NigG (#142),
...That must be a classic pilot's nightmare: catastrophically losing flying speed on take-off. One's first, incorrect, instinct must be to keep the nose up, and the second one to head back to the airfield and thus to 'safety'...
Worse than "losing" flying speed by misfortune" is losing it by your own stupid fault. If you like, I will send you a copy of "My Crash" file by the PPRuNe e-mail method. You do not need to reply in that way, for that will involve disclosing your email address to me, and I do not need a reply, anyway. I do this because my PM inbox keeps hitting the 100% stop, and there is already a group of three Parts of the story on the "Pilot's Brevet" Thread.
...Another recent example comes to mind, where 'impulse' over-rode 'knowledge and training'. This was the Air France Airbus, Flight 447, that came down in 2009, crashing into the Atlantic on its way back to Paris from Rio de Janeiro....
Now the take I shall give you on this is no more than that to be expected from any well-informed layman. I never flew on the civil side, and for the greater part of my 10 years as an Air Force pilot, I was a simple Stick-Rudder-Throttle man, never had anything to do with automatics, and I flew from A to B by means of watch, map and compass until almost the end of my time. So with that caveat, here goes:
This case (AF447) has become a classic of the dangers of the excessive reliance on automation and computerisation of all the control and navigation systems of an airliner which is a feature of air traffic today. The sad fact is that (to take the simplest example) automatic pilots (which have been known since the thirties) can fly a plane, and hold height and heading, as well as (if not better than) the best of human pilots. But the human gets tired, the autopilots do not. And the more accurately (and smoothly !) an aircraft is flown to its plotted route, the less fuel it will need to reach its destination. Fuel is the major item in operating costs, the accountants rule supreme. Captains may be disciplined by their Companies for "manually" flying their aircraft (or permitting their First Officers to do so).
Once Navigators had an honoured place on the Flight Deck. Not any more - they are long gone, more money saved. Instead, all the "way-points" of the planned route are stored in on-board computers. These are constantly fed with aircraft position (now by GPIs, before that the Inertial Navigation System (don't ask), both independent of anything outside the aircraft. Also input are running details of airspeed, groundspeed, height and much else. The computers determine the correct heading to fly, and when to turn, and instruct the autopilot to do so. They can follow an ILS approach to a landing (ILS came in before the War, it has been the standard world-wide bad-weather approach system ever since). Now Autoland can (at all major airports) finish the job.
The Pilots are relieved of all need to practise their basic flying skills (and actively discouraged from doing so): they have become Systems Managers instead. And, so long as the (very reliable) systems are up and running, that is fine. But......
The "Black Boxes" were recovered (by a miracle of deep-sea salvage), and the whole sorry story came to light. There are many blow-by-blow accounts on Google/Wiki.
I will only add my two cent's worth. IMHO, 300+ people died in an (at first) perfectly flyable aircraft. Apart from the "
De Mortuis..." angle, don't blame the pilots. They acted in the way they had been conditioned to act. Any one of the three
could have gone back to first principles and flown the aircraft out of trouble. It simply did not occur to them to do so.
So the Companies have had a Damascene conversion and reversed their policies ? Dream on - money talks - we all want cheap fares, don't we - it could happen again at any moment, anywhere.
Now I bow my grey hairs in anticipation of the storm which will descend on me. Put it all down to Senile Decay, I throw myself on the mercy of the Court. What do I know, anyway ?
Danny.