Quite an interesting thread
Let me add a few points (from an engineer's perspective – If I am saying something stupid – I do expect a very strong – WTF are you talking about – see below).
1. We are fooling ourselves that human beings are capable of logical reasoning, especially when it comes to split-second decisions in a stressful situation. Decisions like that are made on instinct – driven by pre-programed associations. In most cases, when exposed to danger, a person instinctively runs from danger any way he/she was programmed to run. The hero of our story wanted to run from danger but he didn't know how.
2. For this reason, training is absolutely essential so that proper ways to run from danger are instinctive, which clearly was not present in this case. A kid who practiced for say an hour a day for a few weeks on a toy simulator on some game station would most likely have a better instinctive reaction to the stall warning than the hero of our story did.
3. For this reason, there is something fundamentally wrong, I think, with counting hours of watching autopilot do its thing as “flying experience.” With the emergence of present day-autopilots the process of judging pilots' experience should have been redefined long ago. One way to do it would be to count takeoffs and landings, which would promote pilots who did time on smaller planes long before they were allowed to touch commercial jets. However, I do not see pilots talking about changing that system. Maybe they should.
4. It is absolutely true that a true ace pilot, one that committed his whole life to aviation, could NOT be affected by even most illogical configuration of plane controls. Even if someone/something all of a sudden re-wired the whole damn sidestick backwards, a guy like that would figure it out in a few seconds, because he committed his whole life into merging his mind and body with every flying device he could put his hands on. But, the point is, many of the pilots probably are not aces like that, they looked for something to do and they did/learnt exactly what the “system” required them to do and absolutely nothing more. Now we are getting into my favorite model of stereotyping people into aces and vegetables, or wolves and sheep.
5. Clearly, the guys flying AF447 were not aces, and it was probably by design even if nobody will dare to admit it. Here is why: Every society outside state of war for survival just LOVES vegetables and tries to suppress the aces/wolves. At the end, this is extremely illogical process, but outside real emergencies, vegetables are so much nicer and easier to deal with. They like one another and don't fight with each another like aces do, they are loyal to the system not their trade, they don't cause trouble(at least until trouble finds them), they are not adrenaline junkies like some of the aces are, etc, etc.
6. For above reasons, the whole system was demonstrated to be a complete failure, and there is no way to see it anything but that. Someone allowed “vegatable” pilots behind the controls who were more than happy to do little beside watching autopilot do its thing. Then a small problem arises, the whole automatics shuts down and expects our heroes to suddenly, on a second's notice become ace pilots capable of handling the plane almost without any idiot-proof protections they instinctively learnt to rely on. The main idiot-proof system that still works (the stall-warning) provides completely fraudulent feedback (disconnects at deeper stall, reactivates itself at the attempts to recover from stall). Nothing wrong with this picture?
7. To make matters more interesting, due to lack of communication and specifics of the sidestick design, the PNF has absolutely no idea what PF is pulling back on the stick and that he is doing it even after he pretends to agree to not do it. When PNF finally masters enough courage to try to take controls himself, he has no idea that the other guy counters his actions, which discredits the only attempt to recover from stall as action that brings no result.
8. If you think vegatable pilots are bad, imagine vegetable engineers, people who never had any desire to create new things, and are perfectly happy to do little besides playing office politics. Yes – the corporate engineering is full of those and this is why good pilots should not be shy about criticizing stupid things the corporate engineering came up with on the premise that “they know what they are doing”. As every real-world engineering is ALWAYS over budget and late, fixing screwups found late in the process is very hard because it risks massive delays. Tremendous pressure is always put on those who, loyal to their trade and not office politics, want to fix the screwups. They are often portrayed by the bean counters as people who want to destroy the good company with their idiotic “nitpicking”. Therefore, the only chance to fix engineering screwups comes up after a major FUBAR.
9. I have never worked for Airbus, so I don't know how bad (or good) things are over there. But the companies I worked for, the things that I have seen made my skin crawl. Worse yet – if I told anyone the details, I would be sued and “the law” would destroy me rather than help me. That's today's corporate culture which in my view has nothing to do with healthy capitalism, which I always believed in.
10. My view that human beings are inherently illogical comes precisely from watching “vegetable engineers” do their thing. If you scratch your head over 2 pilots doing completely stupid thing for 2 minutes, imagine watching 30+ engineers doing similar thing for months. Having weeks and weeks to think about it and still doing it. Generally, one vegetable engineer, most likely the boss's top ass-kisser would come up with the idea in order to promote his position, then convince everyone that that's what the boss wanted. Then everyone goes along and does not dare to question things. Not daring becomes its own logic and so it goes. Not thinking is running from danger of risking the alienation of the management and co-workers. The only way to stop such nonsense outside complete FUBAR where the crew would lose their jobs would be someone being brave enough walking to them and saying something like: WTF are you IDIOTS doing? It is sad but in my experience only a strong shock like that can make people think in such lock-down situations. A direct, UGLY challenge where they have to prove they were not screwing up or lose face. Needless to say, being loyal to my trade first and foremost, I had the pleasure and the privilege to be the one doing it over and over. At one job, I was expressly forbidden by the boss from using word “idiot”, which I interpreted in my own way as a challenge to learn more English synonyms of the word idiot, which I printed out of thesaurus and framed on the wall. I never lost my means of survival doing things like that – but I would never lie to anyone and pretend that it was easy.
11. The “WTF are you IDIOTS doing” story brings up the last point. The PNF is half-aware that PF is not doing what he should be doing, but he never masters enough courage to properly assert this point. Calling for the captain to come to the cockpit is pretty much the extend of his bravery. If he mastered enough courage to do “WTF are you doing” and properly asserted taking over the controls, he could have prevented the disaster. When planning the shock/upset simulator training, it would also be a great idea to test the pilots if they are able to properly identify the situations where the other pilot does something completely idiotic, and assert control to prevent disaster.
Last edited by SadPole; 12th Jul 2012 at 11:01.