Originally Posted by Machinbird
I think I need to clarify that there was apparently a mental 'expectation' that Alpha Floor was going to kick in, thus even though he may have forgotten his specific autothrottle configuration, the expectation that it would operate caused confusion and a delay in actually adding power.
This seems to be a good moment to mention Asseline's book.
It has his own annotated version of the final 60 seconds of the CVR transcript, how he himself remembers the accident flight. Although he seems to be wrong about at least one detail, it may still give an idea about what he was planning to do and what he was expecting. Mentionable items:
- When PNF said "Bon, t'arrives à 100 pieds là fais, fais", this was well above 100 ft, and Asseline is certain that after he levelled off, his pressure altimeter indicated 100 ft exactly.
- For the fly by, he was mainly focused on keeping the vertical speed at zero.
- In the moment when he said "Bon, j'y vais bien là, débrayer l'auto-manette", he pushed the auto-thrust disconnect buttons and advanced the thrust levers to some intermediate thrust setting. (Here the DFDR disagrees: No movement of the thrust levers yet, both still at idle.)
- His original plan for the fly by was to continuously adjust thrust to maintain his intended speed and to apply go-around thrust when passing the control tower. But since his speed was still 160 kts after levelling off, there was initially no need to add thrust.
- Just before passing the control tower, he becomes aware that the engines haven't spooled up from idle. Also he realizes that what looked like just some vegetation of a darker shade of green at the edge of the airstrip is actually a forest.
- This is when he pulled the thrust levers all the way back and pushed them all the way forward again. (The CVR records this as three clacks of the levers moving across their detents.)
Paraphrased from pp. 5-8 in the book:
http://www.crashdehabsheim.net/livre...20coupable.pdf . Annotations in () are mine.
What I make of this:
- If you're surprised by a forest in your intended flight path, there's something seriously wrong with your flight preparation. Duh.
- It looks like Asseline made one serious omission (meant to adjust thrust right after levelling off, but didn't), but could never admit it.