14th Oct 2011, 22:54 #
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lyo
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: earth
Posts: 14
Hi all
Had a conversation with an AI FE. He told me about a test flight last summer.
3 test pilots, an air asia 330 And a flight test program. Vmc day light over the Jay of Biscaye in a dedicated flight test area.
This guys reconfigured the lad in alternate 2, stable fl 350, zoomed to fl380, entered a Stall. It developed into a deep Stall. No information about ths position though.
Eventually, they recovered at ...6000ft... As the elevator authority was lost, deep Stall, they found themselves powerless using standard techniques to recover from it. A rudder input induced a spin which Led to a dive And our test pilots recovered This tricky Stall. These guys reported that they felt the end was near...
I hope the live feed he witnessed that day Will be Made available for all pilots to learn from guys who were prepared And trained for that event.
Had some discussion with my checkees prior to a LOFT session and the checkee captain ( a TRI ) was scathing in his criticism of these AF447 pilots. We all agreed to do some manual flying exercises after the LOFT session and the LOFT exercise would be a little bit non standard, a little bit out of the ordinary.
I improvised by giving the Captain a very light aircraft climbing to FL390 in night IMC, with some small electrical problems, window arcing then with a badly cracked left forward windshield window ( verbally simulated, with the outer pane cracked impairing visibility ). We then obscured the left windshield with a manila card board; the TRI was in his element as they went through the ECAM and QRH, transferring control to his F/O.
Earlier I had programmed the loss of all PRIMs and SEC 1 together with unreliable airspeed/radome loss with turbulence with a TCAS climb event; as we were messing around with taping up the manila card, the crew's checklist procedure and simulated ATC calls, all the programmed events kicked in with all the crazy warnings. To cut a long story short; it wasn't pretty, the sim ended up in the drink!!!
We then had a very, very quiet session of many visual circling approaches which both checkees performed to acceptable standards ( they were obviously still rattled after ending up in the drink! ). Both looked were very chastised; we then revisited the previous LOFT scenario with each failure coming sequentially one by one which they managed reasonably well.
During the debrief, we had the litany of usual excuses. However they were more circumspect and understood that we might never know the actual " atmosphere and displays " in the AF447 cockpit. To this day, I am not 100% confident that had I been in the Af447 cockpit that night that I could have recovered before we hit water; sorry I am just an average pilot who happened to be a TRE!