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Old 10th Jun 2014, 13:31
  #117 (permalink)  
Phalanger
 
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Heads simply must roll over this, and I can't see why Borghetti's shouldn't be included? I hope you haven't forgotten who the accountable person is in your organisation John?
So what about the group who got themselves in a situations where the the damage occurred and failed identify this to other parties? This was not a great display of team work:

Flight control occurrence

The captain believed he indicated his intention to take over control and while the first officer could not recall it being verbalised he was aware of the captain’s actions. The first officer recalled that he took his hands off the controls, releasing touch control steering in the process. Shortly after, concerned about a high nose-up attitude, the first officer put his hands back on the controls. To both crew members, what happened next was unexpected and unclear. Suddenly, the crew felt high positive g, the controls felt different and spongy, and cockpit warnings activated.

...

Initial examination

The airspeed increased again and then both the first officer and captain pulled on the control column. Shortly after, when the vertical load factor was increasing through 1.8 g, the first officer began to push the control column. The differential force on the control column that resulted from the captain and first officer applying an opposing force exceeded the differential force required to generate a pitch disconnect. Each pilot was then controlling the elevator on their side of the aircraft in opposite directions for a brief period before the first officer released his control column.
Now there is a situation where they are putting a load on the elevators in a twisting motion, that would of been opposing the ailerons to keep steady flight and something has got to give.

The crew advised the engineers that they weren’t sure what had happened but that the pitch controls had disconnected, with a possible overspeed. From the onboard equipment, the engineers were able to establish that there had not been an overspeed but a vertical load factor of 3.34 g was recorded that exceeded the acceptable limit for the aircraft weight. One of the engineers took the opportunity to conduct a preliminary walk-around visual inspection and did not observe any aircraft damage. The flight crew entered the pitch disconnect in the aircraft’s technical log and, after a request from the engineers for more information, added that the aircraft had sustained moderate turbulence.
Now if the engineers were actually told by the pilots that they were operating the two sections of the elevators in an opposite manner during the event, as opposed to simply turbulence causing the issue, do you think the engineers would of taking a different approach to their work? Would this of not meant the engeneers would realise they are no longer dealing with simply an turbulence inspection, but rather need to look at damage related to a different set of stress point? It is possible that there was internal damage at this time which didn't manifest itself till after further flights. Why are you jumping to calling for the head of one man who was the least responsible, when it really looks like it is a lesson for different groups including the pilots, engineers and ATR?
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