Originally Posted by oldchina
It's allowed (certified) for the AP to quit and make the pilots hand fly the plane at high altitude.
Surprise...shock...horror. And not just APs! Engines, radios, NAVs are also allowed to malfunction from time to time and poor pilots are expected to cope with it! Is it realistic thing to expect from mere human being?
Originally Posted by HarryMan
Yes, yes, i know... bad piloting, inexplicable piloting but that is why stick shakers and pushers have been around for years
Nope, they are not to be considered poor piloting compensators. They are fitted if certifying authority deems that aeroplane stalling characteristics warrant their installation. They may help slightly distracted pilot but they are of limited value with totally incapacitated one. As is anything we came up with so far.
Originally Posted by xcitation
The AF447 pilots probably had less than 60 seconds to get ahead of the aircraft that had run away from them.
Aeroplane was not getting away from them. CM2 has chased her away pretty actively.
Originally Posted by rudderrudderrat
Is it reasonable to ask a pilot to fly one particular way when in Normal Law, and a different way when in Alternate Law?
Is it reasonable to ask me to control the roll by spoilers alone when right roll control linkage gets jammed and I get no feedback via yoke whatsoever? Is it reasonable to expect my F/O to fly us back to the tera firma with no spoilers and thus reduced control if my side is stuck? Was it reasonable to expect Genotte/Michielsen to survive when Gremlin hit took out all of their A300 hydraulics? How about Fitch/Haynek/Records?
For Finnegan's sake, the pilots are expected to cope with the degradation of flying qualities as far as they are able, not by the law of the men, but by the simple law of self-preservation.
Originally Posted by rudderrudderrat
We had to do all our B707 emergency exercises in real life, Stalling, Emergency Descent, EFTO etc. Unfortunately we were writing off more aircraft during training than we did in normal passenger operations. There was no good reason to continue using the real thing once simulator fidelity came close. A crew learns far more by freezing the sim before impact than chatting to them in their hospital beds - or worse.
Absolutely correct. Today's training is what aviation authorities believe to be optimal trade-off between training value, risks associated with flying and costs.
Originally Posted by Machinbird
Do you really think you can shake the short Airbus stick sufficiently to draw attention without also making control inputs?
And what if the pilot is not holding onto the stick when the alarm is triggered?
Then again, how would you alert the PNF?
1. Yes, I do, provided it turns out FBW Airbi meet criteria for their installation. It's stickshaker, not stickwaver.
2. Aural warning, already patented.
3. See 2.
Originally Posted by John3775
I hate to say it but the people on the flight deck were...morons. I know, it is terrible to say.
In general terms, I wouldn't say so. I don't think that background checks will find much extraordinary, like more than usual amount of re-training. IMHO there was something that debilitated them at the moment probes froze and did not let them out of its grip till the watery end. This something is what has do be drawn out into the light. To paraphrase Arab proverb: they were like children going into lion's den, unaware that the old nasty lion lives at high AoA. They forgot
an old aviation cliche:
To go up, pull the stick back. To go down, pull the stick back harder.