BEA Video
The official BEA video representation of the recorded flight data is meant for professionals.
So, how does it look for a professional?
First of all, of course, a professional had already read all the available reports, interim and final. From the data, presented in those reports, a professional had already understood fully what had transpired on the flight deck of AF447.
Still, reading data from graphs, spread out over several pages, makes it somewhat awkward to integrate, for instance, the stick movements with the aircraft attitude variations.
The video does this information integration very nicely.
Earlier in the whole discussion about AF447, somebody made a remark about the steering commands of the PF as if he was stirring mayonnaise in a mixing bowl. The video nicely illustrates that concept. The wild left / right gyrations of the sidestick do not seem to be justified by aircraft roll behavior.
The total lack of situational awareness is illustrated by the useless slam forward / slam backward movements with the thrust levers and by the utter disregard for the pitch attitude.
One can understand the tendency to initially start a correction in the upward direction, because the altimeter did dip down a couple hundred feet at the start of the event. However, there seems to be no target at all to strive towards resettling at FL350. It is all just blind panic to yank on the stick.
An airliner at optimum cruise level has a pitch attitude of about 2.5 degrees nose up. The usual climb rate when optimum cruise level is reached, is 1.000 to 1.500 ft/minute. When a step climb is made, the engine thrust is sufficient only to sustain an increase in pitch attitude of about 1 degree!
In normal words, an airliner at cruise level is as fit as an old geezer. There is no way that an airliner at cruise level can sustain 10 or 15 degrees pitch up attitude without massive loss of airspeed.
Still, the video shows that just before the apex of the pull-up, there is a pull movement of the sidestick that shortly yanks the nose up to a whopping 18 degrees.
The only reasonable explanation for the steering behavior is a panic mode, right from the start – but, the text from the CVR transcript had already shown that, the hapless comments, …. .
Secondly, the video opens up again the hamster wheel of arguments about, if this had been different in Airbus, or that had been different in Air France - Baloney!
Judging from accidents worldwide and on all types of aircraft, a certain percentage of pilots has no clue about real flying, no matter how many hours they have cruised airliners through the sky. Would stick shakers, interconnected yokes or simple old fashioned flight control systems have made any difference? NO.
Look at West Carribean MD-82, 16 august 2005, over Venezuela, stick shaker ON, stall and yoke fully back all the way from FL330 into the ground. Besides the rattling stick shaker, there was also the call from the First officer, "Captain, this is full stall, full stall!"
Look at Swiftair MD-83, 24 july 2014, yes, this year, over Mali, stick shaker ON, stall, wingdip over left and guess what were the yoke inputs all the way down from FL310 until just before impact? Full backstick and right roll!
Especially in that latest case, there is no excuse possible along the lines of – how could we know? Well, by soaking up aviation knowledge perhaps, after all that has been discussed in the aviation world since 1 june 2009, the fatal date for AF447.
Last edited by EMIT; 21st Dec 2014 at 17:03.