Flyinheavy;
Well, as far as I did understand the procedure, above FL100 the memory items call for 5°/Climb thrust.
I found it strange, but as I never have flown a bus, I asked some friends current on the A330 and they concurred, although confirming, that they'd rather stay with the attitude/N1 which had been before the event.
I wrote on
July 30th, 2009 that the correct response was to "do nothing". I don't claim any special prescience...it's just the logical thing to do when in cruise. When this entire matter was conflated in subsequent discussion, I argued that the memorized items were not only confusing but the entire drill and checklist were poorly written. The "above FL100" memorized item to pitch to 5deg and set CLB thrust was, in my view, intended to cater to high density altitude airfields, not cruise altitudes. But this is
not clear in the drill.
There has been plenty of discussion on this item throughout these threads, and I suggest the use of
mm43's excellent
PPRuNe search tool, to find these discussions.
The BEA press conference comment is, in my view, incorrect. While control would not be lost with an increase of pitch of 2.5deg to an attitude of 5deg, (because the pitch is already 2.5deg in cruise, roughly), the maneouvre does de-stabilize the aircraft when the aircraft is already stabilized in level flight with a good pitch attitude and power setting which were just fine moments before the UAS event. In fact, if one is not trained or accustomed to high altitude handling of a transport aircraft, one may be hunting a great deal with either a CC or an SS to maintain a pitch of 5deg. I just can't see, and never could see this memorized item making any sense whatsoever when in cruise flight.
jcjeant;
As far I know .. at this time (2007) it was not a "memory item"
The procedure in force at February 2007 shows that there are 2 steps
1 - Before the thrust reduction
TOGA/15 °
2 - After the thrust reduction above FL 100
CLB / 5 °
The items have been memory items July, 2006 according to the BEA IR#3 and the Airbus OLM training PDF on the UAS Abnormal cited below. The following is typical of the drill at the time:
There is the following PPT, from 2006, which illustrates that the need for clarifications to this drill and checklist may have been recognized as early as 2006:
http://www.iag-inc.com/premium/Airbu...ableSpeeds.pdf
In my view, the UAS drill and checklist extant at the time provided inappropriate "if-then" decision points for a crew faced with a loss of airspeed in cruise or the late climb/early descent phases of flight.
The primary decision-point is based upon whether the safety of the flight was impacted. That is an entirely subjective matter, as is evidenced by the differences in opinions offered on the matter by those who do this work.
In the above PPT presentation, it is stated that crews will be informed of the nature of this decision "in training", but as read by crews, the memorized items might, or might not be accomplished depending upon one's interpretation of the initial condition -
the safety of the flight.
At cruise altitudes, I have argued that this was no emergency at all, it was an abnormal which required standard responses as trained, and which required no action other than to get out the QRH checklist for the pitch and power settings. Most here disagreed with this view, citing the "Above FL100 decision-point, but frankly there is no way that setting 5deg pitch is indicated in cruise.
Whether this PF intended to set 5deg or 15deg or something else cannot be factually determined at this time. But the airplane pitched up, and it was held there until the stall while both pilots accepted the trajectory, the pitch attitude and the loss of energy. We can only surmise why, and that, is, I think hindsight territory.
Here was my attempt at changing the UAS drill into something reasonable, last year sometime:
This "bifurcates" (makes a decision-point for the crew) the drill on altitude, not a subjective assessment in a moment of failure regarding the safety of the aircraft. Close to the ground, one sets memorized pitch and power. At higher altitudes in climb, cruise or descent, one sets QRH values while "doing nothing" to destabilize the airplane. That's what 30+ other crews actually did when faced with a UAS event.
Pitching up and changing power destabilizes a stable aircraft and, critically, takes it away from those conditions which had produced stable flight, into regimes which are far from stable flight, giving the crew an enormous situational awareness problem in determining the way back to stable flight, where they were in the first place. The "5deg pitch above FL100" is misleading and wrong but, read correctly, the drill does not require such a pitch attitude but instead requires the selection of GPS altitude on the GPS page of the FMGC and the stabilizing of the aircraft in level flight while the QRH is brought out by the other crew member for pitch and power settings.