AF 447 Thread No. 8

[gums]

Salute!

Good grief, are we now supposed to train our pilots to do fault analysis for 99% of the flight and then decide if Hal is doing O.K., and then "save the day" when Hal says "I can't do any more and don't know what's wrong"? BEAM ME UP!

Even if that approach is taken, then the humans still have to have the abilities and skills and judgement to fly the jet and get all the folks to the ramp. And they better have lottsa training for unusual flight conditions and loss of indicators.

Only reason I cut the crew some slack is the complicated reversion laws, unusual warning sounds and displays and such. I still think the PF thot he couldn't stall the jet due to the AoA protections ( poor term, but for another thread). Otherwise, I blame the crew.

I do not agree that the jet is so well designed that it is fool proof. Nor do I buy the argument that it did what it was supposed to, so no problem with the jet. I throw the foul flag, and point to the displays, confusing warnings, and on and on....

I see no point in discussing the yaw dampers and sideslip angles and all that stuff. Best I can tell is that the jet was fairly controllable, even at an extreme AoA and slow speed. So an attaboy to Airbus aero folks. And many "aw $hits" to the display and sfwe folks and training program. Takes 20 of gums' "attaboys" to equal one "aw $hit".

My feeling is that most of the pilots here think that better training and more hand-flying is vital. And then there's the human factors such as displays, warnings and complicated control law reversions. Am I way off base?

I thank the Lord that the primitive FBW system I flew had AoA as the prime limit, and the gee and rate limits secondary. Our yaw damper for the rudder commands was decent, but prolly no better than any jet that flew from the mid-fifties.

I say again that you could not get into the stall or "deep stall" without zooming up at 70 or 80 degrees of pitch and let the jet zip past the control law limits, then settle into the infamous "deep stall". If you were rolling and such, it was really hard to do.

I look forward to the final report and recommendations. Will be extremely interesting.