Originally Posted by
HarryMann
Right,
apologies then...
Don't mention it, and likewise, I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that I was being disrespectful at any point.
I think I'm overspeeding, so I'm holding the stick back, I've tried a wedge load of thrust (oddly) and also now reduced it somewhat (more sensibly)
I'm also holding the stick almost fully to one side, then the other to keep the wings level, as they have a habit of rolling around in a rather airy fairy floppy fashion
Why in an overspeed situation, would this be happening, when the norm is a spiral dive (banked one way or the other and increasing) or just laterally diverging (again banked one way) ?
I don't think the PF was ever completely convinced he was overspeeding, as I think he would have argued the toss with the PNF when the latter practically bit the PF's hand off when he reached for the speedbrake lever if he did. I suspect he didn't really know what was going on and was trying to throw out ideas (which is fairly common in a dynamic problem-solving environment). I also suspect that he was suffering encroaching tunnel vision from the outset and heard neither the "Alternate Law" callout from the PNF, nor the stall warning. As such, there's a little nagging suspicion in the back of my head that he was convinced that as long as he had TOGA selected, no amount of back stick could cause him to stall.
Another thing I'm not convinced of is that he was fighting a right-roll tendency that was entirely down to external forces. After the aircraft was stalled, yes the clues were all there, but at the apex of the climb and just prior he was still slamming the stick around. I wonder whether the initial right-roll was induced by an unfortunate combination of a pocket of turbulence at the same time A/P disengaged - and because of the magnitude of the inputs what we are actually seeing prior to the stall is PIO. While I'm not going to join the chorus of those saying that failure to release the raw FDR data is tantamount to wrongdoing, I do hope that with the final report will come some traces that are of a higher resolution in the time axis - especially around the time of A/P disconnect to the apogee. That way it should be possible to determine whether the PF stick inputs were excessive inputs to combat a serious roll issue or whether PIO had a part to play.
Again, remember you're clearly a pilot with some considerable technical and aeronautical knowledge under your belt. This is no slur on them, but a lot of guys on the line do not.