The latest Flight International article on the AF 447 crash reports from the BEA investigation that "the charged emotional situation combined with the workload might have led the pilot to trust the flight director independently of other parameters and he may have viewed the flight director crossbars as a means of maintaining cruise altitude....furthermore the cross bars orders were in contradiction with appropriate inputs and "may have troubled" the pilots.
"Troubled the pilots" Now that would be the understatement of the decade. All this is pure speculation and fails to consider the possibility that the pilots were simply right out of their depth when it came to flying a sophisticated jet transport by hand in IMC. Yet it remains a strong possibility a great number of the world's airline pilots are in the same boat; only saved from embarrassment by the reliability of superb automation.
Watch any airline crew entering a simulator prior to a recurrency training or conversion session. They have been carefully briefed and take their respective seats. Often with hardly time to adjust their seats and belts we see them almost simultaneously going heads down arse-up typing into their respective computers and switching on their flight directors. An observer can sense in the crew an almost a palpable sense of relief when the final finger pecking data inputs are made and the time has come for scans and engine starting. And that is just for a practice take off and landing.
There is something deeply troubling when airline pilots are unable to seamlessly switch from automation to instant raw data hand flying without running into the realisation they are ill equipped to cope safely -as witness AF 447. Manufacturers and various State regulators have a lot to answer for in their training philosophies.
Last edited by Tee Emm; 7th August 2012 at 10:24.