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Old 1st Jun 2003, 17:14
  #19 (permalink)  
bookworm
 
Join Date: Aug 2000
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But what is worse is that when he realised the problem he pulled up on the stick, but did not add power with his hand.
It comes instinctively to a traditional pilot to add power when pulling the nose up. Not so on the Airbus. His hand was already full forward, but he had idle power!
That bears little resemblence to Mac Job's account in Air Disaster 3, which is presumably based on the accident report.

When the trainee captain finally realised the gravity of the situation at 140 ft, he pushed the thrust levers to TOGA. In fact, he didn't need to, as the Alpha Floor protection had activated and the engines were already spooling up.

Both crew then pulled and held sidestick full back, which gave the Airbus a chance to optimise its escape at maximum lift coefficient -- a conventional aircraft it would have just stalled. But it was too late to arrest the descent into terrain.

This appears to have been a case of the crew being too late in recognising that their trajectory was wrong. That's something that comes from not monitoring the instruments, which has to be done visually, regardless of aircraft type. Their actions after recognition of the problem were optimal but insufficient to avoid the crash.
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