Originally Posted by
Owain Glyndwr
Possibly, but it could be any number of reasons, and with absolutely zero knowledge of the VFW laws I would rather not speculate.
OK, so coming back to this after a brief absence I just have to check - we're talking about the VFW-Fokker 614 used in the ATTAS programme - *not* the A320 - right?
From
DLR Portal - Research Aircraft - VFW 614 / ATTAS - out of operation :
ATTAS was primarily designed as a 'flying simulator', to simulate the flying behaviour of other - real (existing) or virtual - aircraft
Or in other words, a European version of NASA's "General Purpose Airborne Simulator" JetStar. So I think it is at least safe to assume that the specification of that EFCS would have had significantly different behaviour goals than that of the A320.
Originally Posted by
Chris Scott
I agree with CONF_iture, however, that it would be good to see the DFDR for the whole flight.
Would you also say that while it may have been "good", it was nevertheless reasonable to truncate the published DFDR output to the time period relevant to the accident by the standards of the time?
Originally Posted by
CONF iture
Thanks for such first hand information, I am satisfied with point (1) - It is the minimum the BEA should have mentioned.
Point (2) is more delicate - Your information seems accurate to me, but the correlation with the CVR data, and also the Asseline's account, would need that crucial missing piece of info that BEA kept out of our sight ...
The BEA are only charged with publishing material proven relevant to the accident. Neither of those issues on the face of it seem to be relevant to the accident itself. The A320 at the time had some technical issues to be ironed out - this was and is true of every new type one cares to mention (and the truism has been demonstrated recently with the A380 Trent issues highlighted by QF32 as well as the B787 battery issues demonstrated several times).
That the report didn't mention those particular issues is not a case of "hiding" anything, it's a case of those issues being irrelevant to the accident sequence in the first instance, and stating the bleedin' obvious in the second!