless times. When this happens the correct thing to do is fly pitch and power. Not that this is necessarily easy when you've got a bunch of warnings going off, of which at least some may be spurious, but eminently do-able.
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.
Uh, if a pilot is incapable of working out that upon A/P disconnect that the system that is controlling the aircraft is in fact them, then there's something seriously wrong in their training, surely?
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.
Again, those on here who are either FBW Airbus pilots or who have systems-level knowledge seem to know exactly what's going on. Most of the confusion has been engendered by people throwing theories in either from a position of relative ignorance or because they have an agenda.
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.
Wrong again. The "test pilots" would have been quite capable of taking the aircraft to a genuine stall as part of certification testing. You're confusing line pilot stall/incipient stall training (which certainly looks deficient with 20/20 hindsight) with Airbus's own testing of it's aircraft and systems.
(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.)
That's an apples/oranges comparison. There's a major difference between troubleshooting an engine failure on a relatively new aircraft type with all-new engine technology and getting things ready to come in for a landing, and diagnosing a pitot probe blockage/loss of airspeed data on an aircraft that's been in service for over a decade.