Originally Posted by
Lyman
As a flyer, I take note of the record. With upwards of three dozen UAS events, each handled in an ad hoc manner, the replacement of the Probes should have been an emergency AD, imo. One would hope that those in charge would have seen it that way after the first dozen or so events.
The manufacturer recommended the SB be applied as soon as practically possible. AF elected to take their time over it. An AD would have resulted in the grounding of all A330 and A340s, which could be argued would have been overkill given that none of the previous incidents had resulted in an emergency situation. Again, it looks like the ball is more in AF's court than Airbus's - though as I've said before Airbus will carry some responsibility for fitting those pitot tubes in the first place (despite the fact that they passed certification). Airbus said "fix this", AF decided to delay - how can Airbus be held responsible for AF's decision?
To re-state the facts as they were prior to this accident is not "partisan" in any way - facts are facts. To state that there was no emergency situation beforehand is not cheerleading, it is just honesty.
Put another way - before this happened, if I as a mere software engineer had suggested that a 2-man relief crew with a combined number of hours in excess of 6,000 was unable to identify - let alone recover from - a high-altitude stall, I'd have been pilloried and laughed off the forum for impugning the abilities of professional airline pilots. Now we know that if the training is inadequate, that can indeed happen and the ripples of that revelation will be doing their work throughout the industry for some time to come.
In a perfect world, every incident that revealed a minor technical problem would result in an AD until the problem was fixed. But neither the world nor the aviation industry is perfect, and real politik will have to be taken into account. This situation is a million miles from the DC-10 cargo door issue (where an AD was appropriate), because the loss of pitot data results in neither structural damage nor an uncontrollable aircraft. The accusation of political machinations also rings hollow, because Airbus were not at the time in existential danger from the issue - the A330 and A340 were already a commercial success and there was little danger of jeopardising their continued success.