Originally Posted by
bubbers44
...but if all your airspeed went away in the clouds with a little turbulence and everything else worked like altimiters, VSI, attitude indicators and engine power indications would it be a major problem? I didn't think so. Why them? Hands on flying maybe?
Lack of high-altitude manual handling training is almost certainly a factor, but the sad truth is that no matter how good you are, sometimes it just isn't your day.
Originally Posted by
Lyman
At what point then do you consider the a/c STALLED? It changes LAW to accommodate the STALL? How tight does Mr.Pilot have to play it? Should he wait, so that Mr airbus can still claim, "Won't STALL...." In Normal Law
The kind of Stall Warning I was referring to was a transient warning - on the order of a second or two at most. In such an instance the aircraft is not stalled and is not in any danger of stalling, but because of the pre-emptive nature of the warning, it sounds regardless. In many respects it's like the "G"-induced warning that sounded after the PF pulled the nose up to 15 degrees - the aircraft was actually a long way from reaching approach to stall, but because of the abrupt shift in data the warning sounded. Surely in this case it's better to design the systems to be over-cautious rather than the opposite?
Originally Posted by
Lyman
No, he may have called Alternate Law because he knew without speeds, Normal goes away
Highly unlikely - he was monitoring pilot and knew to go to ECAM at the first sign of a problem. Given that he did not immediately take control away from the PF in light of the inappropriate attitude, it's probably reasonable to assume that he was not especially well-versed in the consequences of a drop to Alternate.
Probably, but you still have to admit, they may have been working, and wrong....
The chances of that are exceptionally slim given the evidence at hand.