PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Air Asia Indonesia Lost Contact from Surabaya to Singapore
Old 2nd Dec 2015, 21:15
  #3538 (permalink)  
autoflight
 
Join Date: Jun 1999
Location: Queensland
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No accident

The starting point is that that the aircraft actually was an A320 with side sticks and fly by wire. It is too late to permanently ground all side stick equipped fly by wire airliners and in my opinion this is not needed.

I clearly see the need for better training, including the requirement to follow FM procedures. The WARNING about resetting more than one computer at a time was either ignored or not known. This was a major part of the accident, but even so, it was still not inevitable.

After that, in spite of the language difficulty, the situation was still manageable if the captain had pressed and held his takeover pushbutton.

What can we do to prevent similar situations? The position can be like vaccinations giving humans "herd immunity". If enough pilots consistently report malfunctions in the aircraft technical log, it becomes more difficult for airlines to ignore. It isn't enough to see a previous report and assume that the company knows about the problem.

This particular FAC problem escaped correct reporting as a repetitive defect, so insufficient attention was taken. It was always a collective pilot responsibility but apparently pilots failed to act. A starting point would have been to write up every single instance of this malfunction. After a few instances of successful BITE tests, each subsequent write up should include reference to page and item numbers of all known previous reports re this malfunction.

Even in a significant airline, this might not get the full attention of management. Obviously they need more incentive to act. Finally, it is still up to the captain. And finally the captain must decide if the instances of this malfunction are more frequent on his flight and return to base for rectification. Now we have the attention of the company.

Do it once and maybe captain still has a job. Company will become more proactive and maybe same flight deck crew will be rostered for next day flight with same aircraft, maybe with 2 new or replacement FACs. Crew should critically quiz engineers about rectification work before deciding to fly. Assume they claimed 2 replacement FACs fitted and ask for critical comments after the flight. Assume crew accept the aircraft.

If the fault remains, return to base. Company might be very upset at captain decision. Crew might even be grounded pending investigation. The good news is that the aircraft will probably be also grounded pending investigation. In a week or two, when the problem is fixed, the same crew will be rostered for the first flight.

No accident.
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