@Old Carthusian:
Hi,
I don't know why you're addressing a reply to me about your flying background - I didn't ask any question about it
My earlier replies to you were just trying to help correct the mis-description of what a nose-up AI indication means (or rather
doesn't necessarily mean). That interpretation is especially relevant in the case of AF447 when stalled, of course. I thought I would try explaining it slightly differently, to see if that helped, since you were saying the same thing to multiple other members who were also trying to explain the fallacy of your statement
as it was written (which you later explained was not what you really meant).
Someone else suggested the discussion about general AI interpretation was off-topic in this thread, and I agreed to stop. That's all
While I don't agree with all your comments below, since you've kindly explained some of your thoughts, here are some of my own...
Originally Posted by Old Carthusian
The implications are very disturbing - almost as if there is a disease that can infect any airline.
I agree - since HF seems to be a significant contributor to this accident, and humans are involved as flight crew on other airlines,
personally I have
not concluded that
only Air France CRM training / assumptions of hand-flying training requirements / etc. [add other human factors as needed] are likely to have been lacking at that time.
In fact I remember another pilot here (not AF as far as I know) who said a while back, that high-altitude manual handling training and high-altitude UAS training had been introduced on his airline
after AF447. That suggests such training was also lacking on that airline too, prior to this accident - so AF was not alone, it seems.
Originally Posted by Old Carthusian
Arguments about automation and greater computing taking away flying skills may have some bearing but not really.
Based on my reading, I politely disagree about the "not really". The paper by Dr Lisanne Bainbridge called "Ironies of Automation" seems extremely relevant here (I first found that paper a while ago, via a link in another accident report - NTSB, I think - this is not the first time that AP handed over to pilot, who seemed unable to grasp the situation from a "cold start"). This isn't a criticism of pilots - it's a limitation of humans IMHO.
Also the concept of "startle factor" (when automation unexpectedly hands-over to the pilot) was shown in an AF training slide in an earlier segment of this thread, so this issue is known. The man-machine interface (and humans not being well-suited to a monitoring-only situation, which is more & more the case with modern flying) makes me very interested in the effects of increased automation, and its part in accidents like this.
Originally Posted by Old Carthusian
However, the yoke would not have saved the aircraft in this incident because the issue is cultural not mechanical.
Perhaps, perhaps not. I don't believe anyone can say that yokes "would not" have helped (nor that they "would have" helped) - we simply don't know, since we can't re-run
this scenario with
this crew (unless you have a time machine to re-run that flight in an A332 fitted with (preferably coupled/back-driven) yokes
). I've seen enough arguments from members here (some quite assertive!) with merit on both sides, to see that there are benefits (and deficiencies) to both systems.
LOC accidents with yoke-equipped aircraft as previously mentioned by other members, show that they are not a panacea. However I don't see how anyone could
rule-out in this case, the possibility of the PNF being more assertive (e.g. perhaps taking control earlier) if he was more aware (by having the yoke pressed to his body) of the PF's extreme nose-up inputs. We can't ask him, so we'll never know whether that knowledge might have changed his behaviour
I will just point out that the CVR conversation at 2h 13m 40s seems particularly important regarding the [lack of] awareness of the other crew to the PF's inputs - especially since (according to the released CVR transcript), the PF was not verbally communicating his decisions & inputs most of the time. Would a yoke have improved this PNF + Capn awareness enough (and quickly enough) to change the outcome? I don't know, and perhaps only if the PNF or Capn caused a change in PF inputs (or one of them took control) earlier than this point in the sequence - but I doubt that a yoke would have made the PNF & Capn's awareness of the PF's inputs
worse.
The HF part of the final report will make interesting reading, IMHO.