Hi Gums,
Originally Posted by
gums
Bottom line is there are too many "external" inputs to the FCS after the air data has failed, and the spurious stall warnings and such did not help the crew.
Agreed, sir - as others here have said before, a stall warning which turns off even when the aircraft is still stalled, is likely difficult for them to understand. I wonder how many AB pilots here, were taught that the stall warning could be silent with the a/c stalled, before this crash...? Yes, I know the attitude & airspeed should have been clues, but if they're (correctly) ignoring some instruments due to them being wrong (airspeed) or missing (v/s), how do they know they can trust the attitude displays?
Returning to your point about too many (pilot) inputs after the air data failed: Is it reasonable to expect civilian pilots who (whether we like it or not) now spend much of their time monitoring during the cruise rather than hand-flying, to instantly handle a totally unplanned transition to hand-flying, without occasional excessive inputs due to shock / surprise / fear / etc.? Especially with inadequate training for that situation? (Of course we're now seeing some improved training, as mentioned in the BEA report.)
My understanding of your eloquent posts (and please correct me if I'm wrong), is that your military flying was very different, in that you were very rarely using any form of (even basic) AP - yes? If so, then you were always "caught-up" with the exact state of your aircraft (through your ss!), in a way that a civilan pilot monitoring the cruise is much less able to be, unless hand-flying. Or do you believe I'm wrong?
It seems to me that the transition from "normal" to "problem" (it's not even necessarily an emergency, as Machinbird kindly pointed out), occurs to military pilots while
flying; but occurs to civilain pilots, if in the cruise, when they are
not (actively) flying and hence is a bigger shock and needs more time to catch-up, just because we're human. That's the time when control inputs have a greater risk of being inappropriate, due to the shock factor and lack of preparedness for that transition.
I think I'm probably just repeating PJ2 and his comments about them needing to "don't do something, sit there"
- the requirement for immediate roll inputs prevented those initial moments of "catch-up", however.
I'm here to learn, and become a better (GA) pilot, so I'm open to being told that I'm full of &^%$