It isn't just me who doesn't trust
Subject: Test Pilot Burt Rutan, on Airbus
Passed on by an experienced guy who worked for Lockheed and then the FAA for years. He absolutely refuses to fly on any Airbus because of their French designed fly by wire system.
Bill, These machines are mfg in Touloius, France and have certification by CAA and ICAO over there before they go for our FAA certification. It depends a lot on direction from the white house and congress as to what the FAA does when it comes to dealing with foreign governments. Some times the FAA doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to say about the end result when pressured by the State Dept on some political issue. I think the FAA core knows all about the Airbus systems that are so radically different than any we have here. The computer nerd systems on the Airbus have caused numerous crashes over many years since their inception but never enough of them at one time to get people up in arms.
Airbus is ALMOST as good as Boeing in hiding the real cause of crashes. I remember about 20 years ago when the A319 was being introduced to India. The pilot thought he had control during a landing BUT the nerds system took over on approach, throttled the engines back to idle, and the bird plopped down in the pine trees and exploded about 1/4 mile from the end of the runway. OF COURSE--Airbus found that it was pilot error since neither he nor the copilot survived. Twenty years later the same nerd systems on a A320 put Capt. Sully in the Hudson. The nerds sensors on the engines determined that the bird strike was cause for shutting down the engines and it shut down both engines and the pilot had no control to restart them. Actually the strike did nothing more than smear some goose guts over an engine PTO probe and their was NO reason to shut down the engines. If this had been a Boeing, Sully could have used the engines to make a safe landing.
The Air France 447 was another nerd screw-up in using JOY sticks to fly a huge airliner--the A330 is a huge bird!!
What makes this incident so sad is that the exact thing happened to an A330 in France five or six years ago during a demo flight by their chief test pilot. The accident was the basic responsiblity of the chief test pilot as he allowed a customer pilot (with very little flight time) to make the take -off to show him how simple it was!! On take-off the customer pilot pulled back too much on the JOY stick, and before the chief could take over, stalled, crashed and burned right in front of the control tower. Just like 447 the chief couldn't see what position the copilot JOY stick was in, as it was covered by his hand, just as the Capt on 447 couldn't see what control inputs were being made when he entered the cockpit at 18,000 feet on the way down to the water. If it had been a Boeing he could have seen the copilot pulling back on the control yoke causing the the stall. And to further the confusion in the cockpit--when the right JOY stick is moved, the left JOY stick doesn't move with it. When one moves either control yoke on a Boeing the other control yoke responds with the same movement--not so with the nerds system!!
Bill,
the only thing we can do at this point is stay the hell off Airbus equipment!!
Jim,
Where’s the FAA in all this ??