AF 447 report out [Archive]

flipster

5th Jul 2012, 15:43

WRT AF447, no-one has explained the basic conundrum of accident investigation:

That people do things that they think are correct at the time - even those actions that sound/look like madness to us sitting at our desks post mortem.

So why did the 2 pilots do what they did - why did they think that a rapid climb was a correct action given their proximity to 'coffin corner'?
Guess we will never know but considered conjecture points to the fact that they didn't know (or didn't believe) they were stalled, certainly they were confused, disorientated, possibly suffering from information-overload and had reluctance to believe their instruments - all started by being IMC in a TS cell then losing speed indications, the AP disconnecting and the stall warnings being intermittment. Will have to read full report but no mention thus far about fatigue or circadian hi/lows - it was dark, so they would have been less than fully aroused.

Lessons?

Know how to work your radar properly;
Don't fly into TS cells;
In the ITCZ - don't go to sleep and carry extra fuel;
Replace faulty air data systems asap;
Design better stall-warning systems;
If speed indications lost, fly power-pitch combinations that will avoid the stall - get rid of FD bars;
If ever you lose control, remember "Controls centrally forward to unload and unstall, then roll wings level, then pitch to straight and level attitude (something sensible will have to be done with the power depending on ac type) - don't re-enter stall (get control of your heart rate) - check you are above safe altitude and check for damage/problems!".
(This may have to be done on the standby ISIS/HSI when you least expect it and are feeling tired - think about that when you are in the cruise next!)
Expect the unexpected;
Better training and encourage airmanship to reinforce all above.

That's just for starters.

A and C

5th Jul 2012, 15:49

I keep asking why these guys did not have a metal default in their heads for a normal pitch & power combination incase of a failure in the aircraft systems?

I have yet to find anyone who can come up with a satisfactory answer.

What is worrying me is that the airlines are heading down the road of multi crew licensing were young pilots will get very little time flying basic aircraft and practicing the very basics of flying.

Fox3WheresMyBanana

5th Jul 2012, 16:16

TOGA drills practised, TOGA drills carried out.
High level drills not practised, and not carried out.

Complete failure of drills and cross-checking even before the incident.

My reason. Training is far too short and far too easy. There is insufficient time to build up airmanship.
Bring back proper Unusual Attitude training.
I'd also question the wisdom of having pilots pay for their own training. Guess what? They ain't going to pay for more than the minimum, and they ain't going to train somewhere that fails people.

For what it's worth, I've had an ASI failure at night. Attitude and power. Total non event.

fotoguzzi

5th Jul 2012, 16:27

[Not a pilot.] To a layman, it seems possible that the co-pilot seeing the altitude dropping rapidly and not sure which other instruments to trust, concluded that the plane was in a nose dive. The crew of 1979's TWA 841 (the nose dive over Michigan) knew immediately that they needed to pull back. I'm not saying that these examples are too similar, but such a mistake is something I could understand to be a result of two or so minutes of profound confusion.

As a layman I wonder what hints the center stick was giving Captain Gibson in 1979 compared to those offered by the side stick in 2009.

testpanel

5th Jul 2012, 16:37

CaptainProp

5th Jul 2012, 16:46

AB skates. Had the airplane had conventional control columns the captain would have seen what his unskilled comrades were up to (no pun intended).

So the Mighty Captain would have realized the problem and known how to deal with it? Just mislead by that side stick and those damn First Officers hu?

Get real and stop playing this Captain vs First Officer game. They were a crew and unfortunately they seem to have not realized what the problem was and that the aircraft was in fact stalled.

Pitch and thrust. It's all in the QRH.

ECAM_Actions

5th Jul 2012, 16:48

To a layman, it seems possible that the co-pilot seeing the altitude dropping rapidly and not sure which other instruments to trust, concluded that the plane was in a nose dive. The crew of 1979's TWA 841 (the nose dive over Michigan) knew immediately that they needed to pull back. I'm not saying that these examples are too similar, but such a mistake is something I could understand to be a result of two or so minutes of profound confusion.AF447 pitch didn't drop below the horizon the entire time. In fact, for most of the fall, the nose was pegged somewhere above +14 degrees of pitch.

As a layman I wonder what hints the center stick was giving Captain Gibson in 1979 compared to those offered by the side stick in 2009.In 1979, you'd have control forces you could feel. In 2009, the side-stick removes all tactile feedback.

Another point worth mentioning is that during the hard pitch-up by the pilots of AF447, the stab trim wound all the way back to +13 degrees.

Interesting that many are not discussing this point.

Any A380 pilots want to comment on the display of pitch trim there? Interesting to know if they did it differently.

Clandestino

5th Jul 2012, 16:50

Folks, we have ninth thread on AF447 up and running in the Tech Log. Please continue discussion there.

Mods, please merge.

deSitter

5th Jul 2012, 16:54

This is not an "AB" problem as much as an indication that things have tipped beyond the point of safety specific to basic airmanship. At the end of the day these pilots simply didn't know how to fly...a scary reality.

I don't agree. Many pilots had complained about the unnatural aspect of the sidesticks and their feeling of disconnection from the airplane. This accident showed how the pilots are also disconnected from each other. That's a fundamental design flaw.

mickjoebill

5th Jul 2012, 16:56

AF447 pitch didn't drop below the horizon the entire time. In fact, for most of the fall, the nose was pegged somewhere above +14 degrees of pitch.

Would they have been able to recover had it been in daylight hours?
ie have the confidence to ignore the stall warning that occured when they lowered the nose?

Armchairflyer

5th Jul 2012, 17:00

Another point worth mentioning is that during the hard pitch-up by the pilots of AF447, the stab trim wound all the way back to +13 degrees. Due to the way the systems are designed, only by manual selection of the F/CTL page on the ECAM would reveal the true position of the trim.Question from an occasional spamcan (and armchair)flyer: is it possible that with the trim all back (without the crew immediately aware of it), one would need to pitch down and/or roll the trim wheel forward for a very long time to get the plane unstalled. For such a long time that after half the time actually needed a confused pilot could get the impression that he must already be in the first quarter of an outside loop and therefore ceases his efforts?

Fox3WheresMyBanana

5th Jul 2012, 17:05

Exactly fotoguzzi; the crew's reactions were those of laymen.

Rule 1 for a trained pilot is Fly the F#cking Aircraft, which they completely failed to do.

To quote from page 185 of the final report

"Current training practices do not fill the gap left by the non-existence of manual flying
at high altitude, or the lack of experience on conventional aeroplanes. Furthermore,
they limit the pilots’ abilities to acquire or maintain basic airmanship skills."

Ashling

5th Jul 2012, 17:22

For the sake of accuracy

Pilots are taught that you cannot stall a 330 in NORMAL LAW

Pilots are taught that you CAN STALL a 330 in ALTERNATE LAW

They were in alternate law once their pito tubes froze up.

angelorange

5th Jul 2012, 17:28

Other A330 pilots encountered similar senarios without major incident because they flew attitude and power setting. How many times does a "STALL STALL" warning have to go off before someone reduces Angle of Attack? It seems the SO took the low level wind-shear response (TOGA plus full aft stick) and assumed the aircraft was in normal mode. Very poor CRM and the lack of captaincy are other factors. Yes the Airbus has "hiddens" such as non moving Thrust levers, non moving stab trim wheel, independent side sticks but at the end of the day when was the last time those in the flying seats had recovered from a real Stall in a real aircraft? 5000 h of automated Airbus flight and maybe 250h of real flying at the beginining of the SO' and FO's JAR Integrated course training......

Ten years before this accident, Airbus Chief Test Pilot Capt W Wainwright wrote an article on Stall recovery - it is doubtful many Airbus pilots have read it. Had the AF447 crew been taught and applied these techniques history would be different:

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=airbus%20stalling%20advice&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CG4QFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.airbus.com%2Fsupport%2Fpublications%2F% 3FeID%3Ddam_frontend_push%26docID%3D17431&ei=g17fT7O0Fsab1AXNt-H7Cg&usg=AFQjCNG9znzDNZilTLePNBc9_0_SR-U9Sg

We know there were many factors aggravating the situation but responsibility lies with the pilots, the airline, the manufacturer, the training system and the regulators. How much will be judged to have the greater share will depend on honesty, openness and sadly politics. I hope we can learn from the mistakes made and ensure a safer flying future by improving pilot selection, training, and mentoring, developing CRM/SMS so it is of real value and not a box ticking , white-wash exercise. I hope AF447 will lead to a clarifying of systems, improvment to the automation/pilot interface, designing controls that keep all the flight crew in the loop.

Cost cutting shares some of the blame: Since the 1990s Long haul operators have moved from having Two experienced Crews (2 capts, 2 FOs) to a Cruise Pilots (SO's with no flying below 10 to 15 thousand feet).

This combined with what Airbus claims is just 3h hands on flying a year for most Long Haul Captains plus an EU system of zero to hero in 250h (with multiple guess aeronautical knowledge) before 1000s of hours watching automation on FBW jets must also account in part for the AF447 FO and SO interaction and actions.

Of course other maufacturers aircraft have stalled with sad loss of life. If it were not for the Airbus protection systems, the accident rates could well be higher. But, for some observers, AF447 is Airbus' Titanic moment. Even if not expressed directly by the Company, the "unsinkable" / "unstallable" claims made by some pilots have echoed around Simulator halls and online forums for years. It might be true 99% of the time until an iceberg/pitot ice event is poorly handled.

Traditionally, Pilots are entrusted with baby sitting the automation. By bombarding a pilot with claims throughout his training and career, that the automation is better/ more reliable/ more efficient than the pilot can lead to a mind set where the computer baby sits the pilot and a transfer of responsibility occurs.

"This machine will get me out of trouble if I just trust the alpha protection and do what I did in the SIM"

"OK, the automatics have given up and handed me manual control, don't panic!, what's the attitude and thrust setting, strange speed indications! , rate of roll/yaw pitch?, cross check with alternative EFIS and standby instruments, is that weather related turbulence or stall/mach buffet?, The stall warning is going off, fly pitch and power......."

ECAM_Actions

5th Jul 2012, 17:30

Question from an occasional spamcan (and armchair)flyer: is it possible that with the trim all back (without the crew immediately aware of it), one would need to pitch down and/or roll the trim wheel forward for a very long time to get the plane unstalled. For such a long time that after half the time actually needed a confused pilot could get the impression that he must already be in the first quarter of an outside loop and therefore ceases his efforts?The trim would take some winding to move the stab, yes. It would definitely be necessary to unwind it to un-stall the aircraft, as +13 degrees of pitch trim is a very large amount, to the point that elevator effectiveness would be very questionable to even start pitching the nose over.

Again, a lot of what we are discussing comes back to basic airmanship. It would be clear from the ADI that the aircraft is stable in pitch and not looping. It would seem that they didn't doubt the validity of the ADIs at any time.

A question we will never get an answer to is why they ignored altitude data? It was the pitot probes that were blocked, not the static ports?

VC10man

5th Jul 2012, 17:45

I can't understand why the senior pilot was in bed after 2 hours of flight. Was he at work or not?

His dudeness

5th Jul 2012, 18:08

I can't understand why the senior pilot was in bed after 2 hours of flight. Was he at work or not?

You`re not a pilot, are you?

jcjeant

5th Jul 2012, 18:46

Angelorange
non moving stab trim wheelFalse .. they are moving (and it's an index by side) but in silence ... (no clac clac :) )
Check here:
http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/395105-af-447-search-resume-26.html
http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk76/batcave777/AF447/js640_IMG_3037.jpg

Ranger One

5th Jul 2012, 20:31

Other A330 pilots encountered similar senarios without major incident because they flew attitude and power setting. How many times does a "STALL STALL" warning have to go off before someone reduces Angle of Attack?

Now I absolutely grant you that the crew had already f**ked up beyond all recognition by this point, but refer to RobertS975 - post #15.

Once they were deep into the incident the warning worked bass ackwards; they reduced AoA, speed increased beyond 60KIAS, the stall warning sounded, they pulled back again, speed reduced, and the stall warning stopped.

That is an aspect of this accident that *still* hasn't received enough attention for my satisfaction. It's a long way from being the most important factor, but it's there and it seems to me the last thing you need when in a high-stress situation trying to work out what the is going on. I still haven't had a cogent explanation of why that design decision was taken; the aircraft shouldn't be anywhere near 60KIAS in anything resembling normal operation, if it IS then it's in deep stall, so why not just hang the stall warning inhibit off the WoW logic, for instance?

stepwilk

5th Jul 2012, 20:37

Take a look at this hilarous assessment by a nonpilot "aviation expert":

Air France 447 Report: How the Plane Went Down - The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/05/air-france-447-report-how-the-plane-went-down.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_afternoon&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_afternoon&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet)

ECAM_Actions

5th Jul 2012, 20:53

But why did icing suddenly appear four or five years ago as a threat to flights through this and other storm-prone regions? Captain Jobard—along with others who have tried to explain this riddle—wondered whether global warming might be a factor. “It seems,” he told me, “that there is an increase in these kinds of storms.”
"Global warming" - yeah, sure...........

The Ancient Geek

5th Jul 2012, 20:58

Once they were deep into the incident the warning worked bass ackwards; they reduced AoA, speed increased beyond 60KIAS, the stall warning sounded, they pulled back again, speed reduced, and the stall warning stopped.

This is possibly far more significant than the reports suggest.
The stall warning was clearly misbehaving so they would have ignored it and concentrated on the unwinding altimeter and the overspeed warnings.
Looks like we are in a steep dive - pull up before the wings come off.

Yes, they made the wrong decisions but they were faced with multiple conflicting bogus sources of information.

It would be interesting to put a few dozen pilots into the simulator and present them with the same symptoms of bogosity overload. Would you have got it right ?.

There but for the grace ......

ChrisVJ

5th Jul 2012, 21:25

Sometimes us simple little spam can drivers have an advantage over you sophisticated heavy guys. I surely recognise your skills and knowledge but sometimes all that complication and the multi, multi event possibilities seem just to get in the way.

What frightens me is not losing my life in some sudden aviation event, for that I value the odds and how well you all do your jobs day to day, a remarkable achievement in itself, but sitting in the back next to my loved ones with the nose up and the wings sawing side to side for three minutes and wondering why the pilot doesn't push the nose down.

I have flown a lot since this crash but I don't have the comfort in doing it that I used to. Strangely it is worse on longer, 'heavy' flights too.

ECAM_Actions

5th Jul 2012, 22:01

angelorange

5th Jul 2012, 22:15

Enhanced Stall Recovery Procedure_Philip Adrian (http://www.scribd.com/doc/71804963/Enhanced-Stall-Recovery-Procedure-Philip-Adrian)

PT6Driver

5th Jul 2012, 22:20

Guys,
Before they even got into the problems and confusion of the stall warner going off then on (below 60KTS) they ignored the stall warner sounding continously for 50 secs.

At no point was there any attempt to corectly deal with the problems eg PF " I Have Control - Action the ECAM items" no formal attempt to analyse what was going on - just an almost blind panic.

As has been discussed many many times on the tech threads when they reduced the power to flight idle the pitch decreased and the speed increased even with full aft THS. If Pitch down had been commanded the THS would have trimmed forward and together with the power reduction would eventually have resulted in a recovery.
The problem lies with inapropriate drills, a complete failure to follow the correct cockpit procedures and no command and control.
Reason - failures in the training they recieved and procedures they were trained to follow which is also a theme for the colgan crash.

up_down_n_out

5th Jul 2012, 22:25

Somethings that strike me now after this marathon.
A wry note.

The :oh: time taken from accident to report seems roughly normal for the French. :ok:

As usual no sense of proportion or anticipation of problems & adopting immediate solutions.
Instead it's left to the relatives of the deceased to continue to 2nd guess the "what if" scenerios just like when the survivors froze to death at Mt St Odile.

The tragedy has primarily been blamed on :bored: guess who?
(Same dead people)

Air frantic is clearly on the defensive, BUT....
big but (t)
...it now has one of the worst safety records in the world, and the price of rescuing the FDR etc has already been astronomic.
This company could face liquidation over this latest of many fiascos.

:ugh: If they continue to operate, who is going to bale them out this time?, or will they merely go for the standard French rebranding exercise for unpopular, unsuccessful or plain lethal companies eg*. ...

Let's not forget the current French government doesn't have any money.

Is it going to be hived onto the insurance industry or who is going to be behind coming clean for a change?

Capi_Cafre'

5th Jul 2012, 22:33

...Once they were deep into the incident the warning worked bass ackwards; they reduced AoA, speed increased beyond 60KIAS, the stall warning sounded, they pulled back again, speed reduced, and the stall warning stopped.

That is an aspect of this accident that *still* hasn't received enough attention for my satisfaction...

Agreed. After arriving at the correct control inputs through a process of elimination, the last thing that they need to hear was that they were doing it all wrong...

bubbers44

5th Jul 2012, 22:41

An experienced pilot would not have pulled up to 14 degrees at 35,000 ft and expected the aircraft to do anything but stall. He probably didn't know how the stall warning shut off below 60 knots either. An experienced pilot would have held cruise attitude around 2 degrees nose up, maintained cruise power and got a checklist every aircraft has called unreliable airspeed and saved hundreds of lives.

BUT THEY DIDN'T.

hhobbit

5th Jul 2012, 22:53

from avweb, prolly not news to a lot but however.The French news agency AFP reported Wednesday (one day ahead of the official final report's release) that investigators have concluded that pilot error and technical malfunctions caused the crash of Air France Flight 447 in 2009, killing all 228 aboard. "A source close to the case" told AFP that speed sensors on the Airbus A330 "froze up and failed" as the aircraft entered a line of thunderstorms while flying from Rio to Paris. That information was reported more than a year ago in factual findings. However, the source also told AFP that the official report of the French Accident Investigation Bureau, BEA, concludes that the captain then "failed in his duties," and "prevented the co-pilot from reacting.

So the sensors "froze up and failed" did they? So did the senseless ones up in the front.

When I go SLF again I hope I don't have such clueless losers piloting me. They should have started with breaking a few model airplanes. They might have learned the basics with small pain, and saved their profession the shame.

ChrisJ800

5th Jul 2012, 23:18

I had a quick read of the report conclusions and there seems to be an assumption that it is normal for the autopilot to drop out due to UAS. I can understand that the autothrottle requires airspeed reading, but a 3 axis autopilot should not require airspeed and does not on basic aircraft.

So if a Beach Barron suffered UAS, the autopilot would keep flying the plane giving the pilot a chance to work the problem.

Could not Airbus design a plane so that full control does not need to be passed back to the pilot should any input data including airspeed be incorrect? It would be easier for the crew to work the problem if partial automation was maintained.

Fox3WheresMyBanana

5th Jul 2012, 23:22

they were faced with multiple conflicting bogus sources of information

Immediate actions should have been attitude and power. These instruments worked throughout. VSI and directional instruments worked throughout also. Not only did this guys ignore the basics, they ignored them for 4 minutes. I conclude that the basics were not taught properly, never mind the fact that they were given no opportunities to practise them. This is flying lesson 2 for Pete's sake.

dlcmdrx

5th Jul 2012, 23:34

The report doesnt emphasize the big problem that confused the crew in:

-The stall horn discconecting below 60 kts.
-The big problem the automatic Trim can cause.

The FBW in the airbus doesnt have artificial feedback on the sticks so an automatic trim becommes absolutely necessary for hands off flying ( elevator neutral to cg ) if we want to make flying in this planes bearable for the pilot in a day to day operation.
Therefore,this trim being full up if commanded to do so does create a problem after the crew still has not figured out they didnt need to pitch up so much... specially because the trim up will stay there unless commanded to go down... making a dynamic neutral stability situation WITH a pitch up and high AOA taking the aircraft into a stall.

Thats why there are laws in airbus aircraft...because if there where none, almost all pilots would stall the aircraft with that lousy philosphy and hence, protections are needed, but guess what... that day there werent any protections available after pitots got frozen.

Sqwak7700

5th Jul 2012, 23:34

Could not Airbus design a plane so that full control does not need to be passed back to the pilot should any input data including airspeed be incorrect? It would be easier for the crew to work the problem if partial automation was maintained.

And there in lies the problem, you can't expect the aircraft's automation to get you out of every problem. Sure, Airbus could make some changes, I would start with WoW component to stall warning, maybe even some way for both pilots to know what the other is doing with the controls. But if you sit in an airplane thinking that automation will save the day, then you have no business sitting forward of the re-enforced cockpit door.

There is a lot of basic airmanship missing from this accident. The "box" that needs fixing in this case is the one that is racked right between the two arm rests. It has double redundancy and is supposed to be the most powerful computer in the flight deck, the one that takes over when all the other ones fail. There is no way to replace that box, and any attempts at removing inputs into it can lead to this sort of sad and tragic result.

That is not just an Airbus problem, but one which the whole industry needs to deal with. Airlines being one of the main culprits with their accountant managing and rampant, unchecked cost cutting. Some things are too important to cut.

This is what happens when some short-term manager makes a decision he knows nothing about which has consequences years down the line, of which they where told about by professionals who new better at the time.

AdamFrisch

5th Jul 2012, 23:42

All stall related accidents could be completely eliminated by installing a $100 AOA sensor. In fact, why are we still even teaching stall speeds at all? AOA never changes with altitude, load factor, anything. It's the only thing we should be referencing.

bubbers44

5th Jul 2012, 23:53

Do you really think an AOA indicater would have helped these two when fully functioning attitude indicaters, altimiters, VSI's and GPS ground speed info didn't help them? I don't think anything but a fully functioning autopilot would have saved them. Sad, isn't it?

ChrisJ800

5th Jul 2012, 23:54

Just seems to me the report is biased against the pilots and pitots and is not emphasisizing all the design and instrument deficiencies of the aircraft. An AoA gauge should at least be there as a backup. I think the newer A380 has one.

AdamFrisch

6th Jul 2012, 00:12

In the confusion of all the other things going on, I agree an AOA would not have helped here probably as the system was based on airspeed.

But I think stalls should be de-coupled from speed completely. A stall should only be referenced as an angle. The speed tape in the MFD should be angles, not speed. Then we'd eliminate almost all stall related accidents.

bubbers44

6th Jul 2012, 00:55

If they had held their altitude the attitude indicator would be their AOA in level flight. Any experienced pilot would have done that. Unfortunately if you need an autopilot to do it for you, you are out of luck so you need to know how to do it manually.

Irish Steve

6th Jul 2012, 01:01

OK, the BEA are saying that the crew on the day were part of the problem.

Maybe, or maybe the "system" was the real culprit, and a group that is never to be seen when things go pearshaped are more culpable.

How many long haul pilots on the Airbus or for that matter any other long haul aircraft have had any experience of hand flying at cruise altitude? Not many, and one of the reasons for that is the bean counters, who get upset that pilots flying the aircraft rather than the automation may cost more because it's not operating as efficiently.

So, most pilots have not hand flown in coffin corner during normal operations. Have you ever done that in the sim? Perhaps not, and that may be because cost benefit analysis done by (guess who) the beancounters, states that accidents such as AF447 are so rare, it's not cost effective to train to such high levels of skill. Really? I wonder if the bean counters ever travel by air themselves? One has to wonder. If I then ask how many people have had to deal with failures in the sim when hand flying at high level, it's probably an even smaller number.

How many of those beancounters and high level training people are actually at the airport comforting grieving relatives when the result of some of their policies is made painfully apparent? Not many, they are always well protected from the sharp end of such involvement.

Now let's go down another road. How many people have used devices such as a DVD recorder, and thought when using it, why did the programmers do the program in this order, it's crazy, the feature I use least is the first in the menu, and the one I need most is the last, and if you look into it, the reason is that the first item is probably the system set up, and nothing else will work if you haven't done that, and then they move on to other things, and the timer programming comes often last, probably because it's the most complex area, that needs all the others , but it's the routine that the user will use most often, so in a well designed system, it should be first on the list, and the lesser used items should be further down the list.

Same scenario is sometimes true in avionics, and in things like ECAM alerts, the order they are dealt with is sometimes a lot less than intuitive, and certainly not the order than a human flight engineer would bring then to the attention of the PF or PM, having taken them all into consideration and evaluated what they all mean. Computers are wonderful, but they have limits, one of which is that they only make decisions one at a time, and only in the order of programming, which in a lot of cases takes no notice or attention to the phase of flight or the state of other systems that may or may not have been evaluated in this iteration. Some of the ECAM type alerts that are thrown at an already busy crew are not critical to the underlying main and most important criterion. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.

It is significant to me that in 3 incidents in recent time, the system warnings and alerts have in some respects got in the way rather than helping. The 380 that had the uncontained engine failure, they were a very long time working through all the check list issues before they could eventually put the thing back on the ground.

"Sully" Sullenberger commented that when he put the 320 into the Hudson, there "wasn't time to go through all the checklists", and that resulted in a vent being open below the "water line"..

The AF incident was made more difficult to deal with by misleading guidance on the instruments.

Then there's the whole issue of the stall, and awareness of it, both from the crew aspect, AND the aircraft, which was able to stall because the automation had already thrown in the towel and degraded it's operating mode, without making that very important fact known in no uncertain manner to the crew. Do you describe that as a design fault or a design feature.

Over 40 years, I've programmed many computers, and the "trick" to successful programming is to make sure that the right response comes out of the system even if some of the inputs are wrong. Getting the system, whatever it's meant to be doing, to reject input that's wrong, is more important than getting it to validate and work with the right data, and all too often, it's the manner in which the system deals with the errors that makes the difference between staying in the air or crashing.

There are other issues, like the 330 not being stable in pitch, which because it is flown by automation is acceptable to the people that certify it. Maybe, until as already mentioned, the automation throws in the towel. If as a result the crew is given an aircraft that's degraded, and also not stable, that's not exactly giving them too much assistance.

I'm not going to go down the road of the crew training and experience issues, I'm probably ruffling enough feathers and sensitive egos already, and to go there, and bring up issues like self funded type ratings, cruise pilots, and training systems that discourage people from using spare sim slots to improve their knowledge will only make the issues even more contentious.

Over 10 years ago, the EU funded a research project that was supposed to aid and improve the quality and capability of flight deck automation, by improving the evaluation and analysis capabilities of the systems. It seems that the changes that should have come out of that project are being stalled somewhere, as I've seen very little real change in the way that most of the systems provided automatically are operating.

I've seen this accident described in other places as Airbus' Titanic, and in many respects, it is, and how both Airbus and the industry responds to it will be very significant.

One thing is clear, for a vast number of reasons, many issues that have been raised in respect of training, experience, certification and design of flight deck systems are all going to have to be looked at in a very different light as a result of the findings of this report, the implications of this accident are as far reaching as Tenerife and Kegworth in terms of the issues raised and their consequences.

I just hope that all the people implicated are really listening.

In a strictly legalistic manner, yes, the crew of 447 on the day made mistakes that were contributory to the outcome. As to wether those mistakes were "pilot error" is very much a question that needs to be discussed in a lot more detail and over a wider group than even the inquiry team, and with wider issues than just the operation of AF447 in view. It seems to me that the 447 crew were as much victims as the rest of the unfortunate people that were on board the aircraft.

I am not sure that the BEA have succeeded in fully identifying the wider and larger issues that led to this event having the outcome that it did, or more specifically, I am not sure they have given enough emphasis to the underlying issues that are clearly implied in their findings. That may be because the media is taking soundbites, and maybe because of the manner in which their report has been presented. Hopefully, when the specific and detailed findings are analysed in depth, there will be changes at all levels of the industry,

I can only hope.

aterpster

6th Jul 2012, 01:07

bubbers44:

An experienced pilot would not have pulled up to 14 degrees at 35,000 ft and expected the aircraft to do anything but stall. He probably didn't know how the stall warning shut off below 60 knots either. An experienced pilot would have held cruise attitude around 2 degrees nose up, maintained cruise power and got a checklist every aircraft has called unreliable airspeed and saved hundreds of lives.

BUT THEY DIDN'T.

I mostly agree. Except I would have placed the nose 5 or so degrees below the horizon, and reduced the power to "cruise" descent simply to go for better air, so to speak.

CityofFlight

6th Jul 2012, 01:08

Errr, that would be Chesley Sullenberger. (when in doubt, Google). :ok:

Irish Steve

6th Jul 2012, 01:17

Chesley Sullenberger. (when in doubt, Google). http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/thumbs.gif

Indeed, but that wasn't what they called him when they interviewed him on CBS news (via Sky) while I was typing my original. His comments were interesting too, they were in a Sim at the time, discussing the BEA report, and the crew response to the problems, which he found "strange"

MountainBear

6th Jul 2012, 01:32

As to wether those mistakes were "pilot error" is very much a question that needs to be discussed in a lot more detail and over a wider group than even the inquiry team, and with wider issues than just the operation of AF447 in view.

Let's be clear. There was pilot error. That is a fact that is indisputable among fair and rational people. The pilots neither created the correct mental model of the incident nor implemented any of the correct procedures to respond to reality effectively.

How much the crew is to blame for their errors is a different question. I certainly agree that a technological failure put them into a bad position and that technology could have done a better job of helping them out of it. At the same time, insofar as the human crew is the ultimate back-up to the technology the crew failed in their duty.

I'll leave the precise apportioning of blame to others. Suffice it to say that there is plenty of blame to go around and the crew cannot be exempt.

CityofFlight

6th Jul 2012, 01:33

Perhaps Sky are idiots? Most that knew him called him Sully. His name is Chesley B. Sullenberger. How does a reporter come up with Jay?

He was probably too much of a gentleman to correct them.

Nonetheless....Your point is well taken. I am sure his and many others will continue to find the the report disturbing, because it is just that.

soylentgreen

6th Jul 2012, 01:42

I'm a cognitive psychologist, not a pilot. I've just read (well, skimmed parts of) the BEA report, and I think it's interesting that it emphasizes a few issues:

Diagnosis : did the pilots diagnose "unreliable air speed"?
Stall warning: did they comprehend it?

The report suggests

Diagnosis : the pilots never diagnosed "unreliable air speed". Analysis of the dozen or so similar incidents where pitot tubes froze suggest that most of those crews did not diagnose it either.
Stall warning: did they comprehend it? The report provides references suggesting that in a confusing environment, humans can be cognitively deaf to aural stimuli, and tend to prefer and respond to visual stimuli much better.

So, from a cognitive perspective, the accident makes sense. A big part of this was the human-machine interface, which did an extremely poor job of letting the pilots know what was actually going on.

Could they have done better? Of course. Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? Far from it.

Oakape

6th Jul 2012, 01:55

How many recent accidents have been caused by problems with the AFCS, whether it be failure, reversion or simply the pilot being unable to engage it in the first place?

I can immediately think of four - Kenyan, Ethiopian, Turkish & Air France. There may be more.

There seems to be a growing number of pilots these days who can't actually fly & when the autopilot decides to have a rest they are left in control of a large aluminium tube full of unsuspecting & trusting people, with no idea of what to do next. Is the licencing scandal in India not exclusive to that country & more widespread than people think?

Airline flying is supposed to be the pinnacle of aviation, only reached after many years of study, training, experience & perseverance. This does not seem to be the case anymore. People obviously believe that as little as 250 hours is enough.

Some of the comments here indicate that they believe that all airline pilots are created more or less equal. I have sat beside & behind enough of them to know that that is not the case. Some airline flight decks are populated by people who have no business being there. But they are cheap - just ask the accountants who put them there!

Some comments also indicate that people believe that the answer is more automation or a refinement in the current automation. I'm sorry, but I don't agree. If you can't tell when the automation is behaving incorrectly, or you have to rely totally on the aircraft to tell you what to do next with some verbal warning or instruction, then you have no place in an airline flight deck. Does anybody remember having to look 'through' the flight director on occasions & simply fly the aircraft?

The cost cutting mantra of modern business that has flowed into the airline industry is taking it's toll. I have seen a drop in both quantity & quality of training in recent years. Reducing T & C's is possibly reducing the quality of peolpe coming into the industry as well. Arguably we are no longer getting the brightest & best any more. The question is - is cost cutting winding back all the gains that have been made in aviation safety over the last 2 or 3 decades? Are we seeing the beginning of another era of increasing accident rates?

IMHO, the reaction by the PF on this flight to a loss of airspeed indication, followed by the A/P dropping out, is inexcusable. The decision by the more experienced PM to continue to let him fly after his initial reaction of excessively pitching up at that altitude in also inexcusable.

If we have a generation of pilots in flight decks who can't actually fly, then it is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

Irish Steve

6th Jul 2012, 01:57

Suffice it to say that there is plenty of blame to go around and the crew cannot be exempt.

Yes,no argument on that, but I am not sure it can be described as error in that they were not equipped to deal with the scenario they found themselves in. The reasons for that need to be laid bare and never allowed to happen again, and there is a clear requirement for significant extra training and awareness, but that's post event hindsight, at the time, the relevant people saw nothing wrong with the way they were operating, and that may well be a false sense of security because the automation is usually so reliable.

If I had to put words to it, pilot inadequacy is closer to the mark than pilot error. They were never trained how to really fly the aircraft, they were trained to fly the automation, which is fine while all the systems work as designed, but if they don't, this is the inevitable result. The reasons for that are much wider than just the pilots, they go right to the top, and fixing it will have to go to the top as well.

MountainBear

6th Jul 2012, 02:44

If I had to put words to it, pilot inadequacy is closer to the mark than pilot error.That's a highly dangerous way of thinking.

The argument that some system or combination of systems failed the pilots ignores the reality that the pilots are part of the system. After all, if the only cause of the crash is that the system(s) failed the pilots then the best answer is to get rid of the pilots entirely. The argument for improved training and systems is premised on the notion that pilots have some purpose on the flight deck. It's irrational to claim that pilots have a purpose and then when then plane crashes shift the blame somewhere else.

Voltaire said that with great power comes great responsibility. This can be condensed to the idea that with power comes responsibility. Since the pilots clearly had some power to prevent this crash they clearly must bear some responsibility for not doing so. It's axiomatic.

GarageYears

6th Jul 2012, 02:52

What would have happened if the automation had NOT dropped out...?

What would have happened if the automation had said to itself, "hummm, the airspeed sensors seem to be taking a break, let's ignore them for a while and see what happens if we just keep doing what we have been doing for the last 3 minutes...."? May be flash an ECAM warning stating they were in "speed extrapolation mode" or something?

ChrisJ800

6th Jul 2012, 03:53

These planes are designed with fuel economy in mind and in cruise get trimmed for rearward CG for better economy and at cruise they are also flying close to coffin corner. The automation can fly the plane to the accuracy needed in cruise but can a low hour pilot flying manually?

In smooth air the PF would probably not need to touch the side stick for a minute or so until the UAS corrected itself, but in turbulent air, at night, and possibly in cloud that is a difficult scenario. I think the autopilot dropping out and control laws degrading so protections such as stall protection are lost, should not have to be the case for a UAS. Design a system for the worst scenarios and build in redundancies to better give the pilots a chance to manage that system when there are failures.

ironbutt57

6th Jul 2012, 04:23

and at cruise they are also flying close to coffin corner

typically 40-50kts spread between VLS and MMO, not exactly in any "corner", Airbus says to "respect the stall warning, as it is generated by AOA, not air data, they were in a confusing situation for sure, and at night, in weather, not an enviable position to be in for sure, unless they had struck hail, and unless the radome failed/partially separated, the AOA would have been accurate...

deSitter

6th Jul 2012, 05:33

I'm not a professional pilot but I have a lot of intuition, if you want to call it that, for what being a professional pilot would entail. I get along very well with pilots. "There but for the grace of God.." Why?

I'm actually more interested in airplanes than in flying. I'm not even that comfortable in the air these days. But I never tire of seeing aircraft, particularly large ones like the A330, defeating gravity.

And I just can't imagine a pilot who has no interest in airplanes. Well, your ass is constantly on the line, because you ere 5 to 8 miles up and your motors must keep running and your control surfaces in place and symmetrically distributed. Your ass and the rudder are one.

Now, anyone with any interest in airplanes will make some effort to understand how they work. And that means understanding how the air works, because there is no airplane without air.

But in this crash, there seems to be no interest at all in either air or airplanes - because otherwise, how would it be possible to fail to understand the simplest facts about either the atmosphere or flight dynamics? Particularly when your own personal death is the cost of ignorance?

Why would anyone get inside a machine that's going to be 8 miles above the middle of the ocean without understanding every rivet in the galley if necessary? Much less how it stalls?

I just can't understand this. And I can't understand why anyone would design an airplane with disconnected controls unless they expected the pilot to one day be redundant.

chuks

6th Jul 2012, 06:45

Here in Germany the local papers are repeating the two main points, in layman's language, from the report: the crew did not cope adequately with the problem, and part of the problem was the design of the aircraft.

It will be interesting to see if there's any significant drop in traffic for Air France after this. I don't think there will be, while the A330 is a very popular type of airliner and likely to remain so.

It seems pretty obvious that climbing at a fixed power setting from cruise is going to cause a reduction in speed. That's something we learn very early in our training. Never mind what, if anything, the ASI is showing, it should be obvious that a gain in altitude implies a reduction in speed if nothing else has changed, so? Of course that basic point is very obvious in a simple aircraft, but it was clearly overlooked in this complicated A330. I guess that means it will be 'Back to the drawing board,' in some measure.

ironbutt57

6th Jul 2012, 07:04

it should be obvious that a gain in altitude implies a reduction in speed if nothing else has changed,

In still air, yes, but in an area of convective weather, that's not the case....remember it wasn't exactly clear blue skies they were operating in at the time this event occurred now were they?

Not defending the apparent errors made by the crew, but rather encouraging the "after the fact experts" here on this forum to look at WHY the crew might have reacted in the manner they did...

Maybe airspeed unreliable training scenarios should include distractions such as convective weather and turbulence before the event occurs....

jcjeant

6th Jul 2012, 07:09

Amundsen the celeb explorer wrote :
Victory awaits him,who as everythings in order.
Luck we call it.
Defeats is definitely due for him,who has neglected to take the necessary precautions.
Bad luck we call it.

Methink this apply perfectly for this accident

kaikohe76

6th Jul 2012, 07:43

With ever increasing use of automation during basic training these days & the subsequent reduction of simple hands on manual flying of the aircraft. More & more Pilots coming through the system, could very well find, that the first time they ever have to actually think & manually fly the aircrat, is unfortunately when something has gone wrong big time. No winners here Folks, but let's get back to some simple basic flying training skills of old & only once these are understood, move on with the automatics. A quite terrifying & ghastly time for the Crew & pax as well on the A330, they had it all, at night, poor wx, automatics dropping out etc, but a better grasp of the basic skills may just have saved them all. God Bless.

R04stb33f

6th Jul 2012, 08:20

Total layman here so please excuse me. I'm just a tad confused about something:

Ironbutt said
Airbus says to "respect the stall warning, as it is generated by AOA, not air data,

But I seem to remember reading on one of the other numerous threads that below a certain airspeed, the stall warning stops. If this is the case, then if they pulled up, with very low airspeed and a nasty AoA, then wouldn't the stall warning stop giving the impression that there was no stall? Then when pushing nose down, the stall warning would start again when airspeed increased above the limits 'causing' them to pull up again to wrongly get out of the stall?

Even if that was the case, shouldn't they have known about this behaviour?

Obviously if I'm totally wrong, I'll butt out again... Sorry.

Thanks for all your input, this is a very interesting read.

jcjeant

6th Jul 2012, 08:35

fireflybob

6th Jul 2012, 08:36

SadPole

6th Jul 2012, 08:49

What would have happened if the automation had said to itself, "hummm, the airspeed sensors seem to be taking a break, let's ignore them for a while and see what happens if we just keep doing what we have been doing for the last 3 minutes...."? May be flash an ECAM warning stating they were in "speed extrapolation mode" or something?

This is extremely valid point, one that all technical guys should be discussing.

There are a variety of new, very cheap sensors that could be added to every plane to make something like that possible. In this case, equipping the plane with multi-axis acceleration sensors would allow very good approximation of air-speed for hours even with all pitot tubes out of commission. These solid-state sensors have been around for almost 20 years and today everyone has one of them inside their smart phone. They are very inexpensive and extremely accurate.

There is a certain amount of idiocy associated with the way automation is pursued in all "regulated" technology areas. Nobody dares to say that the only way to safely do something like that is either:

1. Full sensors and systems redundancy where each reading needed for proper functioning of controls is replicated 4 or more times, leading to the situation where complete loss of necessary control input would require several unrelated but simultaneous failures.

2. In absence of full sensor redundancy where dropping of automation due to unreliable or missing inputs is allowed as even fairly unlikely event, the crews should be able and required to regularly practice flying without the automation.

Sensor redundancy is possible but is not done due to regulatory costs. To begin with, Pitot Tube is an archaic piece of sensor that should not be used anymore. It is being used because introducing new technology requires decades of bureaucratic and legal hassle. Not only it has to be approved by variety of bureaucrats but anything new introduced to the market (no matter how good) is instantly a target for lawyers. If the AF447 had brand new kind of any type of sensors the lawyers would instantly claim that this was the reason for the crash.

To see how logic and sense have nothing to do with today's law, examine all the lawsuits against Toyota, for example - where people claimed that their car accelerated on their own. The only way to end this nonsense would be to allow libel suits and damages against parties that make such idiotic claims.

In airplane market - look how many years it took them to start using solid state voice and data recorders in place of the mechanical ones with magnetic tape. Here, the decision to use them should be crystal-clear.

1. Even most retarded lawyer cannot claim that using solid state recorder instead of magnetic tape can cause a crash

2. Solid state recorders are much smaller, able to withstand moisture and heat that no magnetic tape can.

3. Solid state recorders are much cheaper. For the price of one mechanical recorder you can have ten solid state recorders, one in every part of the plane, each recording a full copy of the data.

The problem is that while there is a big demand for automation (mostly because of fuel efficiency concerns), the regulatory framework is absolutely not able to allow to do it right (the full redundancy path), and so it is done same way if someone was trying to put a fuel efficiency automation on a stage coach.

With such approach - it makes perfect sense to drop automation due to unreliable sensor reading because in absence of sensor redundancy the pilot still has more sensors than the plane and in theory should be able to handle the situation - IF he is trained to do so, that is and can use his eyes and ears as a substitute for a faulty sensor.

Pitot tube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitot_tube)

Modern ways to very accurately measure air-flow:

Mass flow sensor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_flow_sensor)

Airplane application of such a sensor would basically require a little metal peg or even simply piece of metal foil stuck on a wing. The principle of operation is such that you heat a piece of metal to a specific temperature and measure the amount of energy required to keep it at that temperature. The bigger air flow cools it faster so more energy is required to keep it at constant temperature. Damaging/disrupting/contaminating such a sensor is orders of magnitude less likely than Pitot tube.

SadPole

6th Jul 2012, 09:35

In case someone wants to argue that regulatory bureaucracy is not the problem:

Title 14: Aeronautics and Space

CHAPTER I: FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (CONTINUED)

SUBCHAPTER G: AIR CARRIERS AND OPERATORS FOR COMPENSATION OR HIRE: CERTIFICATION AND OPERATIONS

PART 125: CERTIFICATION AND OPERATIONS: AIRPLANES HAVING A SEATING CAPACITY OF 20 OR MORE PASSENGERS OR A MAXIMUM PAYLOAD CAPACITY OF 6,000 POUNDS OR MORE; AND RULES GOVERNING PERSONS ON BOARD SUCH AIRCRAFT

Subpart F: Instrument and Equipment Requirements

125.205 - Equipment requirements: Airplanes under IFR.

No person may operate an airplane under IFR unless it has:

(a) A vertical speed indicator;

(b) A free-air temperature indicator;

(c) A heated pitot tube for each airspeed indicator;

(d) A power failure warning device or vacuum indicator to show the power available for gyroscopic instruments from each power source;

Meaning - nobody is allowed to use anything other than the archaic pitot tubes for airspeed reading and gyroscopic instruments while we for years have solid-state sensors that are more than 10 times more accurate than gyroscopic instruments or pitot tubes.

sandos

6th Jul 2012, 09:42

The report provides references suggesting that in a confusing environment, humans can be cognitively deaf to aural stimuli, and tend to prefer and respond to visual stimuli much better.

So, from a cognitive perspective, the accident makes sense. A big part of this was the human-machine interface, which did an extremely poor job of letting the pilots know what was actually going on.

I am fairly certain that this would not have happened with a proper HUD or FLIR or similar technology. If the hud can give a sense of the horizon (which is a big point of HUDs) the pilots _should_ have quickly realized that "this attitude is not right at this FL" and pitched down. I have a very hard time seeing that a HUD would not have worked for them, but you never know. Also, the HUD has to be able to use backup info of course. I have seen this done so it is of course doable, even though I have a really, really hard time accepting planes with exclusively electronic backup systems....

Rengineer

6th Jul 2012, 09:50

Q from a non-pilot: Could any of you professionals here explain what knowledge of flight physics is taught to pilots in their training, and how much most of them will remember after ten or so years on the job?

Also, having read soylent green's post which seems very convincing, forgive my continuous ignorance but I would have thought that any pilot, in instrument conditions, would monitor basic things like their artificial horizon and variometer, displayed on the primary flight displays. Do we have to conclude that these don't give enough of a clue to diagnose a high-altitude stall? And what could you imagine, supposing this was the thread to discuss that, how an optimal feedback should be displayed?

The reason why I'm asking this is, I'd like to understand how improvements to the cockpit design and interfaces might be made to help particularly pilots who, for whatever reason, are temporarily not at the very top of their skill (nothing implied here!!!), cope with unsusual situations.

Fox3WheresMyBanana

6th Jul 2012, 09:58

I still vote for the pilots being to blame. The entire point of having pilots in the loop is that they are supposed to sort out the confusing and unexpected. That includes the inputs from your own human failings such as misperception and adrenaline.

Are the techniques to handle unknown/complex/confusing situations understood?
Yes, and it's bloody simple in this case - power, attitude, trim
Are they still taught?
It looks like the answer to this is no, or at least not well enough to be remembered when it counts.
A few hours in the sim will not fix it, but better flight training will. I'm guessing here, as it's 20 years since I last taught commercial pilots, but 50 more hours of hands-on handling and instructing in airmanship should do it. The other point is that a proportion (higher than at present) needs to be taught by hard-nosed grumpy old gits who've seen it all, rather than 19 year olds with 251 hours who are hours building towards a commuter airliner job. But these older guys won't work for peanuts, so the system produces monkeys.

Tinribs

6th Jul 2012, 10:05

I have 40+ years jets with mostly B737 Fkr 100 in the last 25

I have never flown an airbus but have played with the sim a little and thought about it afterwards

It seems to me that all pilots need a mixture of skills and knowledge which varies with their particular situation. We bring the our own set with us when we join a fleet and the trainers adjust it to fill the percieved need.

For the B737 it was mainly watch look act but I think the skill set required with an airbus changes subtly. I think the required skill set inclines much more to listen watch think think think.

The airbus was carefully designed to avoid pilots making stupid errors which most of will given a fair oppportunity under pressure. This results in a falacy that the aircraft can be designed to avoid mistakes.

Pilots then fall for this story, because in the main it is true, and then the one in a million situation strikes when you have fully aquired the "aircraft must be right" habit

USMCProbe

6th Jul 2012, 10:14

The new, modern, cheap solid state IRS's that come in modern smart phones are not required. Modern jets have 3 or more "Real", no $%#@t certified 3 axis accelerometers and gyroscopes called IRS's or IRU's. On a Scarebus, if you call up the "bird", you have instantaneous AOA info. The pitch difference between your "bird" and you pitch bars is - tada - your AOA. A HUD would be nice, but you have the same exact display on your PFD. On a HUD it is just overlaid on the outside world. Awesome for TO and landing, but at 35K feet the PFD works just as well.

The pilots had everything they needed, including the procedures in FCOM. Most "unreliable speed" crashes have happened on TO. It is VERY diffucult to diagnose in that case. Is it unreliable speed? Windshear? At 35K, level flight, autopilot and autothrust on it is not that difficult, and a trained event on all A320 and above airbus aircraft.

Pilot error and systemic pilot training error. This should not have happened.

Case One

6th Jul 2012, 10:28

Yep the pilots screwed up because they didn't know how to fly. There are quirks in FBW Airbus aeroplanes that can confuse the issue (I'm an Airbus guy but I'm sure other types have challenging areas as well, most aircraft do). The Thales pitot tube fiasco is a disgrace. The airlines hire cheap inexperienced guys, don't train them properly, continue to drive down T's and C's discouraging experienced guys from joining or remaining.

All true but none of it the root cause. To me that is the certifying and licencing authorities. They set the rules of this game and they have not being doing their job properly for years. Someone asked if we can expect to see accident rates start to rise. You better believe it. It's not going to happen quickly, but as experience and skill trickle out of this industry it is certain to happen. At the moment the effects of inadequate design and training are being masked by the experienced operators still flying the line.

The public think our job is easy (these things fly themselves don't they), and that current safety levels are "normal" or "natural". Flying is inherently unforgiving and risky. We have systems in place to control that risk, and those systems must be continuously reviewed and updated.

It would appear to me that those in charge now don't understand what made saftey improve over the last sixty odd years and are now actively dismantling these systems. Did I mention EASA?

hetfield

6th Jul 2012, 10:36

Did I mention EASA? The muppet show with its French Director?

SadPole

6th Jul 2012, 10:37

The point was not about pilots not having accelerometer derived speed data as part of IRS/INS but about the automatics completely relying on pitot tubes and not being redundant and using accelerometer calculated speed as backup. From engineering point of view, loss of Pitot tubes does not really require disconnecting the automation but someone somewhere made the decision (or formal regulations) that this is what is supposed to happen.

Someone has to make a decision here - either make the automatics more redundant or require the pilots to regularly practice without it.

Dg800

6th Jul 2012, 10:54

But I seem to remember reading on one of the other numerous threads that below a certain airspeed, the stall warning stops. If this is the case, then if they pulled up, with very low airspeed and a nasty AoA, then wouldn't the stall warning stop giving the impression that there was no stall? Then when pushing nose down, the stall warning would start again when airspeed increased above the limits 'causing' them to pull up again to wrongly get out of the stall?This feature is intended to keep the STALL warning from triggering continuously while rolling on the ground. The speed threshold has been set so low (<60 knots) that it can only be exceeded while on the ground, there is no way you can slow down that much while airborne, not with such a plane. This assumes of course that you have reliable airspeed data, if you have a UAS condition than anything goes and such a failsafe can itself become an issue . As has already been suggested by other posters it would make sense to make STALL warning suppression entirely dependent on WoW status and do away completely with any speed threshold. If your wheels are on the ground then a stall condition becomes meaningless as you're not actually flying, if you're still airborne then a STALL warning should never be suppressed, regardless of the (possibly unreliable) IAS readings.

Regardless of the above I find it hard to believe the hypothesis -- because that's all it is, unfortunately we cannot ask the pilots what was actually going through their mind but can only formulate hypothesis -- that they went back to pulling on the stick because when they pushed the previously suppressed STALL warning became active again. To do so would go against basic training principles that are engrained in any pilot, even a lowly PPL, namely that when stalled pulling will only put you deeper into the stall, only pushing can get you out of it. The only situation where this would not be the case is when flying inverted, but I'm pretty sure the AF pilots were not confused to the point of believing that their plane had turned upside down.

fireflybob

6th Jul 2012, 11:36

The symptoms of a full stall are fourfold viz nose pitch down, heavy buffet, high rate of descent, possible wing drop - one of the big clues other than attitude should have been high rate of descent - have never thought much of efis VSIs - the old display was far more noticeable.

Of course amount of buffet depends on type etc.

But the error chain started the moment the nose pitched up - basic flying says maintain the correct attitude.

JOE-FBS

6th Jul 2012, 11:41

lomapaseo

6th Jul 2012, 12:03

A lot of good discussion points here

but

the issue is how to address these conerns whether you assign the causes to the crew or the airplane.

In the long run of time neither will be perfect, ever.

It's impossible to train for every specific malfunction as it is impossible to annunciate every specific malfunction. Somehow there must be a balance.

You simply decide how to minmize against what you think might be the next occurence.

Case One

6th Jul 2012, 12:21

I still don't understand something which I hope you airliner pilots can answer, please. For my IMC rating (it's a UK-only qualification with very limited privileges that allows IMC flight), I was taught (over simplifying slightly for discussion) that if you don't know what is happening with the airspeed, set cruise power and put the AI in the middle with the wings level and things will settle to a point where you are in control again. Does that work at M0.8 at FL350?

Pretty much. First you have to recognise that you have a problem. Then you have to have an idea of an appropriate cruise power setting (years of automated flight and non-moving thrust levers tend to erode that awareness), and you may have to manually trim (not instinctive for some Airbus pilots).

However, in my experience, most Airbus pilots have zero experience of hand flying the aeroplane above about 10k, never mind at high level. This deficit is not compensated for in the simulator, where most excercises are conducted below 10k, hey ho.

alf5071h

6th Jul 2012, 12:48

The basis of these points have been with the industry for some time, but perhaps they have not been heeded:- Errors in Aviation Decision Making. (www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/papers/seattle_hessd/judithlynne-p.pdf)
Pilots either don’t understand the situation, or if understood chose an inappropriate course of action.

Hopefully this unfortunate accident will reinvigorate the need to further understand and address many human performance issues in awareness and decision making, and generate an impetus for change.
The task would be to improve skills of situation assessment and judgement, not only for the pilots, but also operators, designers, and regulators.
The aim – perfection, may be unattainable; but achievement of consistent high standards of behaviour which together with safety barriers should help the industry maintain and improve a very good safety record.
The activity is that of change – in the way we think about safety, the role of the human, automation, training, and regulation. With change there is risk, these have to be managed and balanced with cost.

WHBM

6th Jul 2012, 13:03

The AF447 accident seems to have more than a few similarities with a lesser recent incident on the London Underground

Rail Accident Investigation: Report 13/2012 (http://www.raib.gov.uk/publications/investigation_reports/reports_2012/report132012.cfm)

Simplistically, a train managed to depart a station into the tunnel with the doors open.

Now of course, that's interlocked multiple different ways to be impossible ...... but a whole range of failures and difficulties over the previous 10 minutes, brand-new, all-electronic, latest-technology train, recent software updates, inadequate and conflicting error messages, misunderstood and rarely used manual overrides, etc, culminated in the driver (who normally does nothing more than oversee the automatics) of several years experience losing situational awareness.

Sound familiar ?

fireflybob

6th Jul 2012, 13:10

Maybe in some respects we are over training pilots - there seem to be an obsession these days for all sorts of mnemonics and very structured procedures which can in fact obscure priorities.

As I say "Flying is very simple but there are a lot of people around trying to make it as complicated as possible".

As part of the act of "dumbing down" of the profession maybe we are relying too much on the procedural aspects (slavish adherence to SOPs etc - yes, I know, we need them!) - almost like "painting by numbers" so much so that when pilots are faced with something "unusual" they become lost.

Dare I say those of us who were brought up on basic a/c with basic autopilots (no autothrust or FMC or EFIS) were "hard wired" for manual flight. We may be a bit rusty but it's no big deal if we have to hand fly. The modern generation of pilots have not got this framework to fall back on when it's all falling apart.

Am reminded something my father (who was a veteran light a/c instructor) said to me "Masters practice fundamentals every single day - look at an accomplished concert pianist who will practice scales every day". If we want pilots to be masters of their trade then they have to be given the opportunity to practice basics on a regular basis.

hhobbit

6th Jul 2012, 13:33

three brains stopped working for three minutes, nine minutes of dumb.

hhobbit

6th Jul 2012, 13:43

@soylent green
I would hesitate to say the airplane did not give them the message, the wind noise level at 60kts would be appreciably different to 500kts...? Or is it? - I'm unsure. I think that point was discussed way way back.

But full thrust plus rapid descent is a mushing stall. I think their critical skills froze under pressure of the unfamiliar. I suppose they don't spend enough enroute time rehearsing emergencies. Better than snoozing and keeps boredom away. I want to feel safe up there.

SLFinAZ

6th Jul 2012, 14:21

At the end of the day the real problem is frightening...

Flying a functional airplane is inherently simple.

Now landing an airplane (or taking off) is infinitely more complex and challenging. This reality is reflected in the relevant incident and accident rates. An autopilot as originally conceived was designed to minimize pilot workload during the safest part of the flight with the goal of maximizing pilot awareness and efficiency when it counted...during the final phase of the flight.

The AP was never intended to replace the pilot...yet we have the AP flying the aircraft for 99% of most flights. In this particular instance we finally reached a point where the PF & PM were collectively unable to fly a functional airplane with a completely manageable technical issue that had occurred on type numerous times and was well documented.

The complete lack of professionalism demonstrated via the transcripts clearly indicates a systemic problem in the training/CRM for AF. The reality that the problem is widespread enough to place to completely unqualified individuals in the wrong place at the same time is a clear warning sign that the entire training and screening process needs to be reviewed.

SadPole

6th Jul 2012, 14:21

The transcript is a riot. No wonder it was claimed to be such an offense for it to be leaked. Almost as "good" as the one from (my favorite) Smolensk:

02:11:03 (Bonin) Je suis en TOGA, hein?
I'm in TOGA, huh?

02:13:40 (Robert) Remonte... remonte... remonte... remonte...
Climb... climb... climb... climb...

02:13:40 (Bonin) Mais je suis à fond à cabrer depuis tout à l'heure!
But I've had the stick back the whole time!

At last, Bonin tells the others the crucial fact whose import he has so grievously failed to understand himself.However, the dumb dumb dumb idea of ("dual input") averaging the stick inputs without even providing the feedback to the other pilot is stupid. How come force-feedback is almost expected for good computer game console but not for a giant jet? I would argue that both Airbus and AirFrance should pay through the nose for this adventure. Airbus for designing a plane that allowed one pilot to do something completely stupid without the other knowing about it, AirFrance for the "performance" of the pilots.

The second screwup is designing a jet where everyone almost assumes (they should not assume that) is going to be flown almost entirely on automatics and then dropping off automatics at the slightest problem (in this case iced up pitot tubes) as if it required the same drastic response as say collision warning, thus forcing pilots into the situation they obviously have not been trained for.

Complete FUBAR.

Air France 447 Flight-Data Recorder Transcript - What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 - Popular Mechanics (http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877-2)

SadPole

6th Jul 2012, 14:38

Dumbing down pilots is the result of a fashion in all technology nowadays which is about "idiot proofing" everything according to dreams of marketeers and not engineers.

I am not a pilot but I am an engineer and I have spent good part of my life opposing this concept. It's not about automatics or no automatics but about who designs it. The true goals of automation are rarely simplicity and sense and more often stupidity of short-sighted profit. Meaning it is mostly designed by idiot marketeers and not engineers.

To adapt a joke about the issue:
Marketeer: This plane is by far our most pilot-friendly. It has only one button and we push it for you at the factory.

This is all industry-wide problem. In automotive industry, for example, they specifically designed all car automatics in a way that only the dealer can service even the simplest problem. The goal is profit not safety or sense.

testpanel

6th Jul 2012, 14:58

But the error chain started the moment the nose pitched up - basic flying says maintain the correct attitude.

Sorry, i don´t agree.
Why were they at that position at that time?
Other flights, e.g. IB, diverted miles to the east.

That´s when/where it started!!

Carjockey

6th Jul 2012, 15:16

What worries me as your average SLF, is that the FBW / computer systems on commercial aircraft are apparently almost totally dependent on a single instrument, namely the pitot tube.

Is their no backup system available in the event of pitot tube failure?

With the technology available today, surely there is an alternative means available for an aircraft's computer system to establish it's airspeed without simply disconnecting the AP?

This situation began because the AP disconnected, and the situation degraded because the pilots did not understand what was going on.

Pilot error is surely a factor in this case, but a more significant factor is the failure of aircraft manufacturer's to recognise that automated systems should be designed as an adjunct to a pilots flying skill and training, and not as a substitute for it.

MountainBear

6th Jul 2012, 15:19

I find it hard to believe the hypothesis -- because that's all it is, unfortunately we cannot ask the pilots what was actually going through their mind but can only formulate hypothesis -- that they went back to pulling on the stick because when they pushed the previously suppressed STALL warning became active again.Your assumption that in a crisis situation a pilot will revert to training is false. The PF pulled back on the stick not because he was confused but because he was biased.

The 'startle effect' is an example of the over arching mental heuristic known as the recency effect. A different but related error is the primacy effect. The report makes clear that the pilot was primed to take the plane up because of the anxiety he had expressed about the plane's flight level prior to the incident. He went up because he wanted to go up; his training be damned.

The transcript makes clear the consistent incomprehension the PF had regarding the situation. Despite this incomprehension he still acted. He may not have acted on his training. It makes perfect sense that when confronted with conflicting and confusing stimuli he fell back on his pre-existing albeit erroneous mental model that the plane needed to go up.

You're correct, of course, that this remains a hypothesis since we cannot read his mind. Yet all hypothesis are not created equal and based upon what an extensive amount of science teaches us about human behavior it is a rational, reasonable, and quite plausible hypothesis.

stepwilk

6th Jul 2012, 15:22

archaic pitot tubes for airspeed reading

Please explain how your 10-times-as-accurate "solid state sensors" will determine airspeed--the salient part of that word being "air."

NigelOnDraft

6th Jul 2012, 15:42

Is their no backup system available in the event of pitot tube failure? Well, yes there is. The other 2 pitot tubes. Trouble is when there is a common problem affecting mroe than 1 :*

Pilot error is surely a factor in this case, but a more significant factor is the failure of aircraft manufacturer's to recognise that automated systems should be designed as an adjunct to a pilots flying skill and training, and not as a substitute for it. This situation began because the AP disconnected, and the situation degraded because the pilots did not understand what was going on.Your 2 statements do not quite add up :ugh:

The AP disconnected precisely because 'that automated systems should be designed as an adjunct to a pilots flying skill and training' occurred - the AP was not able to determine what was happening to a sufficient degree - the system designers / regulators decided that was a point to hand it back to the crew.

Now as you say 'and the situation degraded because the pilots did not understand what was going on' and that is an issue for training / skill / practice. Now I fly "made in Tolouse" products for a major European airline, LHS for nearly 10 years. I do not recall one sim training session where I was "persuaded" to be distracted / looked down / pretend dozed off, and then given the aircraft in an unusual attitude, with some systems / insts failed, and told to resolve it *. I do recall being given some very gentle stall recoveries to perform, precisely, with a detailed brief in the minutes before "to address the AF issue" (all systems working except in Altn law) :ooh:

* The sort of UP recovery every RAF student pilot started doing at ~25hrs and in every IF training trip / test thereafter.

vovachan

6th Jul 2012, 15:42

I think (as a SLF) -- this is a problem inherent in multitasking. You cannot fly a plane and troubleshoot a plane at the same time. Humans just are not very good at this kind of thing. Not with a million confusing messages popping up.

One moment they are bored half to death next thing you know all hell is breaking loose...

SadPole

6th Jul 2012, 15:48

Please explain how your 10-times-as-accurate "solid state sensors" will determine airspeed--the salient part of that word being "air."Already did, here:

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/489790-af-447-report-out-4.html#post7280726

Airplane application of such a sensor would basically require a little metal peg or even simply piece of metal foil stuck on a wing. The principle of operation is such that you heat a piece of metal to a specific temperature and measure the amount of energy required to keep it at that temperature. The bigger air flow cools it faster so more energy is required to keep it at constant temperature. Damaging/disrupting/contaminating such a sensor is orders of magnitude less likely than Pitot tube. Pitot tube is really an archaic sensor that is used in aviation (in my view) only because of historic and bureaucratic reasons. They continue to use it in spite of constant problems with it - ice and bugs clogging it and causing crashes.

To begin with, Pitot tube does not even measure directly any kind of flow but pressure difference. To calculate some sort of flow/speed out of it you need to know current air density.

Pitot tube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitot_tube)

On top of it all, the pressure difference measured by Pitot tube depends on angle of attack, which adds even more problems.

On the other hand, hot-wire mass flow sensor reading is directly what you need for better control of flying condition as it it the mass of the air flown around the wings that gives the lift. Or in other words - thinner air gives you smaller lift than thicker air at the same speed. Using this sensor in vacuum would give you zero flow reading and zero aerodynamic lift even if you were going at a very large speed.

Meaning, if this technology was known from the start, that's what would have been used - because it directly measures what is needed to maintain required aerodynamic lift.

[/URL]Hot wire mass flow sensors are used in every car produced today. It is a well-known technology.

[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_flow_sensor"]Mass flow sensor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_flow_sensor)

overthewing

6th Jul 2012, 15:51

You cannot fly a plane and troubleshoot a plane at the same time.

As SLF also, I understand that standard aviation practice recognises this and that this is why the PF is supposed to fly the plane while the PNF does the troubleshooting. In the case of AF447, this division seems to have been muddled.

VC10man

6th Jul 2012, 16:00

Is it normal to have 3 pilots on a trip of this length?

hetfield

6th Jul 2012, 16:33

Is it normal to have 3 pilots on a trip of this length?

YES, about 12h flight time.

fireflybob

6th Jul 2012, 17:04

Sorry, i don´t agree.
Why were they at that position at that time?
Other flights, e.g. IB, diverted miles to the east.

That´s when/where it started!!

testpanel, good point - or you could say is started by not fitting the new pitot heads. Aircraft have been flying around for decades with pitot heads fitted that don't ice up - I find it difficult to believe that a modern aircraft of this complexity was not fitted with pitot heads that did not ice up!

Is it normal to have 3 pilots on a trip of this length?

VC10man, yes - it's a function of the duty time - above a certain figure (depends a bit with operator and Flight Time Limitation scheme) you are required to have a "heavy" crew.

flapsjml

6th Jul 2012, 17:39

I'm a private pilot with a visual rules rating. Having watched programmes on TV about air disasters, I don't understand why so many accidents have happened to commercial pilots not recognising a stall situation, or were unable to recover from the situation.
Does relying on instruments, when piloting commercial flights, take away the skills that were learnt during basic training?

jcjeant

6th Jul 2012, 18:18

so much so that when pilots are faced with something "unusual" they become lost
Is that "unusual" to lost Pitots indications ?
Is that "unusual" to lost an engine ?
Is that "unusual" to lost part of hydraulic power ?
Or is that "unusual" to fly the aircraft manually ?

Mike744

6th Jul 2012, 18:18

Pitot tube is really an archaic sensor that is used in aviation (in my view) only because of historic and bureaucratic reasons. They continue to use it in spite of constant problems with it - ice and bugs clogging it and causing crashes.

To begin with, Pitot tube does not even measure directly any kind of flow but pressure difference. To calculate some sort of flow/speed out of it you need to know current air density.

I was wondering how many alternatives to the Pitot tube sensor there are and what would be the pros & cons? Apart from the hot wire method there are also ultrasonic sensors similar to the Curtiss-Wright type. Considering the reliability inherent in modern electronics surely there must be a cost effective & viable alternative to the Pitot tube.

Northbeach

6th Jul 2012, 18:30

Airbus makes a fine, technologically advanced and safe jet. I've never flown one, never had the opportunity.

I had an Airbus captain in the jumpseat and asked this individual about his high altitude stall recovery training. The answer I got was that the Airbus will always beat my jet's performance because to escape a ground proximity warning they can engage TOGA and apply maximum pitch input (bury the stick) and the airplane will not stall. After all you can't stall an Airbus.

The answer did not address my question about Airbus' high altitude stall recovery training. Perhaps there was/is no Airbus high altitude stall training. With all due respect; selecting TOGA and burying the stick will not solve every problem. This leads us to the post two positions aove mine where a pilot in training asks the question if becoming a professional pilot causes one to forget/lose their basic flight training background in stall recognition and recovery. How do we answer the question?

Every aircraft in flight is capable of being stalled. It takes the right combination of events and/or circumstances. The idea that " XYZ" aircraft is incapable of being stalled should be eliminated, it is a dangerous error in thinking.

Advanced aircraft, avionics, and ratings do not invalidate basic aeronautics. If the airfoil is stalled then the angle of attack must be decreased to regain laminar airflow to get that airfoil " flying" again.

There are not two sets of basic aerodynamics: one for Private pilots and the other for us commercial pilot " professionals".

Thou shalt maintain thy flying speed, lest the ground (or sea) rise up and smite thee.

xcitation

6th Jul 2012, 18:58

@jcjeant
Indeed this can happen.. only if you don't check your airspeed ... (who was under 60 knots) and if you don't know the specifications of your aircraft ...
Anyway .. when you read 60 knots (all parameters indicated that this speed was valid) on the speed indicator of an A330 .. you can deduce two things:
Or you are rolling on ground
Or if you are in the air ... your plane is no more flying .. he is falling like a stone ... (check altimeter)

For airspeed a qualitative 'sanity' check would be Ground Speed from GPS. If both airspeed and ground speed are around 40kts then it supports a diagnosis of stall unless you believe in 300kt wind. To that end the PAX could have seen the GPS speed decay from 400kts to 40kts in the GPS in the seat back - very sad.
The PF had less than 2 years ATPL, I recall his wife was on board. Perhaps many with similar training/experience would do the same or worse in this nightmare scenario. The ultimate responsibility lies with the capt.

hetfield

6th Jul 2012, 19:00

The answer did not address my question about Airbus' high altitude stall recovery training. Perhaps there was/is no Airbus high altitude stall training. Sad but true.

Personally, I flew A300/320family and A340 for a major EU carrier.

NEVER EVER had high altitude stall recovery training.

Only in the beginning training on A300 some approaches to stall below 10k feet were done.

SadPole

6th Jul 2012, 19:04

Pitot tube was invented in year (get this) 1732 so it is quite safe to assume we did learn a thing or two about better ways to measure gas flows since then; :)

Pitot tubes allowed to measure approximate air-speed without need of electronics or even electricity (except for heating the damn thing) and thus were a great tool from the very beginning of aviation.

Original Pitot tube provided two pipes with static and dynamic/impact pressures that were connected to a mechanical gauge where the different pressures acted upon a membrane that was driving a air-speed gauge needle.

See this Popular Mechanics article from 1944.

Popular Science - Google Books (http://books.google.com/books?id=0SkDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA116&dq=Popular+Science+The+lads+who+fly+Britain%27s+1944&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UHyfT6aEIYOs9ATwh8C1AQ&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=true)

This isn't to say that everything that is that old must automatically be bad - but the problem is that all countries have aviation laws that specifically require Pitot Tubes and other such archaic things and it simply seems easier to throw some electronics into 300 year old sensor than to change all the laws, I think.

So, "modern" Pitot tubes no longer output their readings in form of two hoses but have a silicone pressure sensor instead - and this is the extend of the "innovation" in the aviation sensor field.

On the other hand, in cars you can now find all different types of mass flow electronics.

rgbrock1

6th Jul 2012, 19:17

SLF here.

I've read and reread the CVR several times now. There are a couple of things that were occurring on the flight deck that I really do not understand.

On several occasions the PNF points out to PF that he is ascending and that he should push the nose down to enable a descent but to do so "gently!". PF then responds that he's descending. (PNF also points out the decaying forward speed of the aircraft to PF.) But PF really isn't descending as he's merely eased up the back pressure on the stick. PF then states "we're in a climb." At this point the PNF attempts to summon the Captain back to the flight desk.

After announcing that he no longer has control of the aircraft the PNF takes control and proceeds to pull back on the stick. Even after suggesting a descent - but "gently!" - to the PF.
ter PNF took control the PF took control back and the Captain appeared on the flight deck with the words "What the hell are you doing?"

PNF states "Climb... climb.... climb" to the PF whereupon, finally, PF states that he's had the stick back the entire time.

The captain then says "no... no... no. Don't climb. No... no... no"

After this seeming command PF continues pulling back on the stick anyway.

So, after having received several suggestions or seeming commands to put the nose down, PF continues pulling back anyway. This is a huge interconnect between what he's being told and what he's actually doing. Can it be that at this point in the situation the PF is actually in panic mode and is merely doing anything he can think of without forethought as to what it is he was actually doing? Similar to the flight or fight method of dealing with extreme/dangerous situations? It almost seems as if the PF has temporarily lost all semblance of situational awareness, including what is being suggested/commanded to him.

TRW Plus

6th Jul 2012, 19:27

Hey, not a pilot here, just curious ... is there any technology in existence or under development that could relay air speed to pilots from GPS technology? For example, a GPS device on board an aircraft would interact with either fixed ground stations or satellites in defined locations, and this interaction would yield an air speed? I would imagine (in my rather non-technical haze) that such technology could also be adapted to read out the pitch or AOA, all of which would render these pitot tubes obsolete?

Sandy Swan

6th Jul 2012, 19:32

I would just like to urge all Airbus pilots to read BEA's AF447 Final Report. It is an education, plugs holes in our understanding and illuminates many areas left grey or fuzzy by our training. It took me about 7 hours to read and made me more aware than ever that aviation is still very much a work-in-progress, that there are still major problems or deficiencies in design, regulation, company procedure, training, checking, simulators, flight safety reporting, ATC infrastructure, ergonomics, even in meteorological knowledge. Once again good and honest pilots and people have perished so that the rest of us can live and learn.

If the PF in the right seat, once the AP disconnected, had done nothing except hold the wings level and the pitch at 2.5 degrees until the ADRs kicked in again with some sensible readings, for about 60 confusing, ECAM flashing seconds, we probably wouldn't have even heard about it. All the PNF had to do was silence the bloody aural, disconnect the FDs and monitor the pitch and roll on his PFD like a hawk.

It took me 7 hours to read the Report and discover why that didn't happen. Of course anyone on PPrune who has followed the threads and read the Preliminary and Interim Reports would already know most of it but the Final puts a lot of flesh and insight on those bones.

My own area of concern is the absence of a Captain on the flight deck and the Report has quite a lot to say on the subject, including a CRM Training recommendation. Personally, I don't think it goes far enough. I believe the travelling public, once the Long Haul stuff started, has been short changed by the operators. For economic reasons, they deemed, with the blessing of the Authorities, that **** only happens below FL200 and that there were no status and role problems with two F/Os sitting together in the cruise. I am afraid AF447 calls that comfortable assumption into question. **** certainly can happen above FL200 and, for the AF skipper, it happened very fast. One and half minutes, to be precise.
I believe a pilot with the status, role, rights and duties, and salary, of a Captain should be in the left seat of an aircraft at all times. Period. Try convincing those surrounding the President of even the most impoverished banana republic that it is OK, in cruise we don't have the money to pay for a full Captain to be on the watch. Flying 300 passengers safely, to the best working practice possible, is flying 300 Presidents. This argument has nothing to say about the proficiency or professionalism of F/Os, which is taken for granted and may well exceed a Captain's. It is simply about responsibility, about having a legitimate person in the hot seat for when and where the buck stops. CRM improvements, more emphasis on briefings, more training for F/Os, all suggest some mystification at work to conceal a less than optimum crew configuration.

I was a bit surprised by how the Report quickly covered the analysis of the failure of the crew to recover from the stall once the horizontal stabiliser had reached its 13 degrees position, presumably still in Alternate 2B law. What could have been done, were the Elevators enough, was Auto Pitch trim still available? I would have expected a recommendation for some very defined jet upset training procedures.

But my main purpose here is not to initiate debate or even to ask any questions. I would simply urge you to read this Report if you are an Airbus pilot. For what it's worth, I have 12 years flying A330/340, 27000+ hours, and 2 months to go to retirement at 65. As a pilot I have always strived for excellence and only ever achieved average. And this Final Report has taught me a lot.

Lonewolf_50

6th Jul 2012, 19:40

testpanel: no. I've read the entirety of the eight previous threads, and all of the reports issued to date less the one issued today. (As I am not finished with it, I may have a change of heart after posting this).

I can find no support for your statement. Yes, other crews adapted to the weather as they saw it differently, but it is well to remember:
a. weather is dynamic not static
b. each crew's weather avoidance scheme will be informed by what they see versus what was forecast
c. there is no evidence that moderate to sever turb was a factor in this mishap.

Fox3:

If the pilots are to blame, I'll suggest that they were in part set up by the system at Air France. Noted so far is the point that has been much discussed - evidence of their unfamiliarity with aircraft handling at 35K and above. That does not explain some basic CRM failures, which may be AF driven or personality driven, and also does not explain what looks to be a fundamental instrument scan breakdown.

bubbers44

6th Jul 2012, 19:42

The captain knew how to fly but by the time he got to the cockpit doing his required legal rest they had things so screwed up he took a while figuring out how they could have done what they did.

Pilots should not be left alone in a cockpit if they can't handle a simple loss of airspeed problem without crashing into the ocean. The scarey part is how many flights tonight will be flown by equally unqualified pilots while the captain takes his required legal break? You are not allowed to be on duty in the cockpit for more than 8 hrs. Monitoring an autopilot for a few thousand hours at altitude does not mean you could fly it if the autopilot disconnected with no airspeed. AF447 proved that.

Loose rivets

6th Jul 2012, 19:44

It has to be appreciated what kind of stall they were in. As stated in one of the early threads, the aircraft does not enter a 'true deep stall.' However, their flight profile, the feel, and basic instrument readings could have certainly given that impression to the average line pilot. The major difference would be, for a limited time/thousands of feet, they weren't trapped, as in a deep stall.

The incredibly powerful instinct to pull away from the ground - as suggested above - is I'm sure, very real, and to get another warning, when for a moment you do the right thing, must have bolstered that faulty reasoning considerably.

It probably wasn't long before fear affected the pilots' normally methodical reasoning. It's almost certain to be the case not long after their inflow of data became confused. Their situation must have seemed almost surreal in the latter stages. That is pretty solid psychology. Not a good state to be in when you need to willfully force your hand to obey an absurdly counter-intuitive command.

There are a lot of people better prepared now, as a result of this tragedy.

Pitot heads:

They're expensive, vulnerable and need complex translation before their data is displayed. They wouldn't have been there all these years if there was an easy alternative. However, I'm surprised there isn't a backup system based on alternative technology.

Air particles, and especially water droplets can be detected electronically and this used to measure speed. The trouble is, all the same ice issues apply, with the electronic detection being far more sudden in the way it fails.

CaptainSandL

6th Jul 2012, 19:45

Northbeach
The idea that " XYZ" aircraft is incapable of being stalled should be eliminated, it is a dangerous error in thinking.

I agree, this is the mentality that did for the Titanic!

Sandy Swan
I would just like to urge all Airbus pilots to read BEA's AF447 Final Report. It is an education, plugs holes in our understanding and illuminates many areas left grey or fuzzy by our training.
Again, I completely agree. I would make it form the basis of our 6 monthly tech questionairre.

BOAC

6th Jul 2012, 19:55

There are a lot of people better prepared now, as a result of this tragedy. - we must seek the 'good' from this disaster. LR has it. CaptainSandL's following post (#122) also.

We are stuck with the AB control philosophy - it will not change markedly. We have to make what we can of it. I hope new pilots will ponder well on this accident.

deSitter

6th Jul 2012, 19:56

Mountain Bear said

"The 'startle effect' is an example of the over arching mental heuristic known as the recency effect. A different but related error is the primacy effect. The report makes clear that the pilot was primed to take the plane up because of the anxiety he had expressed about the plane's flight level prior to the incident. He went up because he wanted to go up; his training be damned. "

That's a great point. The same thing happened with the A300 that crashed on Long Island. The PF was overly concerned with wake turbulence and let his anxiety go to his feet, and he knocked the rudder off. To some extent it happened with the L-1011 at DFW, where the PF was spring-loaded to land in a storm when he should have gone around.

deSitter

6th Jul 2012, 20:11

Well I think the proper bodies should mandate training flights in real aircraft with the AP is disconnected. Just normal hand-flying.

Petrolhead

6th Jul 2012, 20:27

Why has no one asked what they were doing in that cloud in the first place? If they had not gone into cloud, the pitots would not have iced up.

Why did they not take vectors like other aircraft?

Was the radar display turned up so they could see it? - there are two parts to the ND display knob and I often see crews in the sim turn on the radar but leave it on min brightness so you cannot see it.

Something simple Airbus can do is to set the minimum brightness still visible.

ChrisVJ

6th Jul 2012, 20:30

Sorry SadPole, anyone who has ever had a VW or GMC MAF Sensor problem will tell you a MAF measure is not the answer. Compared to a pitot tube they are unreliable, need a computer to translate the indication to anything useable and when they do go wrong they screw up everything around them.

By comparison a pitot tube is an elegant, simple and direct measurement that relies directly in a principle of physics. The only complication in this event is that the modification (heating) to cope with low temps and high altitude and water were inadequate. Not the fault of the basic principle.

kaikohe76

6th Jul 2012, 20:48

di sitter,

Agree with you totally, see my post on page 4. Absolutely no substitute for a knowledge of simple basics principles, combined with plenty of manual hands on flying, all this prior to bringing on the automatics.

bubbers44

6th Jul 2012, 22:01

The pitot tube for airspeed compared to static pressure is the only recognized way to display airspeed. Not having that, attitude and power setting using the charts on the aircraft is the alternate way to maintain stable flight for unusable airspeed. The two in the AF447 cockpit were not capable of doing this. Sometimes it pays to hire experienced pilots.

blind pew

6th Jul 2012, 22:16

GPS
Yes some companies do have it fitted and used it for unreliable airspeed proceedures before the accident.

Flew the route with full enlarging crew - two captains. Copilots and engineers.
Always one captain in the flight deck and sometimes the resting captain would join us for the ITCZ transit.
Cheap option one captain - blame the companies and regulators.
As to the lack of airmanship from the captain!

deSitter

6th Jul 2012, 22:40

Wouldn't the captain of anything make sure that matters were all boring and predictable before taking a snooze? I mean, was there any evaluation at all of the weather ahead?

bubbers44

6th Jul 2012, 22:46

I can't see the captain being the problem. When they put themselves into a full stall he wasn't even there. The two FO's managed to do it all by them selves and when he got in the cockpit they were descending at 7,000 fpm in a stall and he in a glance is going to figure out how they totally screwed up a perfectly good airplane exept for the pitot tube malfunction? Could you?

bubbers44

6th Jul 2012, 22:56

ds,yes if you had two captain you would have at least one experienced pilot in the cockpit but since RIO to Paris doesn't require two captains why would AF add the cost of an additional captain. Do like everybody else and get the FO's a type rating so they qualify to fly together. It is a lot cheaper having two FO's than two captains.

mini

7th Jul 2012, 00:42

None of the guys driving that night were fools, some may not have had 10,000 hours experience but they were trained as well as the majority of pilots.

The real lesson here is that if it fooled them it could fool me...

Organfreak

7th Jul 2012, 01:11

@deggers316:

Once terminal velocity is achieved (can't fall any faster), vertical acceleration ceases, and thus no Gs are felt.

Buried somewhere in the myriad threads might be the information on how long it took them to accelerate to TV. I, too, wonder if they didn't feel that.

:eek:

soylentgreen

7th Jul 2012, 01:33

Thanks to those who liked my post (my first post here -- long time lurker, thanks for being kind!)

Again, i'm not a pilot, but am a cognitive psychologist, so I'm sure I come at this from a different viewpoint.

To me, the question is this:

Given an identical situation, what % of professional pilots (or perhaps '3 man groups of pilots') would flub it and crash the plane?

There seems to be a contingent of forum members saying "0% : the AF guys were idiots".
There are others saying "100% : the AB design is at fault".

In my opinion, this is actually a very nice scientific question, amenable to research. Let's calculate this %age empirically.

Imagine this:

Get 100 x 3-man crews, and put them in a multi-day full-experience simulator. In this simulator, they fly full flights, sleep odd hours in weird hotel rooms, etc. Each crew does this for 30 days. 99% of the flights are uneventful.

At some point, each crew will get on 1% of their flights an AF447-type scenario. No warning, it just happens.

From this study, we calculate the ultimate data point: what % of crews survive. And perhaps more interestingly: what % of crews survive for the right reasons.

Expensive as hell? Sure.

Would it cost more than one AF447 tragedy? (Not snark: that's a serious question - how long would it take to do this study? I have no idea.)

The outcome would be quite interesting.

Reading the BEA report, the most interesting findings to me was the comparison to events "similar" to the AF447 event, which the BEA summarizes as follows (p 106, english edition)

'Calling on the "unreliable airspeed" procedure was rare'
'The triggering of the STALL warning was noticed. It was suprisging and many crews tended to consider it as inconsistent"'

So I propose (a modest proposal, being on a forum where we do nothing but argue) that we don't need to argue theory : The BEA has collected the pilot (ahem) study data for us...

Let's take the next step, do the real experiment and see what the data shows.

If, for example, 99% of fully-trained expert pilots flub this, then the "bad pilots" chorus would probably have to rethink their position.

If, for example less than 1% of fully-trained pilots flub this, perhaps that's more of an example of bad apples needing to be better-trained or weeded out?s

Or maybe in either case, we need to consider the human-machine interface as the thing that must change?

We could of course include variations and get lots of data : set the simulator up with A vs. B style controls. 2 vs 3 vs 4 man crews. Time since last slept. Time since woken up. Aurual vs. visual warnings. Fullt-time AOA sensors.

We could even include some stooges (experimental confidants) to mess with the results: what if half the simulated AF447 scenarios, the PF was in fact a trained experimenter who just holds nose up, and we see if the other 2 PNFs figure it out and overrule him?

Sounds like a fun experiment to me!

(NB - I'm sure a lot of this research has been already done, right? I'm not a researcher in this field, so I'd be surprised if these ideas are novel).

CafeClub

7th Jul 2012, 01:49

Apologies if this is covered elsewhere, but a search doesn't pull up a definitive answer... and I have NO wish to convert this to an A vs B thread.

What is the STATED logic from Airbus (they must have a reason) for input on one sidestick not to be felt on the other? As a previous poster points out this is low tech enough to be available (in a way) on every decent video game joystick?

Surely situational awareness would be greatly assisted by such a physical link between the controls? What is the manufacturers reasoning behind NOT linking "feel" between the sidesticks?

Organfreak

7th Jul 2012, 02:41

CafeClub:
What is the STATED logic from Airbus (they must have a reason) for input on one sidestick not to be felt on the other?

I'd love to know what their official answer is, too.

In the likely event that they haven't commented on it, I'll posit the answer:

=Cheaper=. (A bunch.) :ok:

The override buttons and lighted cues were meant to replace the need for linked (yokes). This time they didn't.

No doubt, AB and its apologists will find a way to make it "a feature," not a cost-saving, neato, toy joystick. :hmm:
_________________________________

mm43

7th Jul 2012, 03:45

CafeClub;

Have a look at the following post from the Tech Log (http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/482356-af-447-thread-no-8-a-21.html#post7173636).

As OrganFreak said, there is a "price" to pay - for the life of the aircraft.

lomapaseo

7th Jul 2012, 03:46

Soylentgreen

Please define a Fully Trained Pilot

I've never heard of such an example

some know somethings and others know something else and they all know the same little of something else

boba306

7th Jul 2012, 03:52

I was happening demo in sim A320 ,my learn about unreliable airspeed aka overspeed, which leads to Flight control normal law protections.
I cannot moved the sidestick even my partner beside, overspeed protection taken over controls to the nose pitch up and the sidestick stuck at aft position.
within seconds airspeed dropped and leads to stall...my condolences again to Af447.

Organfreak

7th Jul 2012, 04:15

As OrganFreak said, there is a "price" to pay - for the life of the aircraft.

No' kiddin'??? :O Doesn't make much sense now. Er...where'd I say it? :ouch: :oh:

mm43

7th Jul 2012, 04:26

... not a cost-saving, neato, toy joystick.May be, I'm an apologist.;)

ATC Watcher

7th Jul 2012, 05:25

Why did the pilot flying pull back on the stick at 37,000 feet when the stall warning first initiated?

The answer to that one was given during the BEA debrief/press briefing : There was a sudden Christmas tree with lots of warning , sounds including ice pellets hitting the windows and most probably the PF concentrated his action looking at one thing only and erasing all others, especially the sounds. This is a normal physiological reaction apparently. Brain prioritize visuals clues above sounds.

This reminds me of the 3 Miles islands nuclear accident where the operators collectively concentrated on the reading of a single faulty gauge to initiate a meltdown. Only when the relieving crew came on duty at 07:00 (3 or 4 hours after the incident) did someone immediately realized the error and stopped the plant from exploding. But during 3 or 4 hours a group of very trained engineers disregarded all other valid warnings believing they were false and concentrated on a single thing that happen to be the wrong one..

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

ChrisVJ

7th Jul 2012, 06:26

Having read most of the posts, (not all, I will; admit, ) in the previous thread and in this one it does seem to me that many have advanced points that are valid but no one seems to tie them all together under sensible headings, say The aircraft and controls, training and flight management.

I realise, of course, that apparent shortcomings are not always so, and some are compromises that avoid others, however that doesn’t mean they are not worthy of discussion. I have also mentioned a distrust of fly by wire before and was upbraided because, as someone pointed out, direct controls, hydraulics and cables have been known to fail too. Again, given the complexities of the ‘laws’ that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthy of discussion.

Just from my own reading items that need further consideration in the aircraft might be,

1) Stability of modern aircraft in ‘coffin corner’ and the extent to which we allow designers to rely on computers to maintain control while aircraft are configured at the very edge of the envelope for better economics.

2) The sidesticks. No feedback. It may be something in French mechanical philosophy, we had a Citroen Safari once. The power steering and the brake, especially, had an entirely different feel to contemporary power augmented controls. Feedback to the steering was artificial, I think, and there was none to the brake button.

3) Automatic Trim. Given the lack of feedback in the sidesticks automatic trim is almost a necessity. The problem with that is, as has been pointed out, that after the stick has been held full back for some time trim is full up and it requires full forward stick to get the nose down and there are suggestions that even that would not be enough. (But surely after some time of full forward stick the trim would go ‘down?’)

4) The aircraft drops out of Normal Law into manual control immediately and without prior warning when more than one pitot appears to give an erroneous reading. It’s entirely logical but it is flawed. It means the pilots don’t really have time to get their head in the game before they have to act.

5) The stall alarm is disabled below 60 knots ( so it does not annoy while taxi-ing.) It seems reasonable, but if your head is not in the game . . . . . . . . . . I can easily imagine putting the nose down a little, hearing an alarm and thinking “Can’t do that, it triggers the alarm . . . . . . .” Surely the alarm cancel could be connected to the U/C load switches?

Training and Aircrew.
1) Most aircrew don’t do stall training once they get onto airline aircraft. Some say they have never done it, even simulated, at high altitude.

2) The primacy of instinct rather than training in stressful situations is well known and especially when the training is several years ago. For training to ‘kick in’ it must be frequent, current and automatic. I understand that training for extremely rare events is awfully expensive but so is the alternative.

3) There’s little comment on here about disorientation and illusion. I understand that pilots are trained to read the aircraft’s situation from the instruments however in the dark and with the aircraft being tossed around it might be easy to be disoriented. I have read often of pilots who commented after an event (eg, Gann.) that they had only survived because they had experienced the exact same thing before while in the care of an old timer. How many pilots have experienced a high altitude stall, in a storm, in the dark, with suspect airspeed, even in a sim?

4) There have been several comments that indirect indicators should have alerted the pilots to their situation, eg, “They should have realised if they were climbing on fixed power they would eventually stall,” ( and therefore no need for an AoA,) and some pilots may have that kind of presence of mind, however I don’t think we can rely on that when people are under pressure. I always used to think that I was good under stress, however I have discovered that actually I am useless, under stress I am pretty well unable to reason, I don’t suppose I am alone in that. It is, perhaps, important that we make sure that direct indicators are always available.

5) There is also the “I have decided that’s what is wrong . . . “ syndrome so we stop looking for other causes and adapt all the symptoms to our expectation. I don’t know how we train against this.

Flight management.
1) The decision to fly the most direct route, even though storms were known along it must be questionable. If airlines don’t make money we’ll not be travelling so freely, however how do we balance risk and economics?

2) Crew relief, given that one of the pilots had six thousand hours, hardly seems unreasonable. On the other hand one might reflect that makes it all the longer since he practiced stalls in the real world. It has to be a concern, though, that the captain wouldn’t be ‘au fait’ with the course of events when he returned to the flight deck and the other pilots didn’t seem able to tell him.

OrvilleW

7th Jul 2012, 07:54

Solyent wrote...

"So, from a cognitive perspective, the accident makes sense. A big part of this was the human-machine interface, which did an extremely poor job of letting the pilots know what was actually going on.

Could they have done better? Of course. Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? Far from it. "

__________________________

I'll take you task on this Solyent. From the cognitive perspective you have considered a limited set of factors....but assuming your argument holds for the cognitive circumstances prevailing in the cockpit, the accident still does not make sense. The cognitive environment informing the aircraft and avionics designers - even after all the accidents and incidents we have had over many years - leaves much to be desired. Bad HMI engineering, poor scenario modeling, poor checks on corner cases/bounday cases, poor design processes and inadequate checks (as well as poor pitot design) have led to a situation where, possibly, a set of cognitive elements have conspired to deliver this outcome. Bad, bad design and the usual chain of events at work.

Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? They most certainly are. They are charged as professional pilots to mantain complete discipline and situational awareness in the cockpit at all times. No distractions, no excuses. They accepted the rank, pay and responsibility. They failed. Bad circumstances no doubt. Sensory confusion, loss of external references....never fun. But their responsibility through and through).

chuks

7th Jul 2012, 08:24

Interesting discussion here....

If one sees one's aircraft gaining 2 thousand feet, going from 350 to 370, never mind what the ASI is reading, if anything; you have to realize that you don't get a sustained gain of 2 thousand feet 'for free.' That is so very basic that it should over-ride all the binging and bonging and flashing and beeping in the world, except that here it obviously didn't.

I have noticed with interest the sort of stall recovery training given in two-crew aircraft. Where once we were taught, in little airplanes, to get the nose well down and accept a loss in altitude, the advanced way to do this was presented as a call-out of 'Stall!' at the first indication, going to full power, but putting the nose on the horizon reference and powering out with no or very little loss of altitude. A good recovery was judged on minimum altitude loss rather than getting to the right AoA, when that seems mistaken to me. Here it looks as if they kept the aircraft to a very tidy level-flight attitude while falling like a stone in a deep stall. That would have been somewhat correct for recovery from the sort of stall presented in the usual training scenario I just sketched.

TheShadow

7th Jul 2012, 09:08

So to sum up the BEA final AF447 delivery, my much earlier analysis of the recorders' tale (here (http://www.iasa-intl.com/folders/belfast/finalAF447/MyAF447analyses.htm)) was pretty much on the money, particularly with respect to the stall warning system. Because the AF447 hapless trio were embedded in a deep stall, the type of stall entry that can only be entered via a high AoA tumble from the very thin air of high altitude, the stall warning audio alert quickly cut out at a speed well below the 1g level stall speed. This is probably due to the practical limitations of the designed operating range for the AoA vane's deflection whilst riding out there in the relative airflow. No Airbus designer had ever entertained the proposition of being able to operate at a maintained >40 degrees AoA. *In addition to the nose-high low IAS stall entry, the aircraft had auto-trimmed its THS (trimmable horizontal stabilizer) into a fully back-trimmed/nose-high position during the inadvertent climb from cruise altitude. This happened soon after the autopilot disconnected due to iced-up pitots/ airspeed read-out loss and the pilot allowing/causing the nose to pitch-up by applying TOGA power. But the pilots would've been quite unaware that this auto-trimming was happening during that zoom-climb. Post stall-entry, in the ensuing high-rate descent, this back-trimmed configuration had the deadly effect of keeping the nose attitude nose-high and thus sustaining a stabilized stall (with the additionally assisting pitch-up moment of the wing-mounted/underslung engines at high power). High nose attitude (maintained via elevator authority) plus full THS backtrim and high power is a certain formula for deep-stall entry and stabilization - with a very high rate of descent.

Thus the aircraft began its steep descent embedded in its deep-stall regime and the only hope was that the pilot(s) would ultimately realize this and use stick-fwd elevator authority to lower the nose to unstall. However every time they tentatively initiated this, the stall warning system/AoA vane would traverse back into its operating range and give them a resounding stall alarm (this proving to be a sufficient deterrent to continue attempting what would have been an otherwise natural and instinctive recovery action). In an ideal situation, the stall alerting audio would continue to operate right down to zero actual airspeed – but it didn’t and thus it proved to be an insurmountable psychological obstacle to any affirmative corrective action (i.e. it just confused the hell out of the pilot whenever he tried a nose-down input. Why? Because its low side trigger alert threshold was so illogical and unfamiliar - and they had no meaningful speed display to resolve the conundrum). Adding TOGA power as a response to the surprise Autopilot disconnect and loss of airspeed was also undeniably causative, yet quite instinctive. It also certainly didn’t help that the sidesticks are pretty much out of view of the other pilot, so it was never clearly and visually annunciated to the other two pilots whether (or not) inappropriate manual inputs were being made by the PF. That sidelined Airbus pecadillo of "unseen control input" is yet another hitherto unencountered and unspoken hazard of automation. Automation surprise still has plenty up its ample sleeves.

Additionally, of course, the deep-stall is uncharacteristically without any of the buffeting caused by a normal aerodynamic stall’s flow breakdown, over and aft of the wings, turbulently impacting the tailplane....and thus defining the stalled condition. So the ride down to the ocean surface would’ve been eerily as smooth as silk and quite unlike any stall event that the pilots had ever experienced - i.e. another vital stall cue taken away. So from a design and training deficiency viewpoint, the enigmatic end result - without stick-shaker, airspeed read-out, stick-pusher, continuous stall warning or recognizable buffet cues - was a total sucker-bait scenario. It’s understandable therefore that a solution within the time and height available proved fatally elusive. It was all simply “beyond their experience”.

I'm not certain, but I think I recall an Airbus statement to the effect that the deep-stall characteristics of its aircraft were never tested. If that's true then the lawyers will soon be all over that - and the fact that the pilots were out of their depth due to never having been trained to cope or even exposed to the theory. In fact manual flight at cruise height in a degraded control law was an alien circumstance and never practised - nor entertained as a challenge. So why is an aircraft much more sensitive to minor pitch excursions at high altitude? Think high TAS. Two degrees of pitch change at 200 knots IAS at low altitude might generate a 1000fpm climb. However at around 40Kft that minor pitch excursion's effect will be at least doubled (as the TAS is twice as high). Pitch control at height is therefore deemed to be "skittish" - but near the aircraft's ceiling, it's also critical.

And of course, hearkening back to the origins of this accident, it’s apparent that the Thales pitot-tube heating was never capable of coping with the impact of actual ice particles (of which Cirrostratus/Cirro-Cu cloud is comprised). The Thales Pitot heater could stop water from freezing on contact but didn't have the heating capacity to stop ice particles impacting and agglutinating. The pitot heaters were being overpowered by the different characteristics of ice particle impact. No-one at BEA, DGAC or AirFrance (or Thales) ever awoke to that or factored it into the concerns that arose from an ever mounting score of prior such incidents. Risk appreciation, management and control would appear to be still in its infancy. We're still learning our 3 R's at the hard school of knocks.... that vital Risk Recognition and Rectification recipe for disaster avoidance.

Stpo

7th Jul 2012, 09:19

Apart from poor piloting what strikes me most is that the pitots are certified in operating conditions that are not reprentative for high altitude cruising. A giant hole in the swiss cheese IMHO.

see page 204 in the Bea report.
No news since it was already in the interim report.

Gretchenfrage

7th Jul 2012, 10:28

Contacted:
If your answer is definitive, then it cuts through all the 'noise' and the acres of comment.
Seems that, again, the most basic of Aviation fundamentals was forgotten.

When things start to go wrong:
Rule number 1. Fly the aircraft.

boba306:
I was happening demo in sim A320 ,my learn about unreliable airspeed aka overspeed, which leads to Flight control normal law protections.
I cannot moved the sidestick even my partner beside, overspeed protection taken over controls to the nose pitch up and the sidestick stuck at aft position.

Sort of sums it up.

a) It seems at some point a certain aircraft no longer allows rule number 1 ......
b) It seems as well that some pilots are not adequately trained ......
c) and it seems that better training of them will sort out a) ......

:ugh:

SassyPilotsWife

7th Jul 2012, 12:00

"Dare I say those of us who were brought up on basic a/c with basic autopilots
(no autothrust or FMC or EFIS) were "hard wired" for manual flight. We may be a
bit rusty but it's no big deal if we have to hand fly. The modern generation of
pilots have not got this framework to fall back on when it's all falling apart"

And there you have it. Unfortunately, the situations and crashes will only worsen because the airlines won't hire " rusty" guys anymore. I have questioned for 2 years now why a certain airline that my husband had been applying at would not hire him because he was only 1 year past the age limit. Instead of hiring a pilot with over 15,000 hours at age 52, they would rather drop their minimum hour requirements and hire boys who operate computers at 28,000 ft.

Why ? Because the beancounters see it as more cost effective to run an airline with pilots who can offer more years of service, rather than pilots who KNOW how to fly the effin plane. What is the cost of safety these days? I'm sure AF will know that answer very soon :)

Every year, the airline industry is losing well trained and qualified pilots because bean counters in HR determine who gets hired. Not the Chief Pilot, not the TRI , TRE etc. The younger pilots of today don't have the opportunity to learn to fly. They are NOT trained how to manually fly and how to challenge the dynamics of airspeed vs altitude. They aren't taught how to keep a heavy piece of metal stable and horizontal when something goes wrong. Especially when the computer goes haywire.

Not all now! But Too many in the hiring pool are kids who bought their type rating, never had the opportunity to gain hours on a/c without computers, never had to work up to the majors. And some, well a few have blatantly lied on their log books or falsified docs.

I told my " Rusty" today that while I'm sure he would enjoy flying a newer, shinier, smaller ("Rusty" flies a 747 classic baby) I wouldn't want him anywhere else than what he was about to take off in and I could not be more proud of him. Because my man KNOWS how to fly. :D If I had the choice to non rev in 1st or biz class on a 777 or non rev sitting on top of a pallet inside his 747, I would ride with him every time. I know I'm safer. :ok:

Now if I could just teach him how to cook. :ugh:

aerobat77

7th Jul 2012, 12:08

I keep asking why these guys did not have a metal default in their heads for a normal pitch & power combination incase of a failure in the aircraft systems?

since in fl350 margins between low and highspeedstall are narrowing , since the n1 speed of the engine does not say much about power output in a high altitude flight
, since the airbus gives limited visual backup of the power output vs thrust lever position , since pitch and power needed for a level unacclerated flight on such a widebody is much dependant on density altitude, weight and speed -you will not do much with basic pitch and power settings without speed reference in the middle of the night on a thunderstorm area and severe turbulence, especially when you are shocked that systems start to quit and you have not a real idea how to deal it.

its for sure something different than basic ppl training in a single piston and vmc .

airbus designed its aircraft not be touched manually in cruise flight- things like pitch and power are not of interest to the pilot since its all computer controlled. in my opinion - when airbus designs its aircraft to give ( in cruise) maximum control to the computer and minimum control to the pilot the systems should work in every case instead of quitting due to ice crystals and leaving the pilot with a manual recovery where his experience in manual flying and stall prevention on a a330 in FL350 is close to nothing due to the airbus design .

fsfaludi

7th Jul 2012, 12:48

There are only two possibilities for why an altimeter would be relentlessly unwinding down (to sea level in this case). Your nose is pointed too far down or too far up (you are in a STALL!)

Unfortunately these guys were so massively confused by the automation that was "half working and half not", that they were reduced to the equivalent of a bowel of Jello. This theoretically could happen to ANYONE BTW, who is in disbelief/denial about what is going on around them.

As a low time pilot I lost my A/S indication because | neglected to turn my pitot heat on in what became IMC conditions. I was familiar enough with this particular light piston twin to sort out an approach in fairly solid IMC conditions with power and attitude alone. This was before GPS so I asked the radar controller to monitor my ground speed. I was/am a flight instructor so it was just applying what I taught.

Later in life for a while I was an instructor at Flight Safety on the Challenger jet but was still not too comfortable with it's FMS because I hadn't been properly trained to use it; so given a night circling approach scenario in the Sim. I chose NOT to use it and hand fly the approach instead. It certainly felt a lot more stressful than watching someone who DID know how to use the FMS properly for much of the approach (they screwed up the landing though), but at least I recognized my limitations and felt more "connected" during the approach doing it in a way I knew and understood (hand flying).

So I guess my point is you MUST know all the intricacies of the automation OR... somehow keep your cool and be prepared to manually do the flying if necessary.

iceman50

7th Jul 2012, 12:55

aerobat77

airbus designed its aircraft not be touched manually in cruise flight- things like pitch and power are not of interest to the pilot since its all computer controlled. in my opinion

Rubbish, do you or have you ever "flown: a real airbus?

Double Back

7th Jul 2012, 13:25

I am another retired heavvies driver (B744) who is at a loss why an experienced crew (almost all had lots of GA/gliding experience, so a good understanding of basics like stall/stick&rudder flying) looses it almost right from the beginning.

The next moment (I mentioned it before) the PF gets more or less frozen in his actions, a well trained and rehearsed crew concept breaks down in a snap.
Basic instinct takes over, like pulling the stick to its aft limit, to get away from approaching death. How many of us had this horrible experience and lives to tell? Bet that almost all crashes, with aircrews in their last seconds, will have the stick or Yoke pulled to its aft limit. Stalled or not.

As a result of his actions the plane did not at all react to his input, worse, the thing just would not go up and kept descending, not even with full power and a high nose UP. That further made him loose the situation.

I have, like no one else, a single answer to this crash, it will take for years to study it. The industry as a whole will have to learn from this so that all those who died did not in vain.

For the choice of the routeing: I have flown the stretch many times. I remember only seeing once or twice some dim lights of Ferdinando de Noronha, a small island there. For the rest it is pitch black outside. No lighted fishery fleets(like the Indian Ocean), or even better lighted oil platforms like in the Gulf of Mexico. This would never had happened over lighted areas like Europe, although I did not read IF they got ever into (nightly) VMC conditions. But if so, with a sinkrate of 7000'/min, it was only seconds before impact. The agony suffered in the back by all who realised more or less that the situation was getting out of hand must have been terrible.

The ITF (ITCZ) itself is not so much a big deal, thousands of crews are passing it every day, be it east of Brasil, or right over Africa, or throughout Asia.
In the planning phase it is difficult to find the "best" route, as CB activity develops, changes and dies within hours. For crews a challenge to find routes through passes. That indeed needs experience up front, there are sooo many variables, there is no golden rule how to pass or cross a system like that.
Circumnavigating comparable systems when over US territory is much easier for pilots, as the ATC system is way more effective in rerouteing traffic, away from cells or reported turbulent areas. Once I got rerouted as early as with our landfall over NY, due to a quick developing system on our planned route to MEX, hours later.

On transatlantic routes the pilots are much more on their own in figuring out to avoid bad areas.
Maybe less experienced crews tend to remain too close to the "magnetic" magenta line, I went off track 150 miles if needed to.
But now I enter the balcony level of Statler and Waldorf. I for one have never had to deal with situations like this or Sully's and I am glad I never had to proof how I would have reacted.

TTex600

7th Jul 2012, 14:21

I'll take you task on this Solyent. From the cognitive perspective you have considered a limited set of factors....but assuming your argument holds for the cognitive circumstances prevailing in the cockpit, the accident still does not make sense. The cognitive environment informing the aircraft and avionics designers - even after all the accidents and incidents we have had over many years - leaves much to be desired. Bad HMI engineering, poor scenario modeling, poor checks on corner cases/bounday cases, poor design processes and inadequate checks (as well as poor pitot design) have led to a situation where, possibly, a set of cognitive elements have conspired to deliver this outcome. Bad, bad design and the usual chain of events at work.

Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? They most certainly are. They are charged as professional pilots to mantain complete discipline and situational awareness in the cockpit at all times. No distractions, no excuses. They accepted the rank, pay and responsibility. They failed. Bad circumstances no doubt. Sensory confusion, loss of external references....never fun. But their responsibility through and through).

As a current, qualified narrow body Airbii Captain, I can say this: One doesn't know what one doesn't know.

Before this accident, and this online forum, I had only the computer based training given by my airline and the Airbus AOMVol one from which to draw from for tech info. I passed a type rating course and checked out on the line with what I now know to be a very minimal understanding of how the Airbus is controlled.

Fortunately, in six years in the Airbus I've never experienced anything close to what happened to AF447. Had I have had the experience, I think I would have relied on twenty years of experience flying cable controlled, steam gauge turbo jets and discovered a way to overcome the problems. However, when you take two guys with nothing but Airbus cruise experience, who I must assume were trained the same as most of the rest of us, and you place them in a surprise situation in which their airplane presents them with conflicting/confusing information......I think you'll end up with AF447 more times than not.

If it makes you feel good blaming the pilots, go ahead, I won't change your mind. But if you consider ever flying as SLF, you might want to hope that this accident changes at least: training, procedures, and CRM procedures for Airbus control and "surprise" events.

deSitter

7th Jul 2012, 14:32

Well there was a quite gibbous Moon that night, should have provided plenty of visual stimulus with the lights dimmed.

soylentgreen

7th Jul 2012, 15:18

OrvilleW wrote:

Solyent wrote...

"So, from a cognitive perspective, the accident makes sense. A big part of this was the human-machine interface, which did an extremely poor job of letting the pilots know what was actually going on.

Could they have done better? Of course. Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? Far from it. "

I'll take you task on this Solyent. From the cognitive perspective you have considered a limited set of factors....but assuming your argument holds for the cognitive circumstances prevailing in the cockpit, the accident still does not make sense. The cognitive environment informing the aircraft and avionics designers - even after all the accidents and incidents we have had over many years - leaves much to be desired. Bad HMI engineering, poor scenario modeling, poor checks on corner cases/bounday cases, poor design processes and inadequate checks (as well as poor pitot design) have led to a situation where, possibly, a set of cognitive elements have conspired to deliver this outcome. Bad, bad design and the usual chain of events at work.

Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? They most certainly are. They are charged as professional pilots to mantain complete discipline and situational awareness in the cockpit at all times. No distractions, no excuses. They accepted the rank, pay and responsibility. They failed. Bad circumstances no doubt. Sensory confusion, loss of external references....never fun. But their responsibility through and through).

OrvilleW - Thanks for your followup. It seems to me in the case where even a small % of adequately trained pilots can not handle the situation, then it rather pointless to blame them.

Silly example #1: both wings fall off. 100% of pilots crash? Would you blame the pilots in this situation?

Silly example #2 : a computer bug inverts the airspeed indicator and altimeter. Let's say 85% of pilots crash in this case. Do you blame the pilots for being "non professionals"?

I have no idea what the % has to be before we consider blaming the pilots vs. blaming the system. Does it matter?

EIDWSkypilot

7th Jul 2012, 15:26

TTex600 Quote

If it makes you feel good blaming the pilots, go ahead, I won't change your mind. But if you consider ever flying as SLF, you might want to hope that this accident changes at least: training, procedures, and CRM procedures for Airbus control and "surprise" events.

Too true...

Pilot Training focussed upon relying upon automation and automation designed upon handing back control to Pilot when confused is proving to have created 'surprise' events more than just here.

As has been said elsewhere in the thread, the aircraft technology is being pushed to the limit to achieve economical flight, however, are we reaching levels where if we are not going to put an engineer/programmer back on the flight deck or have the facility of one available in real time on the ground monitoring controls, can line training ever keep pace with emerging tech?

Had the Quantas A380 'only' had 2 pilots when it lost an engine et al, would we discussing a different outcome?

CafeClub

7th Jul 2012, 15:45

Thanks for the responses re my question above about the Airbus philosophy behind having no cross-connection on the sidesticks.

I can appreciate that having control surface forces reflected in the sidesticks would be complex and expensive but that wasn't what i was asking. My question was simpler - given the sidesticks are out of view of the "other" pilot, what is the problem with having a physical indication of movement being applied to the other sidestick?

If i am used to having a free-moving sidestick but can feel resistance when the other sidestick is being used, it would register in my brain somewhere.. Yes?

Sorry for the thread creep, but it does seem odd that such a crucial control component can be "misappropriated" so easily.

Capn Bloggs

7th Jul 2012, 15:59

The 777 is full fly by wire and it's two control columns are "interconnected", are they not?

If designers can make a complete aeroplane fly by wire through joysticks, it wouldn't be a huge effort to make the sidesticks follow each other. Where there's a will, there's a way. In Airbus' case, no will, no way.

My question was simpler - given the sidesticks are out of view of the "other" pilot, what is the problem with having a physical indication of movement being applied to the other sidestick?
In the AF447 case, the crew were apparently so confused that I doubt whether an indicator on the PFD or elsewhere of what the sidesticks were doing would have been any help. The PNF probably wouldn't have been able to register it.

SassyPilotsWife

7th Jul 2012, 16:03

Hey Skypilot,

You brought up something interesting :

" aircraft technology is being pushed to the limit to achieve economical flight,
however, are we reaching levels where if we are not going to put an
engineer/programmer back on the flight deck or have the facility of one
available in real time on the ground monitoring controls, can line training ever
keep pace with emerging tech?"

Has aircraft technology now surpassed what the human mind is capable of controlling ? Are we so technologically advanced with these a/c that no matter how great a pilot is, there is not enough training, human thinking capacity or human development to operate these a/c without properly working computers ?

Without being a pilot, I just wonder how much advancement and/or dropping an engineer could be affecting these situations ? It is horrible to see the pilots get blamed for something that no pilot, not even the sharpest, with the most experience couldnt rectify the situations they are in nowdays.

Is aviation actually safer now than it was 25 years ago ? Are there more accidents now with newer a/c than the older ones ? Will we see it become more or less dangerous with the 380 now, the 350 coming the and the 787?

TTex600

7th Jul 2012, 16:12

I apologize to some for being obvious, but I see a number of questions being asked that have been discussed ad-nauseum in the NINE sequential 447 threads over in the tech log, so for exhaustive answers for questions such as, "why are the side sticks not interconnect, or why do they not give feedback?" I suggest that one spend a day or two reading at least the last three tech log threads. sorry for the run on sentence.

Carjockey

7th Jul 2012, 16:33

@Nigel on Draft
Quote: Is their no backup system available in the event of pitot tube failure?
Well, yes there is. The other 2 pitot tubes. Trouble is when there is a common problem affecting mroe than 1.
So that means that there is no effective backup system, correct?

Quote:
This situation began because the AP disconnected, and the situation degraded because the pilots did not understand what was going on.

The AP disconnected precisely because 'that automated systems should be designed as an adjunct to a pilots flying skill and training' occurred - the AP was not able to determine what was happening to a sufficient degree - the system designers / regulators decided that was a point to hand it back to the crew.That was my point, there are obviously major faults in the system design.

Now as you say 'and the situation degraded because the pilots did not understand what was going on' and that is an issue for training / skill / practice. Of course it is! But how effective was the training / skill / practice in this case?

Please do me a favour and tell me who you are and which airline you fly for, because I do not want to be on any flight under your control.

SassyPilotsWife

7th Jul 2012, 16:52

Go to the tech logs ? No way.. we're too cool to hang out with " those" guys. And besides, you appear much smarter. Especially in this thread :)

Carry on my friend :) :D

dlcmdrx

7th Jul 2012, 16:58

those tech posts are full of engineers embarring the discussion and blaming entirely the crew from the begining. The bias is total and reading those posts is an exercise of pilot sadomasochism.

Cafeclub, for that, Airbus would have to change its philosophy and stop selling the pilot as the only liability in the cockpit, try to work with them, not around them, and not think constantly about cutting costs. One of my dad friends asked one of the airbus engineers why they didnt make the thrust levers move and his answer was along the lines of " for my balls it doesnt move " so you can see the kind of attitude and respect they have for pilots.

You probably dont know, but there was an accident of an airbus 320 in bilbao years ago, the protections in the plane decided against the pilots and crashed the airplane. They blamed the crew exactly the same way they did here airbus and his acolits in the tech thread. In the end the judge gave the reason to the pilots/Iberia and airbus had to tweak the aoa protection system across all their fleets and models.

In quito a 340 ran off the rwy after spoilers, reversers and brakes didnt work i know what the captain says off the record, and that was a manipulation for him to take the entire blame after airbus saying a 1000 fpm touchdown created a 3.1 g structural damage hit.

Bull**** all over the place but truth is they are simply cheap with a philosophy that wants to pull the pilot out of the equation.

In any case what is sad is not that exists people like that, but there are pilots ( supposedly ) in these forums that are so happy with them and applaud them with the lame excuse of safety and passenger interests.

If you go to the tech forum in the last thread you can see the ambient, when the report was released with the feeling it putsthe blame on the crew, they start talking about drones and a future without pilots.

It will be funny if someday engineers decide to take their jobs away, see how they feel because someone thinks a machine can do their jobs better

TTex600

7th Jul 2012, 17:19

those tech posts are full of engineers embarring the discussion and blaming entirely the crew from the begining. The bias is total and reading those posts is an exercise of pilot sadomasochism.

So, go there and offer the pilots point of view. I do and when I err on a tech point they call me out, when I offer my experience in the Airbus they have nothing to counter because ultimately they know that my real experience overrides their sim/computer life.

In defense of the tech log, the bias is not total. Many points are offered and discussed. Much of what is discussed is of no interest to me, but the level of disagreement betweenst the participants is much higher than you appear to believe.

Matter of fact, I sort of enjoy sitting back with popcorn when some of those engineers get into a pssssing contest about this accident. I think some of them might actually take the gloves off if given the chance.:ooh:

SassyPilotsWife

7th Jul 2012, 17:19

Silly example #1: both wings fall off. 100% of pilots crash? Would you blame the pilots in this situation?

Yes Doc ! Because Captain Kirk tried to warn the flight deck that the gremlin was out there !!! :p

TTex600

7th Jul 2012, 17:23

Ttex.. WHAT ?
Go to the tech logs ? No way.. we're too cool to hang out with " those" guys. And besides, you appear much smarter. Especially in this thread

Carry on my friend

Agreed. The level of knowledge over there is embarrassing for dumbs#$%^&^%t's like me. It's sometimes easy to make like you're intelligent when speaking to other pilots, with the engineers......not so easy. :eek:

SassyPilotsWife

7th Jul 2012, 18:02

You mean easy for them to be intelligent when speaking from the ground. Lets see how they do 38k in the air, in the middle of the night, with 300 lives in their hands.

Easy for them to educate and shed light on a situation from 1,000 ft above sea level, inside 4 walls on the ground, behind a desk and the only warning sounds they are dealing with is coming from the wife telling them to get off the damn computer and help with the kids or set the table cause it's almost dinner time.

vovachan

7th Jul 2012, 18:02

So let me get this straight:
this is a plane which when confronted with a speed discrepancy

- turns off the autopilot even when there is no need to do so
- turns off stall protections even though there is no need to do so
- sounds the stall alert when you point the nose down and makes it stop when you pull up
- bombards pilots with confusing messages except the one that matters
- allows both pilots to steer it in opposite directions

This is one craaaaaazy plane!

hetfield

7th Jul 2012, 18:07

@vovachan

Spot on:ok:

Very well said!

Organfreak

7th Jul 2012, 18:10

As a non-flyin' personage who's fascinated by transport flying, I hafta say....I've read .every. .damned. .post. in the Tech Logs, albeit sometimes with eyes crossed, and I'm sure I've learned much more from the pilots (the articulate ones such as Ttex) about the art and science of flying than I have from those engineers, wannabe engineers, self-styled engineers, and speculative armchair fliers who live in grassy valleys.

No matter what the education and background of anyone posting, the ones I pay attention to are the ones who are able to look at divergent POVs without becoming polarized, who have, above all, common sense, and who appreciate the staggering complexity of the causes of an accident like this one.

SassyPilotsWife

7th Jul 2012, 18:37

Organfreak,

First, your name reminds me of those body eating, face munching freaks in the US right now but I'm sure you concentrate more on blood supply vs skin and tissue since you're an organ freak LOL. j/k :)

If you have indeed read every. single. post. on the tech forums, you must be what, 99 years old now ? :E

I agree with you, trust the ones who make decisions and calculated movements based on " cloud smarts" and offer their expertise from flying experience rather than the IKEA table others sit at as they type.

acer231

7th Jul 2012, 18:43

A plane is a plane is a plane is a plane. They all follow basic aerodynamic principals. A very simple technique that was taught from the early days of aviation for unusual attitude recovery is (1) Center the needle, (2) center the ball, (3) check the airspeed. BASIC AIRMANSHIP would have probably saved the day (night). I don't know if the A330 has the basic turn slip indicator or not, or if the new gen pilots are taught to use it.

SassyPilotsWife

7th Jul 2012, 18:58

Yes, if you have control of the control surfaces and engine power, but what if 'The Computer" is in charge and won't let you ?

Of course, I'm not a pilot, you are and I respect your reply.. so my statement is really a question to you...

SLFinAZ

7th Jul 2012, 19:15

dlcm...

To place blame anywhere but on the pilots is fundamentally wrong. This is not an "AB" issue it's a question of basic airmanship. The PF took a perfectly functional airframe with a known manageable issue and fubar'd it so badly it was probably unrecoverable by the time the captain returned.

All the dribble about course change, rest etc is just that. The failure to fly "pitch & power" when confronted with unreliable airspeed is inexcusable for any licensed pilot...let alone one with an ATPL.

hetfield

7th Jul 2012, 19:16

Well ok465

What do you think of this (WIKI)

The type's first fatal accident occurred on 30 June 1994 near Toulouse on a test flight (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_A330_test_flight_crash) when an Airbus-owned A330-300 crashed while simulating an engine failure on climbout, killing all seven on board.[39] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A330#cite_note-N.26W_pp.86-87-38) Airbus subsequently advised A330 operators to disconnect the autopilot and limit pitch attitude in the event of an engine failure at low speed.Even AB test pilots didn't have a clear picture!!!!!!!!!!!!

TampaSLF

7th Jul 2012, 19:23

Good point on the pilots who don't grasp flight as well as some of the SLF, much less the engineers. Would have been scary in that 330 having a hunch what was happening.

The CVR transcript left me dumbfounded at some statements, but the "I have had the stick back the whole time" by PF was something I thought no pilot could be capable of uttering after bleeding 5 miles of altitude.
Sadness.

Organfreak

7th Jul 2012, 19:37

Dear Sassy--
Organfreak,
First, your name reminds me of those body eating, face munching freaks in the US right now but I'm sure you concentrate more on blood supply vs skin and tissue since you're an organ freak LOL. j/k

I'm a jazz organ player (Hammond B-3), repair man, and, if I may say so, world-renowned teacher of such. 'Organfreak' is a handle given to me years ago by a radio DJ - that I'm now stuck with.

If you have indeed read every. single. post. on the tech forums, you must be what, 99 years old now ?

Ha ha, why you, I oughta...I'm only 62 but I lave lots of free time, being retired from a career as a pro stage lighting designer. (Burnout case.)

NOW: As to SLFinAZ:
To place blame anywhere but on the pilots is fundamentally wrong. This is not an "AB" issue it's a question of basic airmanship. The PF took a perfectly functional airframe with a known manageable issue and fubar'd it so badly it was probably unrecoverable by the time the captain returned.

I'm sorry sir/madame, but I can seldom remember being so annoyed by any dumbass post in these forums. I can only assume that your breath-takingly simplistic opinion is not based on reading the threads very thoroughly, and/or, not reading the report. It must be really easy for you, living in such a black-and-white world. :*

I may apologize sometime later, or not.

Joetom

7th Jul 2012, 19:57

I have ready many posts on this event.

I will mention a few points of interest, just my pick up though.

1. The crew wanted to get to France.

2. The crew did not want to crash

3. The crew failed to avoid the crash.

4. It took a long long long time to decide to get the recorders.

5. Plenty of previous problems with those pitot probes.

6. Airlines like autopilot on for most flight time.

7. Pilots get little hand flying time in this event zone.

8. So many experts after the event.

9. Shame experts are not more pro-active before event/events.

10. Pilot training/awareness increased after this event, why needed ?

F.T.M.

It's like so many things in life, just Follow The Money, save time/money/fuel and increase profits period.

SassyPilotsWife

7th Jul 2012, 20:12

LOL if a SLF is worried about flying with a pilot based on ANYTHING posted on Pprune, they should take a Xanax before their next flight.

Puhhlease..OK and SLFinAZ don't try to exaggerate your knowledge when it has been taught to you in the hangar vs real flight time and emergency situation. Big difference between techs, ground crew etc. who when in bad weather get the luxury of a flashing blue light even get to leave the apron and/or hangar and are offered the luxury of safety, than the pilots who are experiencing a catastrophic situation in the middle of it.

Tampa.. you are correct. However, the main point of this thread (perhaps you haven't been reading, is about the pilot who knows how to fly and who knows how to operate a computer. Big difference.) See Colgan Air Crash.. If you're still dumbfounded, please.. take the time to read all of this thread. And..

" what if technology is now overbearing what the human mind can do and tolerate? "

jcjeant

7th Jul 2012, 20:24

That been said hundreds of times in this forum and also in the successive reports of the BEA
The accident took place in three phases
Phase 1
Loss of speed indication (trigger for everything that follows)
Phase 2
Pilot in manual controls and the next minute (major phase that causes phase 3)
Phase 3
Inevitable consequence of phase 2
Phase 2 is the largest in the course of the accident
The BEA report makes recommendations
When examined well .. some seem to be inspired by the fact that the pilots did not show a skill required for this type of event (in Phase 2)
It should not .. recommendations that are based on events of a incompetence .. and whose purpose would be to replace the pilot with even more automation of all kinds
This would still reduce the required skills .. and so have an adverse effect to the safety of flights

Joetom

7th Jul 2012, 22:00

7. Pilots get little hand flying time in this event zone.

care to elaborate ?
.

Pilots tend to hand fly take off and landings, little in climb/decent and even less in cruise.

Just follow the monie.

To have all crews well trained to cope with events that these crew found on the sad flight was not worth it, history shows this.

I would guess on another day/night with the same operating crew, the result may/could of been better.

SLFinAZ

7th Jul 2012, 23:09

I sincerely hope your not sitting in the left hand seat of anything bigger then a 152. The issues here are absolutely that simplistic. The type specific issues were well documented and current. For a professional pilot to totally ignore not only training and procedure but common sense is beyond explanation. There are no complex holes in the swiss cheese here...simply a known malfunction with a safe, tested procedure that should be second nature to a commercial pilot... stabilize attitude and thrust appropriately and fly the plane while the PM sorts the issues out over time.

Exactly what dozens off other crews did with exactly the same issue.

sevenstrokeroll

7th Jul 2012, 23:50

30 years ago I first hand flew a jet (sabreliner). On one trip, we went to max alt, FL450. Hand flew. IT WAS HARD TO DO. One had to dampen out the controls to very, very small movements.

I made it my business to learn to hand fly at max altitude any subsequent plane I ever flew. You NEVER know when YOU have to fly.

Later on in my career, I noticed no one took advanatge of getting the feel of a plane at altitude when I offered it to them.

and when the autopilot quit on them, they had their hands full.

and the planes I flew weren't fancy computerized planes like the AB.

SO, it is really time to learn to fly a plane in all regiemes of flight

svhar

8th Jul 2012, 00:44

Let's wait for BOAC's final analysis. He knows it all.

bubbers44

8th Jul 2012, 00:55

I flew the same way and handflew when it wasn't required because I wanted tol.

Dengue_Dude

8th Jul 2012, 01:03

Without reading every post, has anyone mentioned the IN/GPS groundspeed readout thats usually on constant display in each MFD?

With serviceable attitude indicators and GS you could hazard a guess at whether you were stalled or not.

mm43

8th Jul 2012, 02:15

Dengue Dude;

This post to the AF447 - wreckage found (http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/447730-af447-wreckage-found-33.html#post6478410) thread will confirm what you are asking.

However, these guys had problems with their scan, and in not believing what they were seeing on the PDF, then what chance of that on the MFD?

Capn Bloggs

8th Jul 2012, 02:49

BASIC AIRMANSHIP would have probably saved the day (night).
Interesting concept, Airmanship. But what exactly is it, and how do you get it? When the answer is known/worked out, you will understand why the pilots of AF447 were not up to the task.

fitliker

8th Jul 2012, 05:45

Was their weather avoidance equipment in good working order ?
This is the second CB related accident for this operator .The Pilots took a servicable aircraft into wx that was beyond the capability of the aircraft.
Maybe the Radar systems of these aircraft needs to be looked at as well as no sane pilot in a civilian aircraft would willingly and knowingly fly into a CB with tops of 0ver fifty thousand feet.
As the USAF training video used to say "There is no reason to take ANY aircraft into a CB"
There are many causes to most accidents,hopefully someone will be asking about this companies weather avoidance strategies.And whether their radar was working and if the pilots willingly and knowingly attempted to take an aircraft into an enviroment beyond the aircrafts abilities.

Capn Bloggs

8th Jul 2012, 05:54

There is no evidence to support the hypothesis that they flew into a CB. Certainly, the turbulence that was registered on the FDR showed they didn't!

GliderGuy88

8th Jul 2012, 07:06

Hi all, long time lurker, first time poster here. I find this thread very intriguing. What I find most intriguing of all is that some contributors feel that it is neccessary to apportion blame in a disproportionate manner.

Quote:
"To place blame anywhere but on the pilots is fundamentally wrong".

To place blame squarely on the shoulders of the pilots is also fundamentally wrong. All accidents, be they industrial, aviation or even road traffic accidents; rarely, if ever, have a single outright cause. There are almost always several causal factors involved. Said causal factors are already being explored so I will not delve into them in detail here.

Yes, the pitot issues were known and documented. Yes, pilots are trained to deal with unreliable airspeed readings, but past incidents have shown that when pilots are faced with unreliable instrument readings combined with constant, paradoxical, and conflicting warnings, overwhelming confusion can ensue. It can happen to any pilot, no matter how well trained or proficient they may be.

As a glider pilot, I only fly VFR. I have been exposed to unreliable/no airspeed readings as part of my training syllabus, and it is a very trying experience, even with outside visual references and no alarms to divert your attention. The point I wish to make is that I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like to be faced with the situation that the pilots of AF447 experienced that night. Thus I cannot pass judgement on the actions of the crew, and neither can anyone who has not experienced a similar mind boggling, overwhelming scenario.

In addition, I feel that the blame/punishnent culture that is seemingly so prevalent these days (in all walks of life) does absolutely nothing to further the cause of improving aviation safety. If anything, it acts as a monumental hindrance, in such a culture people are less likely to come forward and admit to errors or shortcomings. As a result, such issues remain unknown and thus cannot be rectified, and will likely resurface in future with potentially disastrous consequences....

The aviation community needs to study this tragedy in depth, and learn from it, rather than waste precious time on the narrow minded, counter productive pursuit of worrying about who is to blame.

qquantum

8th Jul 2012, 07:56

SLFinAZ – you sound like the NTSB.

As expected, the BEA Report is comprised of carefully crafted smoke — placing blame on the pilots of course — and distraction from the real issues of airplane design and regulator oversight failure that truly were the causes of the accident:

Pressure and Confusion
A review of the CVR transcript (Final Report, Appendix 1) plainly indicates the confusion in the cockpit that resulted from the total loss of airspeed indication, which occurred at a time when they were attempting to avoid the worst of the weather (icing, lightning, and severe turbulence).

In the darkness, in addition to the pressure of weather avoidance, the following compounded pilot confusion:
1. The loss of airspeed information caused a change in the FCS mode at 2h10min06; the fact was indeed mentioned [thanks InfrequentFlyer] at 2h10min22.1, but its import with respect to 2. (below) was lost in the confusion that followed.
2. The FCS Mode change resulted in loss of the envelope speed and angle of attack (AOA) limits — no stall protection — no overspeed protection — no bank angle/pitch angle protection — again the pilots seemed not to notice, as they did not discuss it;
3. The inexperienced FO, who was flying, made a radical pitch control input (full aft stick), which was not noticed by the more experienced FO, as he could not see the opposite control stick in the darkened cockpit (the A330 has independent control sticks, and so the normal means by which one pilot will instantly know what the other pilot is doing with his control stick – by the position of his own stick – was not available);
4. This drastic control input caused the trimmable horizontal stabilizer (THS) to automatically apply full nose‐up trim — a condition that while dangerous, in that it seriously compromised any attempt at recovery, was not detected by the pilots, as they made no mention of it;
5. Examination of the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) data, (Final Report, Appendix 3) indicates that, incredibly, the stall warning ceased (as designed) while the airplane was still in a deeply stalled condition, then reappeared when recovery action was attempted, adding even more confusion to the situation.
From the above it is readily apparent that the pilots were unable to fully recognize and understand the danger of the aircraft configuration and the continued existence and extent of the stall condition — in other words, the aircraft state was not presented to them in a way that would enable them to take proper recovery action.

Conditions of high altitude stall and reversion to Alternate Mode have been very rarely encountered in airline operations, leading to a degree of complacency with respect to knowledge and practice of operation in the Alternate Mode of the FCS, and an unjustified feeling of trust that the airplane “will take care of the situation”. The following flaws in the design of the A‐330 FCS fatally betrayed this trust:

Design Flaws
1. Failure of the FCS to remain in the Normal mode (with envelope protection) resulting from the loss of a single parameter (pitot‐static airspeed). While failure to design for this event may have been excusable during the initial design phase, the simultaneous loss of all pitot‐static systems had occurred in normal airline operations a number of times, and should have provided the impetus for a review of the design — or at least a warning to airline crews of the possibility of such an occurrence, along with appropriate remedial training for such an encounter. On AF‐447, the temporary loss of pitot‐static information caused the FCS to revert to Alternate mode – without envelope protection, at a time when the pilot most needed it – with no indication of airspeed.
If the design had incorporated synthesized speed – from GPS, IRS – which would be accurate enough – the pilot would not have been placed into such dire straits, and with appropriate cautions, would have been able to contend with the problem (in the Normal FCS mode); needless to say, the presentation of angle of attack (AOA) information (now planned for inclusion on Airbus airplanes) would have eased the burden on the pilot.

2. The design of the primary flight control controller such that it is possible for a pilot to make a sustained incorrect or dangerous input, without the awareness of the other crewmember(s).
On AF‐447, the junior co‐pilot’s instinctive reaction to the confusing situation, of pulling the control stick to the maximum nose‐up position, was not detected (in the darkness of the cockpit) by the other two crewmembers until he verbally brought it to their attention at an altitude which was too low to enable a recovery, due to low energy and excessive descent rate.

It can be readily appreciated that an FCS control design in which both controllers move in unison at all times (as in Boeing, MacDonnell Douglas, and most other airplanes) would have enabled instant detection (tactile) by the senior pilot (along with the probability of a sharp rebuke) and subsequent recovery of the airplane. Note that when the original airliner sidestick controller was first designed, some twenty or more years ago, it was not technically feasible to design a parallel (active) sidestick controller, as a mechanical solution would pose major problems of friction and hysteresis; now, however, the required technology has been available for several years, and because tactile communication between pilots is of such vital importance, parallel control should become mandatory on all future sidestick designs.

3. The ability of the FCS to allow the Trimmable Horizontal Stabilizer (THS) to move to a configuration that renders the airplane essentially unrecoverable, without appropriate warning to the pilot.
On AF‐447, the THS moved to the full nose‐up trim position in response to the (incorrect) sustained nose‐up command by the junior FO on the control stick. No warning to the crew of this grossly abnormal stabilizer position was provided. Further, when AOA becomes greater than 30°, or Speed is less than 60kt, auto THS trim is turned off. The result was that the THS was set at full nose‐up trim at 32,000 feet (Final Report, Appendix 3, Page 6), and remained there until impact with the ocean. It can be reasoned therefore, that unless the pilot had detected and manually corrected the trim setting, the airplane could not have been recovered to normal flight with a power setting of other than minimal thrust.
In addition to AF447, a number of previous Airbus accidents have also been characterized by a movement of the THS to the full nose‐up position prior to a crash – Nagoya, Tao Yuan, Perpignan, etc. without the pilot being aware of the change in configuration. Manual trimming is only ever encountered by line pilots in the simulator, and then in a lesson in which a stabilizer mis‐trim is expected to occur. When asked how often they have used manual trim in normal operations, Airbus pilots reply “Never”.
There is a subset of THS settings associated with cruise flight; that the THS was allowed to move outside of this range without a strong warning to the pilot is a major flaw in the FCS design.

4. The FCS design which allows the primary stall‐warning sensor to be declared invalid (when it is still capable of providing a correct indication) based upon another parameter (speed), of questionable validity.
On AF‐447 the stall warning was turned off as a result of an airspeed error (invalid), even though the airplane was deeply stalled – giving the pilot the impression that the airplane was not in a stall. When the senior co‐pilot took control (although the junior FO did not relinquish it) and pushed forward on the stick in an attempt to recover, the stall warning again sounded – leading him to believe that his control input was not correct, thus causing him to release pressure on the stick to get rid of the stall warning. This design is absolutely inexcusable; there was no reason to believe that the AOA vanes became simultaneously unreliable, since matching IRS AOA was present on the FDR data.

In all, a "politically correct" report that omits analysis of significant factual information, and does not criticize either Airbus or the DGAC.

Member – ISASI

lear60fellow

8th Jul 2012, 09:07

There are hundreds of aviation accidents/incidents you may find on internet, but why on the Airbus is always to blame the crews? Looks like "Black Boxes" always get lost for a couple of weeks and then they come up with an extraordinary story to the public.

Is Airbus a state of the art piece of engineering? Yes it is, for the Engineers, but not for the pilots.

Are airlines pushing the limits hiring guys fresh from Flight school? Yes, they are, but also the engineers who design the aircrafts.

Something went wrong on that flight, I bet my :mad: they didn´t want to get killed, but crew inexperience + bad weather + technical problems is a molotov cocktail.

On the other hand all that computer design should be there to help the pilots not to distract them from basic airmanship, I have this problem with too many F/O, punching buttons is great but not on final 2 miles from airport, what I tell them? "Fly the ******* aircraft!!!!!!!"

Hand Flying: absolutely right, do it as much as you can, climbs and descend is a way to practice everyday.

wiggy

8th Jul 2012, 09:25

it is really time to learn to fly a plane in all regiemes of flight (sic)

Agree, but of course hand flying above FL245 is now illegal in (?above) many parts of the world.

has anyone mentioned the IN/GPS groundspeed readout thats usually on constant display in each MFD?

It has, as has the idea of better:solid state/hot wire ASI's - but wouldn't it have been even better to have provided the crew a full time visual display of the AOA? AFAIK it's not particularly useful in some portions of a typical heavy's flight envelope but personally it's something I think should now be mandatory...(and it certainly woud be an improvement on the new simulator "fad" of training crews to add/subtract flight path angle from pitch attitude to derive an AOA).

jcjeant

8th Jul 2012, 12:07

About the choice of the Captain for the crew change (and designation of the PF)

It's some additional stances in the CVR transcript (appendix N°1) of the final report that was not in the interim report N°3
One is about some words of the captain and Bonin just before the entrance of the other copilot in the flight deck (those words were already in some leaks published in the press ... but at time they were not fully credible)

So we read in the transcript: (page 17)

1 h 56 min 16
er who’s doing the
landing, is it you? well
right he’s going to take
my place

1 h 56 min 20
You’re a PL, aren’t
you ?
change in
background noise
1 h 56 min 21 yeah It is to remind that the crew who perform the flight Rio - Paris is the same that perfomed the flight Paris - Rio some days ago
Seem's to me that the question of the captain is legit
What seems odd to me is the time to ask ....
Is there no sense that the captain knows that consists of his crew and therefore he should have put this question before takeoff from Paris .. some days ago
Some pro can maybe answer ?

VNAV PATH

8th Jul 2012, 13:28

They tried TOGA at 37000 feet. That's a level of incompetence that is otherworldly. I'm not the litigious sort, but AF and Airbus should be sued for every sou they can be forced to disgorge

That was the procedure by those days : ( refer to the report )

- TOGA and 5 ° pitch , above 5000 ft ...

NigelOnDraft

8th Jul 2012, 14:33

Carjockey...

@Nigel on Draft
Quote: Is their no backup system available in the event of pitot tube failure?

Quote:
Well, yes there is. The other 2 pitot tubes. Trouble is when there is a common problem affecting mroe than 1.

So that means that there is no effective backup system, correct?Disagree. Many systems on aircraft are duplicate, but identical systems. Not just ASIs, but Altimeters, Engines etc. If we followed your logic, on a twin engine aircrraft, one would be RR, one GE etc. :ooh:

That was my point, there are obviously major faults in the system designDiaagree. Pilots are on aircraft to fly them, and the ability to be cope when the automatic systems fail. Not v-v. APs are there to reduce fatigue, increase capacity & accuacy (RVSM). After any major / multiple failure, if the integrity of the AFS cannot be assured, it should audibly and clearly "give up", as it did here, not try to fly the aicraft with incomplete / inadequate / non-verifiable data.

But how effective was the training / skill / practice in this case?Insufficient. And I would say it was, and still is, in most airlines across the world. The majority of pilots do not have a solid depth of expeirence to fall back on, and of those that do, few get (or take) the opportunity to keep those skills current.

Please do me a favour and tell me who you are and which airline you fly for, because I do not want to be on any flight under your controlWell I won't, since it would break the T&Cs I work under. But if you really are anything to do with aviation you could work it out :oh:

As an aside, I have a military background, both jet instructing, and fast jet flying. I tend to manually fly, at work, to/below 20K'. I fly / display / compete and teach GA inc aerobatics and upset training. I teach / fly display ex-mil jet trainers / FJs. I am very lucky to be able to do that, and to have had the opportunity / luck to have the training I got. It is not available to all. It might be that background that leads me to hope I could have coped with the situation these guys found themselves in. It is that background to realise that many might not fair much better than this crew did.

The report covers it under "startle factor". Unless and until we take crews, in sims or aircraft, and regularly (say a <6 month cycle, not ~3 yrs) give them unanticipated multiple systems failures and expect their raw handling and management skills to cope, we will get (a few) such accidents.

Clandestino

8th Jul 2012, 14:52

Why has no one asked what they were doing in that cloud in the first place?I spend a lot of time in clouds and no one has ever asked me what I am doing there in the first place.

Why did they not take vectors like other aircraft? No one has ever taken vectors in the middle of Atlantic and this is not going to change for a considerable time.

Was the radar display turned up so they could see it? It was. Getting acquainted with the matter discussed saves bandwidth.

I mean, was there any evaluation at all of the weather ahead? Yes. Covered in interim 3 and final report.

what wrong with flying "by the seat of ya pants" When you are supposed to fly by instruments, each and every part of it.

Once terminal velocity is achieved (can't fall any faster), vertical acceleration ceases, and thus no Gs are felt.At terminal velocity vertical acceleration ceases at 1G exactly, thus 1G is felt. Anyway, believing the somatogravic and balance senses is actively discouraged in instrument flying - for a good reason.

To me, the question is this:

Given an identical situation, what % of professional pilots (or perhaps '3 man groups of pilots') would flub it and crash the plane?Those who have been paying attention know that between Nov 12 2003 and Aug 07 2009, there were 37 recorded cases of unreliable airspeed on A330/340 worldwide. 36 of them ended without damage to aircraft or injury to anyone. One ended up in airframe write-off and death of all on board.

Study you proposed has already been done. Results are in the final report. Your notion that:A big part of this was the human-machine interface, which did an extremely poor job of letting the pilots know what was actually going on.
...is not confirmed.

Thanks to those who liked my postYou are welcome, even as I liked it as a very good example of bad science.

they are also flying close to coffin corner.Read the final report and let's get rid of this nonsense of coffin corner on modern turbofan transports once and for all.

And I just can't imagine a pilot who has no interest in airplanesLucky you. I even need not imagine and can not object when I get rostered with such individuals. They have all the necessary paperwork in order and I can't even get additional pay for 1 1/2 pilots operation.

Could any of you professionals here explain what knowledge of flight physics is taught to pilots in their training
This: CDBDA AADCD BAADC CADCB BABCD AACDB BACDA. I kid you not.

how much most of them will remember after ten or so years on the job?Depends on individual, as mentioned in DP Davies "Handling the big jets", chapter 11: To airline pilots. Those in love with flying will know it. Those in love with status, don't really know it even as they pass the exams by rote learning from question databanks.

I would have thought that any pilot, in instrument conditions, would monitor basic things like their artificial horizon and variometer, displayed on the primary flight displays.

Certifying authorities share your belief.

Do we have to conclude that these don't give enough of a clue to diagnose a high-altitude stall?No. Final report doesn't give comprehensive list of all A330/340 events but does point that reaction to stall warning in cases that could be analyzed was either maintaining the attitude or pushing. Never pulling. Either reaction kept the aeroplanes flying. Stall warnings were recorded, stall never.

I was taught (over simplifying slightly for discussion) that if you don't know what is happening with the airspeed, set cruise power and put the AI in the middle with the wings level and things will settle to a point where you are in control again. Does that work at M0.8 at FL350? It does. Issue is no one on the flightdeck recognized the unreliable airspeed. CM1 just added to CM2's confusion as he first said "we have no good indication of speed" just to warn "Watch your speed" few seconds later.

It's impossible to train for every specific malfunction as it is impossible to annunciate every specific malfunction. Somehow there must be a balance. How about getting more guys like Walter Hughen, Samuel Tyson, Robert Schornstheimer, Dennis Fitch or Eric Gennotte into flightdecks?

Who?

My point exactly.

Flying is very simple but there are a lot of people around trying to make it as complicated as possible.To get to the point where it is easy takes dedication, capability and a lot of work. Those management types that think any of the ingredients can be omitted and 18 mths quick courses can turn anyone into pilot are fooling... probably on the others' expense.

Is their no backup system available in the event of pitot tube failure? It's called pilots.

The answer to that one was given during the BEA debrief/press briefing : There was a sudden Christmas tree with lots of warning , sounds including ice pellets hitting the windows and most probably the PF concentrated his action looking at one thing only and erasing all others, especially the sounds. This is a normal physiological reaction apparently.Well then, if this is normal, all the other crews made abnormal reactions, yet it saved their bacon.

I have noticed with interest the sort of stall recovery training given in two-crew aircraft. Where once we were taught, in little airplanes, to get the nose well down and accept a loss in altitude, the advanced way to do this was presented as a call-out of 'Stall!' at the first indication, going to full power, but putting the nose on the horizon reference and powering out with no or very little loss of altitude.Pretty demonstration of inability to differentiate between "approach to stall recovery" and "stall recovery". Not a factor if you manage to spend all of your flying life above 1.3 Vs or 1.23 Vs1g.

TimeOnTarget

8th Jul 2012, 15:14

Clandestino, you have the patience of Job.

Thank you Sir.....:ok:

Rockhound

8th Jul 2012, 15:50

The July 6 edition of The Globe and Mail, Canada's so-called "national newspaper", carried what I thought was a poorly-written, incomplete and therefore misleading story on AF447 and the BEA report. Be that as it may, it included the following:
For the last 10000 m of freefall, the last two minutes, only test pilots might have pulled off the sort of dramatic, aggressive effort needed to save the plane. That might have involved throttling back one engine to force a wing drop, to drag the nose out of its 40-degree up angle into a dive.
A letter to the editor appeared next day from a pilot who claimed to "have flown and instructed on all classes of aircraft from the most primitive biplanes to the most sophisticated transports and fighters". In regard to the above quote, he wrote:
"All that was needed was full power on all engines and a release of elevator back pressure and the plane would have flown out of it in seconds. You do not "drag" an aircraft out of a nose-up condition - you basically let go of it, and it will drop its nose all by itself.
Maybe this suggestion has been covered in a previous thread, in which case, apologies, but I'm not a pilot and would be interested to hear what the experts have to say.

Turbine D

8th Jul 2012, 16:11

Posted by deSitter
Well there was a quite gibbous Moon that night, should have provided plenty of visual stimulus with the lights dimmed.
True, if you were headed to Rio, not true if you were headed from Rio (moon position in the sky that night). Anyhow, they were in the cloud when things started going awry.

Posted by TampaSLF
Would have been scary in that 330 having a hunch what was happening.
Only hunch you would have had was the angle of the wine in your glass sitting on the tray table.

Posted by qqantum
As expected, the BEA Report is comprised of carefully crafted smoke — placing blame on the pilots of course — and distraction from the real issues of airplane design and regulator oversight failure that truly were the causes of the accident:

Read page #3 of the BEA's Final report. No blame is placed on the pilots per-se, only a report out of what they did or didn't do during the course of the event. Of course, this leads to cause or probable cause of the accident. I might add, ISASI's Forum Magazine - July/Sept 2012 issue, read Patrick R. Veillette's article on LOC. A LOC accident is defined as "An aircraft put into an unrecoverable position due to aircrew, aircraft or environmental factors, or combination of these." I am not sure the use of the word "unrecoverable" is correct in all incidences of LOC, but in this instance the aircraft was not recovered.
A review of the CVR transcript (Final Report, Appendix 1) plainly indicates the confusion in the cockpit that resulted from the total loss of airspeed indication, which occurred at a time when they were attempting to avoid the worst of the weather (icing, lightning, and severe turbulence).

IMO, they avoided late. There was no lightning or severe turbulence, review the turbulence and time table contained in the final report.
The inexperienced FO, who was flying, made a radical pitch control input (full aft stick), which was not noticed by the more experienced FO, as he could not see the opposite control stick in the darkened cockpit (the A330 has independent control sticks, and so the normal means by which one pilot will instantly know what the other pilot is doing with his control stick

The experienced FO knew what the less experienced FO flying was doing. Review the CVR tape and words to the effect "Go down", "No, you are going up", etc.
This drastic control input caused the trimmable horizontal stabilizer (THS) to automatically apply full nose‐up trim — a condition that while dangerous, in that it seriously compromised any attempt at recovery, was not detected by the pilots, as they made no mention of it;

Know how the mechanics of the aircraft works. Stick back, elevators respond, THS moves to relieve pressure on elevators. Conversely, stick forward, elevators respond, THS moves to relieve pressure on elevators. You can see the trim wheels move and you can see the actual degrees, up or down, it is positioned at.

jcjeant

8th Jul 2012, 16:12

"All that was needed was full power on all engines and a release of elevator back pressure and the plane would have flown out of it in seconds. You do not "drag" an aircraft out of a nose-up condition - you basically let go of it, and it will drop its nose all by itself.Not valid for A330 AF447 (think about the THS !! read also above Turbine D message)
Already explained at long in many messages here and in the Tech Log forum ......
"have flown and instructed on all classes of aircraft from the most primitive biplanes to the most sophisticated transports and fighters"He certainly never fly a Airbus FBW (or read about) .. despite all his experience ....

BOAC

8th Jul 2012, 16:20

Indeed, jcj - Rockhound's 'pilot' was talking out of his seat cushion.

DOVES

8th Jul 2012, 16:22

As expected, the BEA Report is comprised of carefully crafted smoke — placing blame on the pilots of course — and distraction from the real issues of airplane design and regulator oversight failure

1. The loss of airspeed information caused a change in the FCS mode,
2. The FCS Mode change resulted in loss of the envelope speed and angle of attack (AOA) limits — no stall protection — no overspeed protection — no bank angle/pitch angle protection —
3. The inexperienced FO… made a radical pitch control input (full aft stick), … not noticed by the ‘other’ FO, (the A330 has independent control sticks, and so the pilot doesn’t know what the other pilot is doing with his control stick);
4. This caused the horizontal stabilizer (THS) to automatically apply full nose‐up trim — …
5. The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) indicates that, incredibly, the stall warning ceased (as designed) while the airplane was still in a deeply stalled condition, then reappeared when recovery action was attempted, adding even more confusion to the situation.

6: If I remember well some fuel had been transferred to the tail (which I suppose happens automatically during cruise, like on MD11, to reduce fuel consumption) making it even more hopeless, if they wanted and had tried, to exit the condition of deep stall they were in.

Who knows how many glitches are hiding behind the automation of AB?
On our skin we discovered a few:
- You loose the manual cotrol of throttles under 50 'R.A.
- The Flight Path Angle was easily confused with the vertical speed.
- The autothrottle is excluded by removing the Flight Director/s
- The ground spoilers do not extend unless there is a weight of 1000 kg on both the landing gear,

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

chuks

8th Jul 2012, 17:44

Got something for everyone there, Clandestino?

What was presented as 'stall recovery training' was just what I wrote about, reacting to the first indication of a stall. That might be part of the problem, not going any further than that, showing, indeed, inability to differentiate between approach to stall and stall itself.

What works okay for recovery from an approach to a stall might not work for recovery from a stall itself. It seems to be that people want to keep things simple, perhaps a bit too simple?

Rockhound

8th Jul 2012, 19:04

Thanks for taking the time to respond, Jcjeant and BOAC.
What about the following remedy for the situation?:
throttling back one engine to force a wing drop, to drag the nose out of its 40-degree up angle into a dive.
Rockhound

BOAC

8th Jul 2012, 19:15

Yes, it would 'upset' the stable condition, but it is unnecessary. All they had to do is push forward on the stick and lower the nose. 'Standard' normal aeroplane stall recovery - possibly not the way AB pilots are indoctrinated.

Clandestino

8th Jul 2012, 20:08

What was presented as 'stall recovery training' was just what I wrote about, reacting to the first indication of a stall. That might be part of the problem, not going any further than that, showing, indeed, inability to differentiate between approach to stall and stall itself. Closer, but not yet there.

Stall recovery training was never on the repertoire of ordinary line pilots' type rating & recurrent training as far as I remember. Once you have mastered stalls during basic training, the idea was that your aerodynamics knowledge enabled you to recognize that what you could get away with in trainer is very risky business in transporter so you would react promptly and correctly as soon as warning signs were present. Basically: airline pilots were supposed to initiate prompt and correct recovery action when stall warning went off so they wouldn't get near the stall at all. Theory was confirmed in practice even with UAS on A330/340. Except once.

For further info, have a look at: "Case of TAM flight on 12 November 2003", page 87 of the report in English. Panic pulls were interrupted by panic pushes as the stall warning went off. Rollercoaster ride eventually evened out without stall.

1. The loss of airspeed information caused a change in the FCS mode,Surprise, surprise. What would you want autopilot to do? Follow possibly wrong data?

The FCS Mode change resulted in loss of the envelope speed and angle of attack (AOA) limits — no stall protection — no overspeed protection — no bank angle/pitch angle protection What was it supposed to do? Air data are unreliable, that's why speed and alpha protections went off line. Attitude protections switched themselves off so not to eventually drive the aeroplane out of envelope when air data protections are off - these two groups really can't work without each other.

The inexperienced FO… made a radical pitch control input (full aft stick), … not noticed by the ‘other’ FO,Who cares about input on the other stick? Where was he looking at? Attitude? Altitude? Perhaps, but then, notwithstanding the source of the upset, he did not understand what was going to happen to aeroplane flying near ceiling and climbing excessively at all.

This caused the horizontal stabilizer (THS) to automatically apply full nose‐up trimPer design. As would full nose down stick make FCS try to achieve -1G so it would go full nose down with elevators and wind the THS down until this is achieved. You can't hit -1G in upright stall so full stick forward demand cannot be satisfied until the aeroplane is flying again.

The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) indicates that, incredibly, the stall warning ceased (as designed) while the airplane was still in a deeply stalled condition, then reappeared when recovery action was attempted, adding even more confusion to the situation. Nice try but this is trying to have it both ways: first CM2 doesn't pay attention to stall warnings for 54 seconds, then all at sudden he can hear it but assumes "STALL STALL" means "pull-up!"

You loose the manual cotrol of throttles under 50 'R.A.Not true. This is the one even I didn't hear of. Where did it come from?

The Flight Path Angle was easily confused with the vertical speed.Modification to correct FCU display was effected more than a decade ago. As if it was easy to confuse normal three degree approach descent V/S of about 700 fpm with 3000 fpm on VSI.

The autothrottle is excluded by removing the Flight Director/sHuh? What are we talking about F/D off or F/D fail?

The ground spoilers do not extend unless there is a weight of 1000 kg on both the landing gear,As if it is normal to roll down the runway for 755 meters on just one main landing gear. Anyway, modification to spoiler logic that automatically prevent such an occurence were incorporated at least a decade ago.

Well there was a quite gibbous Moon that night, should have provided plenty of visual stimulus with the lights dimmed. I have my reasons to believe AF447 operated under so-called "Instrumental flight rules" so outside visibility was not supposed to be a factor.

kcockayne

8th Jul 2012, 20:36

I am not an expert in flying large pax a/c. I am a retired ATCO. Therefore, I restrict myself to what I understand of the technicalities of this incident (very little ) & qualify that with my experience of life.

It would seem to me that in life very few people (or firms) are ready to shoulder the blame (the more so when the subject is a catastrophic incident). Most people & organisations seek to avoid blame & responsibility as best they can. All the more so when they have a vested interest.

So, professional pilots are reticent to acknowledge that their colleagues could possibly have made what seem to be elementary mistakes.

Airlines seek to avoid taking a share of blame which would expose them to litigation.

Aircraft manufacturers, the same.

The last 2 seek to put pressure on the investigation authorities to avoid them publishing anything (or too much of anything) which might facilitate or ease the process of litigation being initiated against them.

& the Investigators are "mindful" of the repercussions which could occur to their national flagship manufacturers & airlines if they publish anything which pins the blame too firmly on the manufacturers or the airlines.

It is my suspicion that may be what happened here. I make no accusations; but, I draw on my experience in ATC & life in general when I suggest that no single element in this equation was particularly more to blame than any other.

I have seen, & been involved in, ATC incidents (of which I had a FULL understanding) & know that the investigators did not always get their conclusions totally correct. I do not know if these did.

My sympathies go to the crew, who faced a horrendous situation, & who, consequently seem to have "taken leave of their professional senses" - quite how & why is beyond me ! & to the passengers & their families.

Above all I hope that the full & exact reason for this crash is now publicly known & that a similar situation will never re-occur.

bubbers44

8th Jul 2012, 21:01

We all know this aircraft couldn't climb and still have 1.3 buffet protection so they lost IAS and climbed at an impossible 14 degree deck angle. What genius figured this checklist out? Nobody, it was the incompetent pilots that did it. We need to hire people that can control their aircraft, not monitors of autopilots.

SLFinAZ

8th Jul 2012, 21:21

Indeed, jcj - Rockhound's 'pilot' was talking out of his seat cushion.

Actually he was entirely correct. The 1st step in unusual attitude recovery is to unload the airframe...period. No pilot...let alone "professional" pilot should maintain a particular control input for as long as the PF did. Obviously the trim issue becomes a significant complication and either manual trim or continued full deflection would be required to correct the trim.

Had the PF simply unloaded the airframe the moment the stall warning sounded the entire incident would most likely be one of the dozens of "recoveries" from this malfunction. Only his continued incompetence generated the stall then forced the trim so far out of sorts.

So...in the early stages of the upset the statement is entirely correct...

deepknight

8th Jul 2012, 21:22

All of us who fly for a living, or even just for pleasure, will eventually, experience a moment when tiredness, confusion, distraction, fear or any other human factor degrades our ability. Nevertheless, when that happens, it is all the more crucial that we fall back on our basic training of pitch and power. No matter how complex the aircraft - and an Airbus can be flown in its basic law like any other - those are our means of survival. This is just another example of a crew getting distracted by unexpected events and failing to do just that. My company, and I'm sure many others, are now revisiting basic upset recovery in the sim. These guys had everything they needed before them to tell them what the aircraft was doing, from attitude to groundspeed (available on the MCDU and independent of any pitot/static combination) The only thing they didn't have was the ability for one of them to see at a glance that the other guy was doing. That it the one major fault of the Airbus. Maybe the other guy's sidestick position should be shown on the PD.

Case One

8th Jul 2012, 23:26

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rengineer
Could any of you professionals here explain what knowledge of flight physics is taught to pilots in their training

This: CDBDA AADCD BAADC CADCB BABCD AACDB BACDA. I kid you not

What?

Posted by deSitter

Quote:
Well there was a quite gibbous Moon that night, should have provided plenty of visual stimulus with the lights dimmed.

True, if you were headed to Rio, not true if you were headed from Rio (moon position in the sky that night). Anyhow, they were in the cloud when things started going awry.

Well, they turned through 180 degrees on the way down, I wonder if they really were IMC the entire time. Not that this should matter, they had attitude information throughout.

- You loose the manual cotrol of throttles under 50 'R.A.
- The autothrottle is excluded by removing the Flight Director/s

Most of my manual landings are in manual thrust and I've yet to loose control of the engines. Switching both the FDs off puts A/THR in SPEED mode which is the reason for several Airbus procedures.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DOVES
1. The loss of airspeed information caused a change in the FCS mode,

Surprise, surprise. What would you want autopilot to do? Follow possibly wrong data?

Don't be silly, how about downgrading to another mode such as attitude hold?

Quote:
Originally Posted by DOVES
This caused the horizontal stabilizer (THS) to automatically apply full nose‐up trim

Per design. As would full nose down stick make FCS try to achieve -1G so it would go full nose down with elevators and wind the THS down until this is achieved. You can't hit -1G in upright stall so full stick forward demand cannot be satisfied until the aeroplane is flying again.

I don't think so. Although (speed stability protection aside), in Alternate Law the SS is still providing load factor demand, and the aeroplane is stressed to minus 1g, I don't think you can read that as the FCS would demand minus 1g. However Airbus manuals are cr@p, so I can't be certain - can you?

And again I'm afraid:

Quote:
Originally Posted by DOVES
The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) indicates that, incredibly, the stall warning ceased (as designed) while the airplane was still in a deeply stalled condition, then reappeared when recovery action was attempted, adding even more confusion to the situation.

Nice try but this is trying to have it both ways: first CM2 doesn't pay attention to stall warnings for 54 seconds, then all at sudden he can hear it but assumes "STALL STALL" means "pull-up!"

When someone is panicing I think you can have it both ways, they are not thinking logically, and this design feature does not help.

Airbus make a good product, but their philosophy was radical and is over a quarter of a century old now. It is high time for a comprehensive review based on operational experience, not just tinkering and more AB Coolade. They could start by surveying pilot opinion of various features of their products.

Won't happen, business as usual.

The Dominican

8th Jul 2012, 23:27

A340 zoom-climb inquiry backs shock tactics (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/a340-zoom-climb-inquiry-backs-shock-tactics-372060/)

And the hits just keep rolling in:ugh:

Organfreak

9th Jul 2012, 03:13

Well sir, I think "shock tactics" is a bit of unfortunate colorful journalism, but the actual idea contained in the article, of "training for surprise" and "startle factor" is timely, if not already too late. It's been mentioned previously that it's not gonna be EZ to startle/frighten some guys in a sim, for obvious reasons. Maybe if I strolled in, with my hair down to here, and announced that I was in charge? Would that do it?

Also, as stated here a brazillian times, apparently some Airbus crews need to read and understand their FCOMs, and receive upset recovery training pronto. Maybe they wouldn't be quite so scared if they knew WTH was going on!

:}

Case One

9th Jul 2012, 03:44

apparently some Airbus crews need to read and understand their FCOMs
Which might be easier if Airbus started writing manuals in English instead of their traditional non-sensical "Franglish" mish-mash. It may also help if they stopped grossly oversimplifying their contents. The cheap but barely legible computer generated diagrams in the latest format change are not a giant educational leap forward either IMHO.

I am not sure that Airbus want crews to understand the aeroplane so much as just do as they are are told. This may be great for selling product, but does not produce the best pilots.

deSitter

9th Jul 2012, 05:50

A340 zoom-climb inquiry backs shock tactics (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/a340-zoom-climb-inquiry-backs-shock-tactics-372060/)

Jesus! "RETARD RETARD RETARD"

-drl

Capn Bloggs

9th Jul 2012, 06:02

Instead of shock tactics, how about Airbus remove the handle that startled pilots grab on to: the sidestick!

If a Boeing pilot gets a shock and yanks back on the prong, at least his oppo will shock him with a "WTF are you doing?!" as he gets hit in the guts, instead of "hmm, why is this aircraft suddenly climbing?? Hey Capn Bloggs, are you pulling on the sidestick or is the aircraft doing it by itself??".

:}

oldchina

9th Jul 2012, 07:59

1) If you are right why did the FAA certify the plane ( + A320 family) as safe?

2) How come the other 60000 operational Airbus pilots are not complaining about the sidestick?

Mac the Knife

9th Jul 2012, 08:05

1) Because they thought it was

2) Because it hasn't yet happened to them

:ok:

noske

9th Jul 2012, 08:35

Originally Posted by Clandestino
Originally Posted by DOVES
You loose the manual cotrol of throttles under 50 'R.A.
Not true. This is the one even I didn't hear of. Where did it come from?
Michel Asseline, possibly slightly misquoted, but I'm not going to look up what exactly his claim was.

Originally Posted by Clandestino
Originally Posted by DOVES
The autothrottle is excluded by removing the Flight Director/s
Huh? What are we talking about F/D off or F/D fail?
This must refer to the Bangalore crash. PF wanted autothrust in speed mode, but left PNF's F/D enabled. PNF noticed the mistake and pointed it out, but neither pilot corrected it. PNF (check captain) probably wanted to teach PF a lesson, but underestimated the danger this put them into.

Some (again including Asseline) have criticised the "both F/Ds off" logic as non-intuitive.

hetfield

9th Jul 2012, 08:42

2) How come the other 60000 operational Airbus pilots are not complaining about the sidestick?How do you know?

After some years on A300 I flew A340 and A320 family, before I came back to A300 until my retirement. So I had the great opportunity to compare both flight control systems for years. From the LH seat as well as from the RH seat. I have to say I felt much more comfortable on A300 (Yoke). Especially on gusty approaches as PF and as well as PM.

But let's come back to the topic.

This accident would not have happened in a conventional plane like A300.

Why?

In a stall one would feel very soon what to do with the aileron, because stall is sooner or later accomplished by a wing drop. The aircraft will start to roll.

On AB FBW aircrafts, the FCCs will maintain a constant roll rate commanded by the stick, e.g. the pilot doesn't feel/see the aileron deflection, the FCCs will do the job!

Stick neutral doesn't mean ailerons neutral, they may be somewhere to maintain zero roll rate/wings level.

So AF447 went down like a leave in autumn. Most of the time wings level. The FCCs did a great job (sarcasm:cool:), as designed.

Again, never ever would this accident have happened on 747/767/757/A300 and so on.

chubbychopper

9th Jul 2012, 09:09

Difference between an operator and a pilot:

An operator will have no use of the information that "stick" or thrust lever position might provide him with.

By knowing how these controls are positioned, the pilot will know why the airplane is doing whatever it is, and what it is most likely to be doing soon after.

ironbutt57

9th Jul 2012, 09:13

This must refer to the Bangalore crash. PF wanted autothrust in speed mode, but left PNF's F/D enabled. PNF noticed the mistake and pointed it out, but neither pilot corrected it. PNF (check captain) probably wanted to teach PF a lesson, but underestimated the danger this put them into.

Some (again including Asseline) have criticised the "both F/Ds off" logic as non-intuitive.

Besides the fact they were descending in "open descent" mode away from the FCU set altitude...when they finally went TOGA, it simply didn't spool up in time

http://flightsafety.org/ap/ap_jan94.pdf

total confusion....automation mismanagement....lack of experience and understanding of operational procedures...

jcjeant

9th Jul 2012, 09:54

total confusion....automation mismanagement....lack of experience and understanding of operational procedures..Exactly the same as for AF447 (Except for some differences place - time - altitude)

glofish

9th Jul 2012, 10:49

Before yo’alls go back into endlessly repeating what has been babbled on the other zillion AB threads, there’s time to tell that ol’AB joke again, at least we’ll have something to lol:

There’s that AB pilot in divorce talks with his wife, when she snaps at him: “By the way honey, I always faked my orgasms”. The next day he’s in his retirement meeting and the CP tells him: “By the way Joe, the sidestick was never connected”.

Take a break guys, reports have become food for the grandstand and the lawyers.

Rockhound

9th Jul 2012, 10:55

SLFinAZ,
Indeed, jcj - Rockhound's 'pilot' was talking out of his seat cushion.

Actually he was entirely correct.
So...in the early stages of the upset the statement is entirely correct...

The pilot in question was advocating this method of recovery for the last two minutes of flight, i.e. when AF447 was deep into the stall.

infrequentflyer789

9th Jul 2012, 11:25

Instead of shock tactics, how about Airbus remove the handle that startled pilots grab on to: the sidestick!

If a Boeing pilot gets a shock and yanks back on the prong, at least his oppo will shock him with a "WTF are you doing?!" as he gets hit in the guts,

Whereas the oppo on a turboprop will get hit in the guts and think "oh right, must get the flaps up" ??

And are we conveniently forgetting the several Boeing crews that are at the bottom of the ocean precisely due to a "yanks back on the prong" and stall ? Or are they maybe just guys who happened to be at the pointy end of a Boeing and not actually "pilots" in your definition ?

instead of "hmm, why is this aircraft suddenly climbing?? Hey Capn Bloggs, are you pulling on the sidestick or is the aircraft doing it by itself??".

:}

PNF doesn't sound confused as to that - "you are climbing". And he was right.

ironbutt57

9th Jul 2012, 11:29

Airbii are fine as long as you adjust your thinking to their philosophy....little bit different, but this old dog managed to, so quite sure anybody can...

lear60fellow

9th Jul 2012, 12:04

A340 zoom-climb inquiry backs shock tactics (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/a340-zoom-climb-inquiry-backs-shock-tactics-372060/)

1.- Retard throttle
2.- trim up a little
3.- Don´t disconnect the AUTOPILOT!!!!

It´s basic, come and fly the LR60, overspeed is everyday issue = Plenty of rocket power in the back.

Capn Bloggs

9th Jul 2012, 12:08

Infrequent Flyer,

My post was half-tongue-in-cheek (don't the smilies work on your computer? :} ), but since you mentioned them...

are we conveniently forgetting the several Boeing crews that are at the bottom of the ocean precisely due to a "yanks back on the prong" and stall
Which accidents were those?

rgbrock1

9th Jul 2012, 12:51

OrvilleW wrote:

They are charged as professional pilots to mantain complete discipline and situational awareness in the cockpit at all times.

I have seen, in a combat environment, trained and disciplined soldiers (Both officers and noncoms) lose all vestige of said discipline and situational awareness.

when the **** really hits the fan, regardless of training, discipline and focus we don't really know how we're going to react. Most of us probably will react appropriately. Some however, and sadly, cannot. It's part of the "human equation" I suppose.

infrequentflyer789

9th Jul 2012, 12:57

SLFinAZ – you sound like the NTSB.

As expected, the BEA Report is comprised of carefully crafted smoke — placing blame on the pilots of course — and distraction from the real issues of airplane design and regulator oversight failure that truly were the causes of the accident:

A lot of stuff from one so new here, maybe you haven't read all the previous threads on the issues you raise, and you clearly haven't read the report.

In all, a "politically correct" report that omits analysis of significant factual information,

The facts are there, you just seem to have omitted to assimilate them.

1. The loss of airspeed information caused a change in the FCS mode, which the pilots seemed not to notice, as they made no mention of it;

False. Mode change noted and read out. Read the CVR in the report.

2. The FCS Mode change resulted in loss of the envelope speed and angle of attack (AOA) limits — no stall protection — no overspeed protection — no bank angle/pitch angle protection — again the pilots seemed not to notice, as they made no mention of it;

False. As above.

3. The inexperienced FO, who was flying, made a radical pitch control input (full aft stick), which was not noticed by the more experienced FO, as he could not see the opposite control stick in the darkened cockpit

False and false. Full back stick came much later when stalled. Initial climb was noted by PNF and he instructed corrections.

4. This drastic control input caused the trimmable horizontal stabilizer (THS) to automatically apply full nose‐up trim

False. The THS didn't wind up until they were already stalled, and there is no evidence autotrim failed - with nose down control inputs the THS would have followed allowing recovery (plenty of SIM sessions and theoretical models covering this on the tech log thread).

5. Examination of the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) data, (Final Report, Appendix 3) indicates that, incredibly, the stall warning ceased (as designed) while the airplane was still in a deeply stalled condition, then reappeared when recovery action was attempted, adding even more confusion to the situation.

Irrelevant - there is no evidence that stall was ever diagnosed - which is a pre-requisite for a recovery attempt. There was no recovery (from stall) attempt.

Conditions of high altitude stall and reversion to Alternate Mode have been very rarely encountered in airline operations, leading to a degree of complacency

Stall - rare. UAS and alt-law - not rare, known and discussed between mfr, airline and regulators. Chronology is in the report.

Two possibilities:
1. Crew was abnormally (in)competent - and that's the cause.

2. An averagely competent crew will turn uas + alt-law in cruise into a stall with an unacceptably high probability (say > 1 in 100). Cause - who assessed that risk (if anyone) and did they get it right ?

Design Flaws
1. Failure of the FCS to remain in the Normal mode (with envelope protection) resulting from the loss of a single parameter (pitot‐static airspeed).

Designed as required for certification. AP & protections shall not operate on known-bad data.

If the design had incorporated synthesized speed – from GPS, IRS – which would be accurate enough – the pilot would not have been placed into

Airspeed != ground speed or GPS speed or inertial.

needless to say, the presentation of angle of attack (AOA) information (now planned for inclusion on Airbus airplanes) would have eased the burden on the pilot.

AOA already available on PFD via flight path display. Separate AOA already an option. Airlines do not take it, allegedly to avoid expense of training pilots to use it.

2. The design of the primary flight control controller such that it is possible for a pilot to make a sustained incorrect or dangerous input, without the awareness of the other crewmember(s).

Not proven - PNF was aware, see report.

Assessment of whether input is incorrect or dangerous is dependent on diagnosis / awareness of situation, which was not present. Pull back into stall happens on other control systems (see Colgan, Ethiopian, Birgenair etc.). Common thread is not control type but the lack of diagnosis of stall.

It can be readily appreciated that an FCS control design in which both controllers move in unison at all times (as in Boeing, MacDonnell Douglas, and most other airplanes) would have enabled instant detection (tactile) by the senior pilot (along with the probability of a sharp rebuke) and subsequent recovery of the airplane.

Not without diagnosis of stall, hearing and understanding the warning etc.

There are more Boeings at the bottom of the ocean due to this issue than 'buses.

now, however, the required technology has been available for several years, and because tactile communication between pilots is of such vital importance, parallel control should become mandatory on all future sidestick designs.

AB sidestick design pre-dates the technology. Future sidestick designs from other mfrs might go a different route. AB sidestick very unlikely to change as it is proven and changing it would break the cockpit commonality across the range.

3. The ability of the FCS to allow the Trimmable Horizontal Stabilizer (THS) to move to a configuration that renders the airplane essentially unrecoverable, without appropriate warning to the pilot.

Trim wheel is visible and moves. Should it have additional audio warning - maybe, but consider they didn't hear (or process) prolonged stall warning.

Further, when AOA becomes greater than 30°, or Speed is less than 60kt, auto THS trim is turned off.

Reference ? Report contains no indication of autotrim ceasing to work.

4. The FCS design which allows the primary stall‐warning sensor to be declared invalid (when it is still capable of providing a correct indication) based upon another parameter (speed), of questionable validity.

Wrong. FCS has no bearing on this. ADIRU does. Be aware that other types also have ADIRUs...

SW computer ceased warning because its input AOA went "invalid" - airspeed did not factor (except at the ADIRU).

When the senior co‐pilot took control (although the junior FO did not relinquish it) and pushed forward on the stick in an attempt to recover, the stall warning again sounded – leading him to believe that his control input was not correct, thus causing him to release pressure on the stick to get rid of the stall warning.

No indication that stall was ever diagnosed.

By the time this warning issue occurred the crew had already ignored 1min of stall warning and had got to AOA > 40deg. They were far beyond where any sane test pilot would go in conditions no test pilot would test in.

Had they started looking at an analogue AOA gauge at that point it would have been pinned at max and appeared "stuck" anyway.

It's an interesting design issue, it's unlikely to be specific to the 'bus, but it's IMO academic for 447, by that time the outcome was already decided.

qquantum

9th Jul 2012, 13:08

Originally posted by kcockayne
Investigators are "mindful" of the repercussions which could occur to their national flagship manufacturers & airlines if they publish anything which pins the blame too firmly on the manufacturers or the airlines.
It is my suspicion that may be what happened here.

You've got it right. — a quote by a senior NTSB investigator (after hours in Hong Kong) circa 2001: " ...sometimes we have to burn a pilot to protect the local industry..." I heard it, but unfortunately didn't have a recording device...

Originally posted by Rockhound
For the last 10000 m of freefall, the last two minutes, only test pilots might have pulled off the sort of dramatic, aggressive effort needed to save the plane. That might have involved throttling back one engine to force a wing drop, to drag the nose out of its 40-degree up angle into a dive.

Quite true — IF he recognized and corrected the egregious THS setting. Should note that some bottom rudder with 90° of bank would also be helpful to get the nose pointed in the direction of energy (and therefore recovery).

infrequentflyer789

9th Jul 2012, 13:12

"Which accidents were those?"
yes waiting for that reply too.....

"The crew's failure to recognize the activation of the stick shaker as a warning of imminent entrance to the stall, and the failure of the crew to execute the procedures for recovery from the onset of loss of control."

"Contrary to any stall recovery procedure, the
control column was initially kept backward and gradually increased over the next 17”"

"when the stick shaker stall indicator started, the pilot-incommand stated that it was fictitious"

Ring any bells ?

airjet

9th Jul 2012, 13:30

wow a lot of "monday night quarter backs" are out in this thread, --the capt should not have been in the back, while the aircraft was approaching a line of storms, also according to the sat pic at the time there was a clear path thru the wx 50 miles to the left, I flew airbuses for the last 10 years of my career and NOBODY ever said you could not stall the plane, in normal law you couldn`t but in this case they were def Not in norm law. also i don`t care if your control is a yoke, stick, or a dick, pulling back when the stall warning is shouting "stall stall" is madness.:confused:

infrequentflyer789

9th Jul 2012, 13:31

Quite true — IF he recognized and corrected the egregious THS setting. Should note that some bottom rudder with 90° of bank would also be helpful to get the nose pointed in the direction of energy (and therefore recovery).

Nose down side stick would have "corrected" the THS whether they recognized the setting or not. Recognizing that nose down was required was the issue.

As to 90deg right bank - why would you try for that in an a/c with bank angle protection ? [or have you changed your previous conclusion htat they had not recognized loss of protections ?]

Carjockey

9th Jul 2012, 13:51

@NigelOnDraft
Disagree. Many systems on aircraft are duplicate, but identical systems. Not just ASIs, but Altimeters, Engines etc. If we followed your logic, on a twin engine aircrraft, one would be RR, one GE etc. Now that is definitely not logical! :ugh:My point is that since airspeed is such a critical factor for the AP to function, an effective alternative backup method of feeding back airspeed to the AP should be incorporated on aircraft. Pitot tubes are exposed to outside elements, they can freeze up or otherwise be damaged and as such they are obviously a weakness in the AP system.

Diaagree. Pilots are on aircraft to fly them, and the ability to be cope when the automatic systems fail. Not v-v. APs are there to reduce fatigue, increase capacity & accuacy (RVSM). After any major / multiple failure, if the integrity of the AFS cannot be assured, it should audibly and clearly "give up", as it did here, not try to fly the aicraft with incomplete / inadequate / non-verifiable data.Agreed, but when 'giving up' the AP should clearly indicate the exact reason for it's 'giving up' and the pilots should have an established procedure available to them to enable them to recover from any given situation. Why didn't that happen in AF 447's case? Why didn't the pilots understand what was happening? Over confidence in their automated systems perhaps? Or simply a failure to understand the automated systems?

As an aside, I have a military background, both jet instructing, and fast jet flying. I tend to manually fly, at work, to/below 20K'. I fly / display / compete and teach GA inc aerobatics and upset training. I teach / fly display ex-mil jet trainers / FJs. I am very lucky to be able to do that, and to have had the opportunity / luck to have the training I got. It is not available to all. It might be that background that leads me to hope I could have coped with the situation these guys found themselves in. It is that background to realise that many might not fair much better than this crew did. The report covers it under "startle factor". Unless and until we take crews, in sims or aircraft, and regularly (say a <6 month cycle, not ~3 yrs) give them unanticipated multiple systems failures and expect their raw handling and management skills to cope, we will get (a few) such accidents. 'Startle factor' eh? Well that's a real good one. Do you mean to tell me that when flying a planeload of passengers at 35k feet, today's pilots are complacent and unprofessional enough to be 'startled' if a problem arises? Are they not sufficiently trained to handle such situations? Maybe yet another indication of operator / pilot over confidence in their aircrafts auto systems?

FYI, I have no connection with the airline industry, other than flying frequently as SLF, which is apparently the standard and wonderfully respectful aircrew term for paying passengers.

NigelOnDraft

9th Jul 2012, 14:36

Carjockey

My point is that since airspeed is such a critical factor for the AP to functionIt is not "that critical". APs need many other functions far more importantly than airspeed - many APs (in smaller aircraft) will have no IAS input at all.

...an effective alternative backup method of feeding back airspeed to the AP should be incorporated on aircraftWell, we'll have to disagree then. Not sure there is any aircraft out there with such a system? Where we disgaree is that to me the AP is not a "critical system" - it is "luxury" to help the pilots, and if it drops out, well the pilots just have to fly. In all types, quite often relatively minor system faiilures lead to a requirement to manually fly i.e. the pilot is the backup to the AP, not v-v.

Agreed, but when 'giving up' the AP should clearly indicate the exact reason for it's 'giving up' and the pilots should have an established procedure available to them to enable them to recover from any given situationThey do to an extent, and it did. But the reason the AP "gave up" it is not relevant, what is relevant is it clearly says it is diconnecting, and they acknowledged that ("My controls" or similar). What is important is the systems failed indicate to the pilot(s) they have failed - which again they did in various ways.

'Startle factor' eh? Well that's a real good oneAt one moment you say you are SLF, and now you have the expertise to criticise the report :D 'Startle Factor' is the exact phrase used in the BEA report (repeatedly).

Are they not sufficiently trained to handle such situations? Maybe yet another indication of operator / pilot over confidence in their aircrafts auto systems?Clearly they are not sufficiently trained, else this would not have occurred. What I tried to illustrate to you in my earlier post is I cannot see "how" we will ever get to the stage where airline pilots can reliably cope with such events. Not whilst it is such a cost driven industry, where we recruit pilots who have hardly handled the controls, and who both by choice and company rules, are actively discouraged from doing so to keep/gain experience. And also whilst said pilots have never flown aircraft in anything other than the nice gentle flying you have a right to expect as a passenger.

qquantum

9th Jul 2012, 14:53

Originally posted by infrequentflyer789

1. The loss of airspeed information caused a change in the FCS mode, which the pilots seemed not to notice, as they made no mention of it;
False. Mode change noted and read out. Read the CVR in the report.

I'll concede that — at 2h10min22.1 it was indeed mentioned, but the import was lost in the confusion that followed. I'll amend my post. Thank you.

False. The THS didn't wind up until they were already stalled, and there is no evidence autotrim failed - with nose down control inputs the THS would have followed allowing recovery (plenty of SIM sessions and theoretical models covering this on the tech log thread).

Stall Warning occurred at 02h10m45s – at that time the THS was already moving ANU from its cruise trim condition; what sort of sane FCS/SW engineering logic will allow ANU movement of the THS in a stall?
Without Aural/Visual warning to the pilot?
We've seen that before — A300-600R Nagoya, A320 Perpignan.
In fact The algorithm controlling the stabilizer has accumulated a large value on a forward integrator and this value is much larger than the actual stabilizer deflection limit. Because this integrator has built up a value well past the actual stabilizer limit, the stabilizer did not come off the ANU stop when the pilot reversed his input – as happened several times – until the integrator wound back down to the limit value. The integrator never unwound over the rest of the flight (fall) to impact.

Since you appear to consider this phenomenon to be OK (Designed as required for certification.??) I don't deem it necessary to address the remainder of your comments.

Carjockey

9th Jul 2012, 15:12

@NigelOnDraft
It is not "that critical". APs need many other functions far more importantly than airspeed - many APs (in smaller aircraft) will have no IAS input at all.Not that critical!:eek: This was the reason for AP disconnect on AF 447 which subsequently led to the demise of the aircraft and all on board!

Well, we'll have to disagree then. Not sure there is any aircraft out there with such a system? I know that there is no such system, my point is that there should be.

At one moment you say you are SLF, and now you have the expertise to criticise the report.I am SLF and I am entitled to form my own opinion, regardless of what any 'experts' may say.

infrequentflyer789

9th Jul 2012, 15:19

can you quote to me the accident report this paragraph came from ?

It's three sentences from three different reports. All Boeing. All stalled into the ocean/sea.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409
Birgenair Flight 301
Aeroperú Flight 603

Really these accidents should come immediately to mind for anyone interested in airliner LOC/Stalls (and UAS), but some people seem to have a block which prevents them getting on their radar because they were Boeings, with yokes. Adjust your tilt / gain and look beyond the small side-stick shaped problem in front and see the big yoke shaped one behind, otherwise you risk avoiding only the small storm and flying straight into the big one.

You could also of course have this one for mishandled stalled Boeing :

From the NTSB report's abstract:

...the probable cause of this accident was the loss of control of the aircraft because the flightcrew failed to recognize and correct the aircraft's high angle of attack, low-speed stall and its descending spiral. The stall was precipitated by the flightcrew's improper reaction to erroneous airspeed and Mach indications which had resulted from a blockage of the pitot heads by atmospheric icing.

When investigators analysed the 727's voice recorder, the recording revealed that the pilots believed that the shaking of the stick shaker mechanism was caused by the airliner reaching the speed of sound, and not a warning that it was going into a stall.[2]

Northwest Airlines Flight 6231. Didn't end up in water though, which was the original criteria.

Clandestino

9th Jul 2012, 15:29

What?One can pass ATPL theory exams by learning the answers from the question databank by rote. Some even try. Some succeed.

Well, they turned through 180 degrees on the way down, I wonder if they really were IMC the entire time.They turned while stalled with alpha exceeding 30° all the time! CM2 fought the right bank with full left stick, to no avail. He even didn't comment about inability to control the roll.

Don't be silly, how about downgrading to another mode such as attitude hold?It downgrades to modes considered basic: as Airbus flight director has far less modes than e.g Dash-8's, it can't revert to attitude hold but to heading select and V/S. It's pilot's responsibility to recognize F/D are no longer able to guide the aeroplane reliably and shut them manually down. If nothing else, checklist says so.

I don't think you can read that as the FCS would demand minus 1gFCS demands nothing! It tries to comply with demand coming from autopilot or sidesticks! Full forward stick gives you low g limit of -1 in manual flight, clean.

However Airbus manuals are cr@p, so I can't be certain - can you?Pretty lame excuse for ignorance. It might have helped my Airbus groundschool CBT was made in Germany but it was telling the same story manuals did.

When someone is panicing I think you can have it both ways, they are not thinking logically, and this design feature does not helpSo it was panic and not design, after all?

Because they thought it wasAny signs of rethinking from the powers that be? Could be that FAA won't rethink Airbus certification just because hundreds of posters on anonymous forum want it to?

Michel Asseline, possibly slightly misquoted, but I'm not going to look up what exactly his claim was.It was statement made in post-crash shell-shocked state. Investigation found out engines worked as expected, capt Asseline concurred and retracted it. Of course, noticing this would damage the strong belief of anti-FADEC brigade so they keep trusting the old newspapers instead of competent technical inquiry.

This must refer to the Bangalore crash.Bangalore crash was caused by selecting the altitude below the airport elevation into FCU and making OP DES towards it. Unsurprisingly, descent was broken by hitting the golf course short of threshold. Selecting the altitude below planned landing elevation is a very big no-no on any aeroplane equipped with altitude selector.

Pitot tubes are exposed to outside elementsWell, they measure air pressure, it is natural they have to be exposed to... air.
Do you mean to tell me that when flying a planeload of passengers at 35k feet, today's pilots are complacent and unprofessional enough to be 'startled' if a problem arises?If you paid attention to other aviation incidents and accidents instead of making a whole world-encompassing theories based only on AF447 case, you would not need to ask that question.

what sort of sane FCS/SW engineering logic will allow ANU movement of the THS in a stall?
Without Aural/Visual warning to the pilot?The one which is behind every aeroplane certification since certification business has started: pilot is the master. If he demands nose up, nose up he will get as long as the aeroplane is structurally and aerodynamically capable of performing the feat.

Fact that THS would go nose down if nose-down input were made doesn't sit well with "evil autotrim" myth, eh?

We've seen that before — A300-600R Nagoya, A320 Perpignan. For beginning: A300-600R is not FBW, it has conventional control columns so anyone seen same thing at Nagoya, Perpignan and AF447 is likelyy suffering from cognitive bias.

Because this integrator has built up a value well past the actual stabilizer limit, the stabilizer did not come off the ANU stop when the pilot reversed his input – as happened several times – until the integrator wound back down to the limit value. The integrator never unwound over the rest of the flight (fall) to impact.Bold statement. Couldn't find in the final report. Can you name your sources or would you rather keep them anonymous?

Since you appear to consider this phenomenon to be OK Phenomenon of airing good-sounding and completely false hypotheses on PPRuNe is just something we have to live with if we want to keep the discussion open.

I am SLF and I am entitled to form my own opinion, regardless of what any 'experts' may say. You are absolutely entitled to your own opinion, not to your own facts.