AF 447 Thread No. 11

[Owain Glyndwr]

BOAC

I don't think I implied that you were arguing about responsibility - if I gave that impression then my apologies. Nobody is going to contradict a statement about the S/W anomalies being a contributory cause though.

So far as WOW is concerned I don't think I have ever seen anything from Airbus on the subject - mostly the argument about it being 'abandoned' seems to emanate from PPRuNers speculating - but I stand to be corrected. What I would say is that leaving aside the AF447 affair, the existing logic functioned without complaint for several decades; why take the head off if it is working?

Now if your objective is to supply an AoA signal pure and simple and which is not going to be used as an input into some more flight critical system then I would agree there may be no need to complicate life by making that signal contingent on some other input - it being tacitly assumed that the aircraft will not be flying at a real 60 kts indicated or otherwise. Implicitly here I am taking the view that since airline pilots have been flying without AoA information since the year dot such information cannot really be classed as flight critical no matter how useful it might be in certain circumstances. [pace gums!]

I entirely agree your point about non-swivelling pitots etc.

To be clear, my remark about EASA requirements simply reflects the latest stall warning requirement CS25 207 (c) which, as I have said before, differs from the requirement applicable at the time the A330 requirements were frozen.