Originally Posted by PJ2
The drill was indeed viewed as obligatory as far as the BEA was concerned (in their press conference) and as far as many on this board were/are concerned.
Actually, I was of the same opinion as I misread the 3rd interim; I believed that drill in QRH/FCOM stipulates memory attitudes while "if safety of the flight is affected" decision point is mentioned only in FCTM. Guess what: I was wrong.
By the time AF447 made its final flight I already left A320 and I have never worked for Air France. Our unreliable airspeed on 19/20 was very, very similar to AF on 30 with one very significant difference: there was no option to consider whether to apply memory items or to maintain cruise thrust/pitch. Legally, if I ever got to UAS, I had to apply 5° pitch above FL100 while PNF gets the weight/power/pitch tables out. Outcome-wise, it would not make a lot of difference if I would have set it or kept the things as they were.
Originally Posted by PJ2
Why pitch-up at all when in cruise flight just because the pilot considers that there is "immediate risk to the safety of the flight"?
(...)
Regardless, the main point I have always made and which you continue to miss is, Why destabilize a transport aircraft in cruise flight when a better course of action is to keep the pitch and power settings which existed prior to the failure?
Perhaps because those who wrote the checklist did not believe the pilots' capability to remember the typical cruise attitude and N1 for different weights? 5° with CLB works for any weight until level-off values are read from table and set.
Originally Posted by CONF iture
It sure brings you to the stall warning. That's flying on the edge with no necessity. What's the point when usual pitch and thrust for cruise is the answer.
Airbus has it wrong on that one, even its chief pilot says differently now.
Let me list some of the ways in which this statement is wrong. 1. pulling can lead to high-mach-low-threshold transient stall warning if aeroplane is jerked into climb, reasonably smooth pull from about 1.5 to 5° will avoid it 2. when settled at 5° pitch, AoA will be near cruise pitch and will gently increase towards 5° as speed is bled off. By the time it gets there, you won't be at high mach anymore. 3. If no valid mach, stall warning reverts to low threshold 4. stall warning is not stall itself - a fact cheerfully ignored by those unable to tell the difference between "approach to stall recovery" and "stall recovery". 5. when arguing about Habsheim showoff, you repeatedly claimed that alpha prot prevented aeroplane from achieving higher lift at even higher AoA (backside of the power curve, anyone?) and now all of a sudden, stall warning is considered to be the edge? Are you having it both ways or are you about to make a breakthrough in aerodynamics - discovery of the area of fantastic aerodynamic performance between alpha max and stall warning? Besides, it would add some credibility to the statement of yours if you could provide quote of Airbus chief pilot.
Originally Posted by PJ2
I have long posited the notion that perhaps the pitch-up was due to a remembered response in training, right after takeoff, of the UAS memory items
Don't you think if he was really trying to go for 15° pitch, he would have gone for it all of the time speed was not available? By the time second stall warning went off, left speed readout was normal. By the time aeroplane departed envelope, it was consistent with ISIS. No one checked it.
Originally Posted by PJ2
We actually don't know if the PF was applying this procedure or not as his actions were never announced nor was the PNF included in what was happening as the PFs actions took place.
From CVR we know he never announced what he was doing. Form DFDR we know we know his actions were totally inconsistent with UAS procedure. What else do we need to know?
Originally Posted by Machinbird
Hey Clandestino, we are talking about trained pilots, not random guys you pick up on the street.
When I'm talking about Yuri Gagarin succumbing to spiral dive in cloud or Charles Basset and Elliot See perishing in controlled flight into building, I'm talking about astronauts, not some random airline pilots.
Originally Posted by Machinbird
The only emotion an actual pilot might experience should be surprise. If any of the other emotions are being experienced, then that person doesn't belong in a cockpit without further training to convert those negative emotions into positive and considered action.
Good example of "Invulnerability" risky attitude of which every CRM course warns one about, even the bad ones.
Pilots must have far, far better emotional stability than general public, however it can not be absolute. Emotions do affect the pilots' performance and everyone can break down, given enough pressure. Trick is having the breaking point in the area which is extremely unlikely to be encountered in flight. Can this be achieved through training? I don't know.
Originally Posted by Machinbird
Flying is not supposed to have a lot of emotion attached to it other than appreciation for the beauties of the sky and the earth.
Of course. Going emotional while flying will make one revert to basic instincts developed during millenia of terrestrial existence, which are sure to be wrong in the air and most probably fatal. Air is a rewarding mistress yet she is very demanding and impartial. If one doesn't abide by her laws every millisecond he's airborne, he'll get rejected promptly no matter if he's a newbie or an old acquaintance. Unlike pigeons, we don't have the flying skills in our DNA, it takes ability and devotion to etch them on the very surface of our cerebral cortex - the first thing to shut down when emotions run high.
Originally Posted by alf5071h
Previous A330 ice crystal / ADC / ASI events may have concluded that flight into such conditions was an acceptable risk because of the non-fatal outcomes (with hindsight).
Not just that, lot of them were not even detected until AF447 post-mortem uncovered them by sifting through QAR data. Pilots were so unfazed that they didn't even make reports.
Originally Posted by alf5071h
To progress safety the industry requires to take a more abstract view for continued airworthiness (systems thinking), vice the probabilistic based certification view
Yes, if we apply selective and very narrow hindsight. Every aeroplane type has dozens if not hundreds technical issues being investigated simultaneously. How can you determine which is minor, which major and which will turn out to be lethal if left unchecked long enough? Before AF447 it seemed that UAS is somewhere in the middle of the seriousness scale as pilots have successfully coped with it. There was no rush to change the offending pitots.
Originally Posted by Lonewolf50
As before, the unanswerable "what was he seeing" during this time segment comes to mind.
There will certainly be proposals for improvement of flight recorders, however, what his eyes saw will be pretty straightforward to decipher. What he believed he was seeing, not so.
Originally Posted by Lonewolf50
what is the likelihood that all 30 or so events were shared and understood by crews at the time?
Nil. Even worse: four crews that passed through ordeal did not recognize they have unreliable airspeed at all. Two were undecided whether it was UAS or not.
Originally Posted by Machinbird
One thing that demonstrably took much of PF's attention during the first 35 seconds after the AP drop was the very significant roll oscillation and the method used by PF to control the oscillation.
Roll oscillation before stall was of low frequency, low and decreasing amplitude. It spells: insignificant and irrelevant. After stall all bets regarding roll control are off, unless you happen to fly some extremely aerobatic aeroplane, which A330 is not. Even if notion that preoccupation with roll precluded control in pitch were true, pilot unable to control the aeroplane around two axes simultaneously is severely incapacitated.
Originally Posted by PJ2
It isn't about notions like efficiency, cost-control or shortened training footprints, it's about pilots being familiar and therefore comfortable in their machine, no matter what it costs or how long it extends the training footprint. And it doesn't take tens of thousands of hours in a career, or weeks added onto the normal training footprint to achieve this comfort - it takes work, mainly on the part of the pilot, but also on the part of the airline in providing a supportive, comprehending management approach to foster this level of comfort.
Fully correct. However, the fact that many more crews handled the situation in which aeroplane was thrown in their laps at altitude than not, will be used by those whose agenda involves playing the blame game by moving the focus from organizations to dead pilots.
Originally Posted by John Tullamarine
Then, interspersed through the routine session stuff of the endorsement, get the trainee up to being able to hand fly, raw data, an ILS in 0/0 to a stop on the centreline. Very much confidence building and the I/F stick and rudder skills skyrocketed.
I was lucky that my head of training, while I was working on my CPL, was a fellow who made it from gliding through cropdusting and night mail to position of chief pilot on DC10 fleet, only to have his career cut short by the flag carrier he worked in going down in flames, together with the country it served. He understood instrument flying very well, we started I/F training on FNPT with basic attitude+power, eventually progressing to VDF approaches, PAR approaches, ILS to stop on runway, UA recovery on partial panel, culminating on recovery with just vario and magnetic compass working. He was very keen to make us understand that while what we learnt might save us one day when situation gets really desperate, we are not supposed to get overconfident and paint ourselves in corner e.g. just because you can hold perfect raw data ILS below 200 ft QFE doesn't mean you should.
Originally Posted by John Tullamarine
I would have expected Flight Standards Management (not just AF, but any operator of the Type) to have put a small sample of line pilots into the simulator to observe what their responses might have been to such events ? The outcome of such an experiment might then have suggested whatever when it comes to training program variations.
I don't think it would be much of use. It might uncover a pilot or two too lazy to know memory items or recognize what procedure to apply when the ECAM crutch gets broken but a pilot who is fully aware "it's only a simulator" and only on the dark, stormy night is fully hit with the realization that air is not a friend and that his life is at stake every time wheels leave the ground would slip under the radar.