Originally Posted by ChristiaanJ
But, wasn't there a suggestion, early in one of the earliest threads, that AB pilots are 'not encouraged' to use manual trim (except after full reversion to "mechanical")?
Not to mention the absence of a "bicycle bell" while autotrim was winding the THS to full nose-up, contributing to a lack of "configuration awareness"?
Sir,
The Airbus is flown using purely on the basis of flight path. The pilot sets the path and it is coordinated in the short term by the elevators and in the long term by the THS. So "trim" is not used/mentioned when the flight path is selected (normal and alternate law). Trim is used in Direct law, but normally in the sim you deliberately configure for landing in alternate law, drop the gear and end up in direct law, and you remain in trim for landing.
Naturally the pilot is more reliant on his ASI than in a conventional aircraft, since he has lost the "out of trim" feedback. However, you have all the protections.... Young first officers I fly with are astonished when I bore them with stories of how you can fly from clean to fully configured quite accurately with all your instruments covered (in an old fashioned jet).
Now...
In the usual sim scenarios something goes wrong and you end up in alternate law. So, as Han said to Chewy, you "fly casual". No high speed, nothing dramatic, and when you drop the gear you often end up in direct law. No drama (and really, not much learnt).
In alternate law, you have no protections, but you still have a stall warning. It is not often drilled into pilots that this stall warning is
really important when in alternate law. We rarely, no maybe never, do scenarios where we are in alternate law with UAS and we might easily stall. All UAS has been done low-level, where the recovery is simple and brutal, using escape-mode pitch and power. High altitude flight is hardly ever trained - and most new zero-to-Airbus guys have never hand flown a conventional aircraft at high altitude. The Airbus hides the delicacy and sensitivity you need, and masks the true lack of grunt available from the engines.
With only sidestick and seneca in your experience bag, you are not well positioned to start your manual high altitude conventional flight learning with UAS in a thunderstorm. Especially when all the training for UAS has been at low altitude. I can't reproduce the words of my certain trainer exactly here, but it was along the lines of "if you hear the stall warning in an airbus, then something has gone wrong
and you have stalled, so you need to unstall and then work out how you
ed up twice in such a short period".
Furthermore, when something goes wrong there's normally a drill or "recovery" to be done. Especially if you are an FO. Captains are required to sit and think, but FOs are required to recall and perform the drill. Of course here the drill was to do as much nothing as possible, but that doesn't feature in training either.
It is easy to end the thought process with the fact that the 2 FOs got it very wrong. It is clear that they did, but I would suggest that there is a whole generation of new pilots capable of making the same error. Through lack of experience of less able aircraft and through lack of
conventional high altitude flight and failures.
The Airbus is an extremely capable and safe aircraft. By far the safest type I have flown. But it will still kill you if you get it badly wrong, just like any other type. If airlines insist of shoving low hour pilots onto the Airbus, then they need to seriously up the ante with training and standards or else this type of accident will happen again.