"The LH incident was a failure of procedure. The Captain should have been performing the landing in crosswinds of that magnitude in the first place. The Captain allowing the F/O to continue was a questionable command decision (as was AF447's CDB placing F/O Bonin in charge with doubtful weather ahead and a known icing problem on that type, but I digress), and he then compounded it by mishandling taking control."
Erm....no.
1. But the F/O was landing, and not subject to your approval.
"With a yoke, the LH Captain would have had to fight the control forces his F/O was making, to which her reaction could have been to pull harder in the opposite direction. On top of that, dual yoke input may not do what you think. There's a school of thought on EgyptAir 990 which has the forward yoke command of the F/O and the rearward yoke command of the Captain causing the elevators to split (one up, one down), causing instant loss of control."
2. Fight? NO. The F/O removes her hands immediately when the Captain even touches his wheel. She won't even wait for "My aircraft".
3. It was the additive controls due to lack of command isolation that caused Lufthansa to strike the concrete with her sharklet. Again, Captain says... and takes, she drops. (With yokes). No cross command possible.
@Dozy..."Again, the PNF on AF447 had the tools right in front of him to not only take control, but to lock the PF out for a period if necessary - tools put there by Airbus specifically to ensure safe operation of the aircraft if one of the pilots is not performing correctly. He did not use these tools - why?
The BEA will tell us why... but let me anticipate. Command confusion due to one or more of several causes. PNF does not assuredly trust his displays, so to take command, he felt his evidence for doing so was questionable. Culture in Air France puts pressure on ego, and shame, just like Korea. It is very stressful for both people to change the command. Did we hear the Captain attempting to apportion command (control)? NO, and he is the Commander de vol. So Captain himself does not see a problem with PF's performance beyond some obvious corrections, Rudder Bar coming to mind. Captain notes PF "I have no VS..." and says, get this...."Ok"... "He's pulling UP...." "Well someone should, we're at 4000 feet"......Remember, the Captain enters and says "What the Hell are you doing?.....
Last edited by Lyman; 4th May 2012 at 17:53.