PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - AF 447 Thread No. 7
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Old 20th Dec 2011, 01:32
  #690 (permalink)  
Old Carthusian
 
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Machinbird
Sounds rather 'Camelish' (the said biplane used to pull to the right due to the torque of its Bentley engine). Are you saying that the control response is tardy and that the pilot's reactions are too quick? It has all the flavour of panic and forgetting how the machine actually flies. Those who have commented on flying the Airbus family particularly the A330 comment that it is a very stable aircraft in all aspects of its flight envelope. Therefore for your theory to work as a causal factor there would have to be a hidden design flaw which was not spotted in flight testing. I doubt this and fall back on the explanation that the PF (for some reason) lost it and overreacted terribly. The aircraft is going to respond to the pilot inputs and these are what caused the rolling - not the aircraft. A thorough rereading of the CVR transcript might help here. There is a disturbing lack of professionalism manifest throughout the sequence of events and the rolling is just a symptom of this.
What is missing from Conclusion No. 3 is the word 'can' because PIO can also result from a panicking pilot 'mayonnaise stirring' without the aircraft having any blame (as it were). However, I picked that conclusion out because it was an excellent illustration of the sloppy language used in the paper. What the PF needed to do in the AF447 situation was wait and analyse then act. He panicked and flopped around hopelessly and his colleague who could have taken command (as he seems to have understood the situation better) did nothing. No CRM, cockpit discipline, SOPs, chain of command. I keep on repeating this sorry to say but these factors are there for a reason - so that pilots do not get into messes when faced with unfamiliar situations. Simply a training and cultural issue - if you have the time take a look at Pan Am (late '60s early 70's) and Korean Airlines (1970s to early 2000s) for just how nasty these things can get.
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