Originally Posted by
Lyman
Howdy. Is there any possibility at all that RHS was following in his scan the V/S (SELECT) at 5000fpm descent at a/p loss, confused it with the Nose Down he saw at takeover, and imprinted it in his initial S/A? Therefore the NU?
Not really, because you just cross-check with the altimeter, and as long as it's not unwinding drastically, you rationalise the V/S display as a turbulence-related blip.
Perhaps Farley can explain how difficult it is to hover the Harrier. A friend tells me its like doing jumping jacks on a bowling ball. I tend to use that thought when I envision a/p loss on 447. It was difficult.
Difficult, yes - but as difficult as hovering the Harrier? I don't think so. The Harrier is notoriously tricky to control in hover as it's not very stable and you're only about 50ft or so off the ground, whereas the A330 is *extremely* stable, and in this case was handed over at cruise altitude, with a reasonable speed setting. The AF447 PF could in all likelihood have kept his hands off the stick and nothing untoward would have happened.
As to the DFDR/CVR contents? To consider any part of it to be "off limits" to anyone with appropriate expertise is to deny the concept of a Democracy.
This isn't about denying content to those with appropriate expertise, it's about air accident investigation *needing* to be a special case to prevent possible further accidents between the time of the accident and the court case. I was accused of naivete on the other thread for saying that Airbus had to be given the FDR data for technical reasons and not for the benefit of their legal team. I'm sure their legal team have seen some of it, but until the final report is released and the trial begins, I don't think they'll have looked into anything the BEA consider non-relevant (and remember, the distinction of relevance is made by the BEA, *not* Airbus).
It's also interesting that you use "Plaintiff" and "Defendant" in that manner - strictly speaking, the crews' families, Airbus and AF are what Anglo law would consider co-defendants. With the evidence as it's laid out in the 3rd Interim Report, it seems that all three are likely to come in for a degree of censure - mishandling and poor CRM for the flight crew, failure to expedite replacement of the Thales pitot tubes for AF and Airbus, and poor management and training practices on the part of AF.
I've said my piece on automation elsewhere. Automation is a tool, nothing more - if that tool is being used to skimp on training and development of handflying, then it is the fault of those using automation for that end, bot automation itself.