I make no moral judgment as to these two accidents, and you are correct. BUT, going from the evidence, can you say some political reluctance was not in play? You quote proper procedures, certainly. In these tragic accidents, I believe your "best practice" was not folowed, as it should have been. Do you see these as "best practice," then? It is occasionally extremely difficult to act without "equality" in the cockpit, that is my point.
As to 447, "Responsible" remains to be decided, and since it is in Court, some percentage value will be apportioned to whomever the principals are determined to be. If crew were briefed, officially, to ignore STALLWARN, where is their culpability? So that means that up til three seconds after a/p handoff, the pilots were totally on the hook. The first STALL,STALL is intriguing, and we do not know its genesis. PF did not "TOGA/15 degrees at this point, and did later, so to me, that indicates the first warnng was ignored. If PNF was concerned about something "What was that?" we do not know what it was.
fifty four seconds total of STALLWARN, and not a word......do you think that odd, Lonewolf?
[B]@Lonewolf...."That "zoom climb" is to me doubly inexplicable, given that the crew were very aware of their altitude limitations for that sector of the route. Their discussion was recorded, to the effect that actual versus forecast temps at altitude did not permit a climb to a higher altitude that they had planned for (or left as an option) before takeoff. /B]
Not inexplicable and the reason is this: The evidence. My take is that the PF was unaware of his climb, and his instruments were not helping him to decide the correct attitude, plus a concern for Overspeed. Another factor could be an uncommanded ascent. Make no mistake, his pull on the stick caused climb, but can we eliminate the a/c climbing on her own? In additiion to? The VS and the altitude gained are remarkable, and the initial inputs of PF were not commensurate with ROC, imho. How can the a/c sustain 1.68 g and the cockpit not remark? ROLL masking the VS accelerations? Columnar airmass, ~ +100?
Last edited by Lyman; 11th May 2012 at 16:15.