Airbus old accident

[AirRabbit]

Hi Goldenrivett – Thanks for the comment and the reference. From reading the report you referenced, it sounds like the person writing that report believed essentially as I do … and it would appear that the training this crew received was awfully short on the “what-is-actually-wrong” and the “what-do-we-do-about-it” aspects of their training. And … I’m not sure that disconnecting the autopilot was necessarily the ‘wrong’ thing to do … as doing this would require the pilot flying the airplane to manually apply the flight controls … which very likely could have given the pilot at the controls a much more accurate understanding of what the airplane was doing … and, thereby, a better understanding of what engine was malfunctioning. Sometimes, the autopilot can input and/or hold aileron, rudder, and/or elevator positions that ‘mask’ the tendencies of the airplane, and make any such identification that much more difficult. Of course, if you aren’t trained on those aspects, if you aren’t given an opportunity to see (and ‘feel’) those things during your training (both initially and recurrently), you might be unable to recognize them, particularly when under the duress of a serious or a developing, and potentially serious, problem. Again, training is such an incredibly important aspect of aviation safety – and that includes the identification of problems or developing problems, as well as a much better understanding of the most logical, most advantageous, and the quickest way to resolve any such problem. Training simply cannot be “do the task; do it right; go to the bar.” There is SOOOO much more to training that when all those ‘other’ aspects of what is collectively called “training” are passed over (or ignored) there are some really valuable aspects of training that may be overlooked – and therefore not examined or brought into the “mix” when they could be a key element of achieving a satisfactory (and safe) outcome. I hope this doesn't sound like a ‘lecture’ … because that is NOT my intent ... but my fear is that “training” almost always takes a back seat to “qualification” and I'd very much like 'training' to be the driving process in aviation safety - as it should be!