Originally Posted by
Welsh Wingman
(1) The historic role of Airbus in creating the impression to line management that "planes fly themselves", even if partly inadvertently, and the knock-on effect upon the training culture.
Well, let's be fair here - if they'd asked the engineers rather than the sales guys they would have got a more honest answer going all the way back to 1988. As a slightly tangential aside, aircraft manufacturers have been claiming the ability of their aircraft to "fly themselves" to some degree ever since the introduction of INS-enabled autopilots - in fact the first time I ever heard the term used (albeit in a fictional setting) was as an annoying kid watching the annoying kid in "Airport 1975" saying the very same thing about the 747. I'm sure the Boeing sales team would not have gone out of their way to qualify that remark. And the movie, though utterly terrible in any kind of objective sense, certainly demonstrated via some rather nifty stunt flying that the 747 was very stable in environments where it would never normally be used.
Another quasi-fictional allusion to said ability crops up in John G. Fuller's "Flight 401" book, this time in reference to the L-1011 - and no matter what you think about the supernatural bobbins included therein, he did his research on aircraft and line operations pretty well.
(2) Several additional "complications" in an Airbus cockpit when things go awry, if cockpit discipline is not tight i.e. feedback issues (e.g. SS v control column, and the throttle and trimming) and the PNF is visually less aware of how the PF is by-hand flying.
Not completely unaware, mind... PJ2 confirmed a few posts back that most of the FBW Airbus pilots he knew didn't really see the feedback thing as an issue.
My interpretation of the CVR, for what that's worth, is that the PNF saw what the PF was doing by watching the attitude of the aircraft on the ADI, but for reasons that are likely to be endlessly debated in human factors forums for years, he either failed to accept that the guy to his right really was mashing the controls about that cack-handledly* (would you, or any pilot on here for that matter not have a moment of "this can't be happening"?), or indeed came to that conclusion but again, for reasons that will be debated for years, felt he didn't have the authority to tell his colleague to get his hands off the d*mn stick right now. We've seen instances of this before, with KLM4805 at Tenerife and Birgenair - but previous instances have tended to involve an F/O who felt he couldn't overrule his Captain. With a poorly-defined command gradient, is it possible that an F/O can also feel he or she does not have the right to give orders to a colleague of the same rank?
Also, I don't think flight deck discipline and airmanship in general can be completely separated - if you don't maintain proper CRM and organise your flight crew effectively then you're probably going to end up in the cacky eventually no matter what aircraft you fly.
I suppose you could add under this heading the <60knt stall warning design "issue".
Fair comment, but as of now we don't know how many other types also have the same issue or similar. I'd be prepared to bet money that it's more than a few... One of the perennial issues that has dogged stall warning technology in jetliners since the days of the Comet, Caravelle, 707 and DC-8 is the number of hull-losses attributed to the crew incorrectly diagnosing a stall warning as false when it turned out not to be. I find it hard to fault any manufacturer making a design assumption like that because this is the first time in decades that an airliner has ended up so far outside of it's design parameters.
This is a training/human behaviour issue otherwise the temporary UAS on AF447 would have been temporary by-hand P+P flight and another logbook entry on the Thales pitot tubes being phased out......
Absolutely agree. Though having said that it offers intriguing technical questions about all modern fourth-generation airliners - and I wonder if Airbus and Boeing will be willing to examine their designs to see what potential gotchas lurk when the aircraft is taken that far outside of it's envelope.
* - I happen to be cack-handed/southpaw/lefty, so I can use that phrase.
