vilas;
Any body who wants to do 45 degrees turn in alternate law/direct law surely has to be out of his mind. You are not training A320 aerobatic team are you? You are wasting their precious SIM time. About piloting skills first you have to have them and they will stand by you the accidents we are discussing the pilots have shown alarming lack of it.
Sorry, I'm confused by your post because there is a disconnect in your statements above.
How can practising basic piloting skills be a waste of sim time? Isn't this one of the aspects of these accidents being discussed...that pilots are losing their basic handling skills?
Fourty-five degree bank turns to the left and right are standard simulator exercises. That they are done in alternate and direct law for the A320 is even better because in Direct Law, the pilot has to trim manually.
The exercise is a quick way of determining a pilot's flying skills, and then on with the rest of the sim. If problems show up here, that is the place to stop for a moment and instruct/practise.
In fact, there is a discussion about such handling exercises back a few pages in the thread, beginning at:
http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/53975...ml#post8823573, regarding "S-turn" exercises, which are a bit more difficult and are certainly worth the time in the sim.
Regarding your statement, "About piloting skills first you have to have them", of course, and the way to get them is to practise, practise, practise. All pilots should be able to do these exercises with a high level of accuracy and finesse. If they can't, then they need the sim practise to raise the level of skill so that they have them.
Once they can do the 45deg bank turns and the normally-banked S-turns with changes of altitude and speed, (in Alternate or Direct Law, with manual thrust) they could be considered to have a high degree of manual handling skills.
Such an accomplishment and level of skill is a great builder of confidence in oneself and the airplane. These are building blocks, upon which an understanding of the Airbus systems and procedures can then be built. This works even if one has been flying the Airbus for years.
karnc;
Flying Airbus is not like flying conv.
I agree with you; in fact knowing that the Airbus is different is necessary before one can begin learning about the Airbus when transitioning from a Boeing or other type.
To emphasize, there are differences between the Boeing and Airbus and those differences need to be understood by the instructor and taught to the students. The number of hours a pilot has may not help if the pilot hasn't been taught how to fly the Airbus or doesn't understand the fly-by-wire system, (known as C* or C-star laws).
Fly-by-wire is something like CWS, (Control Wheel Steering) in a Boeing, (but for very different reasons!).
While the airplane is different to fly, it is also simple to fly but one must first understand the fly-by-wire system, (which is completely different than "the protections" which can be learnt later).
Forgive me if you know fly-by-wire systems; - the following may help others.
When one pitches up/down or banks a conventional aircraft, after doing so one neutralizes the controls of course but a conventional aircraft will wander a bit in pitch or bank so one continuously, subconsciously makes tiny corrections to keep the airplane where one wants.
With Airbus FBW, when one pitches or rolls using the sidestick, one is asking for an amount of 'g' in pitch, and a roll-rate in bank.
When there is no further "request" for more/less 'g' or roll-rate from the stick, the flight control system actively maintains the last pitch attitude and/or bank angle.
Put another way, the autoflight system (not the autopilot but the FBW system), will act to maintain the last pitch and bank angle "selected" by the stick. So long as the stick is neutral, no further "orders" are being sent to the ELACs/SECs and the pitch & roll attitudes will remain until changed by the pilot.
When pitch increases, with the autothrust engaged the engines will increase power just as we would in a conventional aircraft. If one is in manual thrust, one adds power as in a conventional aircraft.
Also, the autoflight system will trim the aircraft if such is required. Similarly, with bank angles up to 33 degrees, the flight control system will work to maintain the last-ordered bank-angle, increasing thrust and trimming as required. Beyond 33 degrees the THS will not trim and the pilot must pull on the stick to maintain altitude say, in 45-deg bank turns. If the autothrust is engaged, it will add thrust to maintain speed.
You can hopefully now see why this is similar to the Boeing CWS but is actually, fundamentally quite different than CWS.
If your pilots are having difficulty with 45-deg bank turns that is just a sign that their basic handling skills require gentle verbal correcting and then practise, with encouragement and feedback from the instructor.
Flying a 45-deg bank turn in any transport aircraft is a challenging exercise precisely because we don't do it often and need the practise.
Flying 45-deg bank turns in Alternate and Direct Laws is the same as doing the exercise in a conventional aircraft.
The stick is smaller than a standard control column so you have to make gentler and smaller adjustments otherwise the airplane will feel quite sensitive to control inputs - other than that, it just requires practise.
The added benefit in doing steep turns in Direct Law is that one must trim just as in a conventional aircraft, by rolling the trim wheel back.
Doing it with manual thrust is even better as the coordination required is significant, and is the measure of the level of handling skills every pilot should have.
Such exercises should never be a "test" - they should just be done in the sim until each pilot is proficient at the exercise. It takes about 20 minutes of sim time unless some instructing and practise is needed.
If the exercise does turn out to be a bit of a mess, help by gently correct the pilot and try again. A high number of flight hours does not guarantee skill or understanding, nor does a low number of hours prevent skill or understanding.
With practise pilots should be able to do it, maintaining both speed (+/-10kts) and altitude (+/- 100ft), rolling out on specific headings. Again, those limits aren't a "test", they're a goal, and when achieved they show that the pilot has the necessary manual handling skills for his or her aircraft. As John T. says in the previous discussion, gentle encouragement and suggestions produces very good results and confidence.
The climbing and descending S-turns described at the above link would be the next step in the practise and exercising of handling skills
Once one knows these differences and understands them, the Airbus is a delight to fly - as easy as the Boeings, in climb, cruise and descent. I've flown Douglas, Boeing, Lockheed and Airbus types in all regimes and they do not present a problem hand-flying them.
In my opinion, anyone claiming that the Airbus is "difficult to fly at cruise, like balancing a ruler on the tip of one's finger", doesn't fly transport aircraft let alone the Airbus, doesn't know the Airbus and shouldn't be saying such things to others who read their stuff when they don't know such things, no matter how many letters are in front of or after one's name...
Uplinker;
In 2006, Airbus issued guidance on how the UAS drill & checklist should be handled. The Airbus document may be found at
http://home.base.be/fabrot31/airbusunreliablespeeds.pdf. The guidance is also in all FCTMs that I've examined, all of which were in the Manual prior to June, 2009.
Along with the standard sim exercises, your employer should be teaching the UAS drill because it is a known issue. The reason why accident reports should be required reading for air carrier managements is to understand why certain training priorities and regimes should be planned and appropriately resourced. If the requirements of the requlator are such that sim time is already at a premium and there is no time for the basics then that needs addressing first within the individual carrier, (why is there no spare time?) and then in proper venues in communications with the regulator...much slower, less effective I know but speaking up is the only way things change.
BTW, "deep stall" only refers to T-tail aircraft in which the horizontal stabilizer & elevator system is blanked by the low-energy airstream from the stalled wings. AF447 was not a deep stall, and in fact the tail was never stalled, (and the airplane could have been recovered using elevator alone if the stick had been held fully-forward long enough...they just stopped too soon because they didn't comprehend their situation and the re-occurence of the stall warning confused them. The indications of a full stall were however, present - an inability to arrest a high rate of descent when the nose is pitch up, etc., etc.).
I would like to add a link to a BBC Radio 4 discussion on cognitive science that may be found in the Air Asia thread on R&N because I think it is worth listening to. The broadcast is at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0505zw1