PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Airbus Official Urges Major Pilot Training Changes
Old 18th Apr 2015, 23:04
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MTOW
 
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A little bit like young men going off to war believing that it will be the other bloke who gets killed rather than him, I think that in every pilot's heart of hearts, he/she thinks that he/she would have been able to recover the aircraft from a situation like AF447. And that's a healthy thing - if you don't have the self confidence to think you can handle an unusual situation, you really shouldn't be in the business.

What I don't understand is how anyone could graduate from ANY pilot training scheme believing that pulling back on the stick/yoke - and continuing to do so for how many minutes when it obviously wasn't working - will recover an aircraft from a stall. Or how anyone could graduate from any pilot training scheme and not be able to recognise a stall. (And before anyone leaps online to shoot me down for making that point, see paragraph one, particularly its second and third sentences.)

For all the advantages of the sidestick, the 'outdated' traditional yoke, retained by Boeing, (much to the disdain of many Airbus fans here), allows the other pilot(s) in the cockpit to be easily and clearly aware of the inputs, whether appropriate or inappropriate, being made by the other pilot, where the sidestick does not. In a really critical and highly unusual situation like the AF447 crew found themselves in, this is no small matter.
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