EDITED later:
@ testpanel
I may have misread your post, or misunderstood its context. A Flightglobal article seemed to allude to something that your pithy observations may have been rooted in.
BEA stated that the relief pilot should have immediately called out the excessive parameters. "The absence of specific training in manual aircraft handling at high altitude likely contributed to the inappropriate piloting inputs and surveillance," it said.
If that's what you were getting at in re the PILOT monitoring function, then your post makes more sense to me than the way it read the first couple of times.
@testpanel
does anybody "needs" a stall warning? we should be trained not to be even closse to it, by various "indications".
You need the warning since the aircraft feedback system doesn't provide cues. Attempting to solve this by training
perfect prevention is a good way to fill up a few more graves.
While I completely agree that stall avoidance is the general best practice, stall warning is particularly handy in conditions near stall (approach) where abrupt changes (gusts) or malfunctions can take your margins from comfortable to too darned close ... so yes, stall warning is a good design feature.
1) make sure it works
2) design as well as can be to eliminate spurious stall warning
pnf should be as it means; pilot-NOT-flying, in other companies called "pilot-MONITORING" and thats what he should have been doing.
You know that is NOT what CRM is all about. As to AF447, the PNF was indeed doing that, and more. He had to. (If you were arguing that he wasn't doing it
well enough, that was a curious way to state the case).
The PILOT not flying or PILOT monitoring is a role which sometimes requires action ... back to CRM 101 ... for example, when the PILOT flying is cocking it up. (See the CVR extracts for this mishap). I don't recall ever teaching that one keeps monitoring failure. One works to correct error or failure.
PNF (LHS) noted errors and was at one point playing the helpful copilot role to support the PILOT flying (in terms of trying to get him to recognize and correct a pitch up error and a climb), a PILOT whose
flying was breaking down. (Were his verbal inputs optimal? Separate discussion, and as I don't speak French, no further comment).
What more do you want this monitoring PILOT to do?
Monitor the screw up all the way down to the ground?
(Come on, you can't feel that way.)
I could make the complaint is that he didn't take the aircraft soon enough, but he also was struggling with his scan and puzzling out airspeed issues ... one can also argue that he didn't prompt the PILOT flying that they needed to get the UAS procedures underway ... but if the guy can't fly the bird straight and level, can you begin to work that QRH? There was apparently a fundamental
flying problem underway.
The LHS guy is a PILOT, a role that sometimes requires
action.
its sad to see another perfectly-good-aircraft got crashed (buffalo, amsterdam etc etc).
Amen, Deacon.
Also: I had to edit again, I realize my tone was way off base from appropriate.
Apologies for that.
