Quotes from Clandestino (
Nov 15), replying to my post of Oct 25 -
(1)
"I'm sorry Chris, if my caustic style caused you to believe I was going for a cheap shot here. To make my position clear: I do not find any of the theories that there was anything remotely rational in CM2's action and it was just misunderstanding and misapplication on his part plausible. He meant just to return to altitude? He busted it by a couple of thousand feet."
It's not your position I took issue with (on the contrary) - merely your misinterpretation of mine. My suggestion of an initial "knee-jerk" reaction implies, by definition, an absence of rationality. Explanation is not justification.
(2) "
Again: issue with AF447 is not the pilot unable to handfly the aeroplane; it was pilot unable to understand the situation, implication of his actions and pretty precisely handflying just the wrong way..."
So he handflew in the wrong way, but not because he was unable to handfly? He knew that he wanted to maintain altitude but felt it necessary to keep pulling back on the stick to achieve such?
(3) "
Nothing of it can be prevented by practising eye-to-hand coordination in friendly skies."
I could not disagree more. All that needed to be done in AF447 was to keep the wings level, and MAINTAIN a suitable pitch attitude and thrust for high-altitude cruise. If you are accustomed to monitoring and understanding your a/c in all flight phases, you may learn ball-park figures even without ever disengaging the AP. But there are at least two snags to that as a policy.
Firstly, you will not learn the very gentleness of any corrections that need to be made on the side-stick if you unexpectedly find yourself without the AP at high altitude. (Rather like driving a car at over 200 kph.) Secondly, human nature means that hands-on practice concentrates the mind in a way that mere observation does not. (The seat-of-the pants sensation when you over-control the stick concentrates it even more.)
The ball-park figures for PITCH attitude in different flight phases soon sink in, particularly if you turn off the FD, crew workload permitting. That's why you need to do it in your "friendly skies". The numbers may be something very roughly like the following, but you will soon learn them for your particular Airbus:
Cruise = +2.5; Step-climb on schedule (initially) = +4 (~1200ft/min); Descent at idle (initially) = -1; Low altitude Hold (level) at about Green-Dot speed = +5; Level flight Flaps 1 "S" speed (i.e., slats only) = +8; 3-degree glide-slope at the same speed and config = ...?
(4) "
Also this kind of reaction is very rare and trying to present AF447 as typical of the current state of affairs is misinformed at the best."
Well, I agree that the three main L.O.C. cases we have been discussing the last few months have involved different pilot reactions to problems in the cruise, but all have been seriously deficient:
A340 AIRPROX - no sidestick action for about 17 seconds during an FBW-induced, undesired zoom-climb;
AF447 - consistent back-stick causing a zoom-climb until and after the a/c entered a super stall;
AF A340 (Serious Incident, 2011) - inappropriate back-stick, causing AP to disengage, and initiating a zoom-climb that exceeded +2G twice, stalling the a/c.
(5)
"...both AF447 and AA965 are subsets of the same archetype of accidents: pilots who find themselves on unfamiliar territory, are unable to recognize where they are and how to return to normal..."
Quite. And, as you imply, this is not a problem unique to Airbuses, nor even to fly-by-wire.