The low speed warning on the Eicas would still work, even if in FLCH, but probably came at about 150 feet when with the low speed and rate of descent and with the drag of flap 30 and gear down it would have been too late to be of any use.
I was wondering if there wasn't any system that would extrapolate the current acceleration, maybe even jerk, and flightpath to warn before ending up in any sort of low-energy event like this. I only have experience from a military simulator as a developer, and that thing only has one "black-hole" in which it does not always manage to warn the pilot in time: if the engines are giving too much acceleration in a more or less vertical dive into the ground (and that should honestly be fixable too. I think the look-ahead is just too short). In any other scenario it will tell you to add thrust, or pull up. This should be fairly trivial to add to heavy jets as well? I know audio is the first thing to go when under stress, but combined with a HUD that just SPLASHES the warning in your face, there is (almost) no way any pilot would ignore the warning. It also displays the warnings on basically every display simultaneously, so that it doesnt matter if you are heads-down or what you are looking at. This of course means the system need to be almost 100% reliable so that pilots always takes the warnings seriously, but EGPWS seems to enjoy that privilege already as far I know.
Originally Posted by
NamelessWonder
Fraom Aileron Drag
And that's exactly the same kind of "Command Gradient" that many have been describing as a potential cause of the issues in this incident - arrogant in the extreme - "You don't have my qualifications, therefore you cannot possibly have anything valuable to add"
@Greenlights
Apart from the relief F/O, who apparently called for the entire last minute "sink rate" from the jump seat. But then I guess you didn't bother reading the whole thread did you? Guess it was "below" you!
The F/O called sinkrate, but not EGPWS or any other system? This is what I find a bit lacking.
If anything commercial pilots should enjoy more reliable and more numerous warning systems for these things, imo, compared to a pilot that never has any passengers in the back.
Why cant a modern airliner with thousands of sensors and millions upon millions lines of code know if its about to hit the ground, and not the runway!