hey gums,
He was flying attitude, obviously. He had a PITCH CUE, and a ROLL CUE, hence his inputs. Cross checking what? For all he knows it's a simple autopilot disconnect, UAS hasn't come up before, for him, and he's flying in NORMAL LAW, as he would be in for any autopilot drop not related to UAS.
Retired? Of course he's steering, that's what he and the autopilot have been doing for two plus hours. He doesn't move to deselect throttles, because deselecting throttle AUTO and deselecting FLIGHT DIRECTORS is part of UAS, of which he is unconcerned. WE know it was UAS, HE DID NOT. NEITHER did, not at that point. So he handles the ship off the FD, easy peasy. Again, why with the alarm? CAVALRY CHARGE and MASTER CAUTION happen at every AUTO quit, so he just wants to get to PARIS. I am saying his level of concern is not up to what you want it to be, or should have been, because he just wants to NAVIGATE.
Mistake? Boy Howdy, but how is he supposed to know? Besides, even if you're LOST, get a DF STEER or a PAR, right gums? No sweat.
I think the FD was worms, and he took bad data and turned it into confusion, alarms, and STALL, by virtue of his reactions to what he thought was happening, which was NOT UAS.
FD worms? Bad AirData? For how long, and how long was the ship "flying" with duff gunk?
We assume the flight degraded because we have the gift of time, and back slapping consensus, we think that's how it went. I say BS.
gums:
What about other indications? basic crosscheck. Granted, the speed and maybe even altitude were questionable, but simply holding the basic attitude of 2 minutes ago would have been the wise choice, IMHO. Don't fool with the power, don't change pitch attitude. Don't just do something, sit there and analyze the situtation and then proceed. And I did not see that.
This is all good, but coming from a pov that has the PF in the stockade, for doing dumb ****. He wasn't, yet most of us have him all "figured out".
It was Not until 17 seconds (check, I think actually eleven) after the loss of AUTOPILOT the PNF announced "we lost the speeds, then". "then" as in, "Oh, Hello, we've lost our airspeeds."
We need to look at all of it, including that PF was a simple line pilot, who wanted to get to France, and home, not some test pilot wannabe who wants to out maverick goose. He acted as though he was unaware that UAS was the call, did he not? His call seems to have been a vanilla a/p drop, and "let's us stick with the flightpath", right?
Last edited by Lyman; 18th May 2012 at 17:56.