Hi
franzl;
Thoughtful response, thank you. The points are eminently worth discussing, and for the time being concluding who's theory is right is less important than the discussion!
When established on final no input is needed until flare mode activates, correct? As you describe and as i understand the NZ law, no stick input is required if no change of flight path is intended. Can we talk about flying manual in this case?
By all means, and what you say in your next paragraph, (. . . "It's a no-brainer"), is in my view largely though not exclusively true for the present standard of training and expectations, a clear risk which is now being widely discussed, examined in the many conference topics since AF447 and how has the attention of at least the US and European regulators, (in fact
AW&ST provided articles in August, 1989 and January/February 1995 discussing these aspects in automation development).
When AF447 dumped AP, ATHR, normal law and protections together with the speed indication in the blink of a second, the PF was forced to use strategies he was no longer trained for. No system was taking care of roll when he concentrated on pitch, no autothrust was taking care of the energy management, and no bank angle protection available to stabilize the pitch during roll.
I think your comment may be accurate in this case and this case may, among a couple of others, be a harbinger of such a developing trend. However, the Air Caraibe event and thirty-odd others which occurred prior to and also after AF447 do represent counter-examples to the "no longer trained for" point because to a greater or lesser degree, these were successfully completed flights. I don't believe such circumstances would leave the majority of crews in a situation they were no longer trained for, at least, quite frankly, I hope not because this wasn't in and of itself and all else being equal, (I recall, and take your interesting point regarding the pitch/flight path item), a serious emergency, (as in loss of pressurization, hydraulics, electrical power generation, engine thrust or engine disintegration, etc). If we consult JACDEC or Aviation Herald we can read about a number of incidents, events and near-accidents in which crews addressed them as trained and which did not result in loss of control or loss of the aircraft.
Itīs an easy solution (just change the pilot everything else is fine), but itīs based on thin or even no evidence.
The evidence is in the absences of an expected standard initial response to an abnormality, which, I will add, is a point which thus far has yet to be discussed and countered.
To my knowledge and experience as an airline pilot there are no circumstances, save for perhaps extremely rare and dire events, in which SOPs, CRM and discipline take a back seat. These responses are proven, primary responses, heavily-emphasized and trained in airline operations and to deviate from them requires significant operational factors.
No such factors or events
prior to the stall warning are in evidence. If the airplane pitches up due to some anomaly, one tries to get it back down to stable flight, period, yet the inputs are mostly NU; one does not permit the airplane to do what it will, not, at least, without vigourously trying to counter what it is doing. If one doesn't counter the anomaly, the evidence is that one agrees with what the airplane is doing and it should "do more". So no, this is not an "easy solution" which dismisses this crew out of hand. This is an extremely difficult solution to come to terms with because it is human factors-based and one must be very careful to examine such factors while avoiding the narrow focus of "blame". Finding out "why", despite some commentary to the contrary, is the way to prevent this kind of accident. If there are training and standards issues, that needs to be examined as do priorities in terms of autoflight and manual flying it is to be discovered first through this unfortunately-blunt process.