psycho joe: I'm interested in the spectacular results that 2º ND and idle thrust would yield in an A330. The aim is – in the face of conflicting/confusing information – to get the aircraft stable after recovering from a UA. Idle is a known power, and 2º ND is a reasonable attitude (to not stall and not overspeed) while you trouble-shoot the problem.

Industry training focusses on recovery from an upset, but it's not good at follow-up when conflicting information is still present. This is where power + attitude = performance is useful. It's drummed into every military pilot until their ears burn – for good reason

A great danger with some quarters of civilian aviation is to look toward the military as a beacon in training standards that can be applied to the civilian world. It is even a greater mistake to assume a military pilot is well equipped to handle incidents just because he is from a military background.

The first generation of upset training I did with Airbus/Boeing came about due poor civilian and inappropriate military experience in dealing with airliners in an upset. That is, many civilian pilots have never been upside down in an aircraft and Boeing was concerned with the possible recovery techniques of an ex-fighter pilot in a jet airliner- rudder use from memory. And the RAAF has had a sadly spectacular history in this area.

Back to your first line, I recall in Ansett training when unreliable airspeed was not an Airbus recall, their philosophy of building a pilot up from raw data and power and attitude knowledge, to introductions of the evolving levels of automation. By accident, it was probably an excellent way to train on the new and evolving glass cockpit concepts. High altitude handling came from experience with the 727. I recall doing high altitude upsets in the SIM and never needing to drop the nose into the brown.

Sorry but you're wrong. A stable, thrust idle descent in an A330 (depending of course on wt and alt and spd, but lets say heavy and high, and going from M.8something then reducing to green dot) would be 1.0 to 2.5 deg NOSE UP at idle thrust. To go 2.0 - 2.5 NOSE DOWN as you have suggested would guarantee an overspeed and a massive sink rate. This is a problem with preconceived ideas carried over from other aircraft types.

My theory (re AF447) is that Bonin went from sitting in the dark, probably tired, probably bored, to suddenly getting an overspeed warning. This would at least explain why his initial reaction (though incorrect) might have been to pull back on the stick, in order to avoid an overspeed. As already suggested, an overspeed warning might have also drowned out the STALL STALL warning, which is based on AOA and not airspeed.

`

Quote:

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when terrestrial automated transport experiences a fault, it fails gracefully and stops on the road

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Not necessarily and the resultant `hull’ loss can be extremely spectacular in all cases however; refer above to my comment in italics and underlined.

Krusty, I get it alright and have done for many a year; you succinctly lay it out here:

Quote:

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`The main issue is the pure evil of the Jetstar Cadet Scam. It is in existence for one reason and one reason only. To drive down wages and conditions. Anything else is just a diversion. The creation of cheaper pilots will lead to one inexorable conclusion, disaffected and distracted pilots.'

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It goes far deeper than this; we all know how this came about; whether we will all admit it or not is another question; pilots have no one to blame but themselves.

It is just not the Jetstar cadets but the total pilot wage and T&Cs throughout the world and I would not rely upon the supposed `The FAA has recognized this and have mandated a system to put value back into the profession’ as a partial or full fix for this’.

Ask my fellow pilot friends in the US who, after retirement saw their pension funds obliterated or destroyed by their former employer; American Airlines being the current airline using Chapter 11 to screw their employees.

Putting one’s faith or trust in a politician in this country at present will yield little though possibly a little more than reliance upon the disgraceful apology of the organisation loosely know as our Industry Regulator.

My point was industry will use technology to reduce the crew resource cost which should be recognised resolving the problem.

The argument is pilot wages, T&Cs and `everything else is smoke and mirrors’; until pilots again stand up to this, divided they will continue to fail.

A 300 hr cadet belongs in the jump seat, given flying time, and serve their apprenticeship as we all did. They do NOT belong in the RH seat, unless supervised by a competent F/O and Skipper, and I for one say if there is a hull loss due to this maniacal decision, I hope the company go up on manslaughter charges, but of course they won't. They will go to extreme lengths to blame the flight crew, and /or the engineers, they will look into their personal lives, they will leave no stone unturned, before they take any responsibility. Seriously, you blokes have to get together and insist on a competent F/O, it IS your ship, your life, your job, your right, your profession, and if you keep on accepting some kid with bum fluff on his face, in the RH seat rather than in the jump seat, because it is now becoming company policy, then you have to look at yourselves as well. Sorry, in our day we would have said (and did) not going anywhere until you give me a competent F/O, happy to have the kid in the jump seat, but that is it. If you don't move on it, they will keep going ahead with it. Time to get some union action, before there is a disaster none of us want to even think about.

Well said TG, except that

Those old enough, that can remember those days are too busy looking after their out of seniority management palm greasing jobs for mates jobs to do so and also actively discourage....

The rest who are too green to know any better.

Well said TG, couldn't agree more.:D:D You Jet* Captains grow some cohunas!

As gobbledock would put it...tick tock!

Thank you TG for the usual wisdom.

There is also an issue with Senators X's activities in the Senate hearings in that each and every politician has been put on notice about what is happening. While they may succumb to the Rat charm at the moment, there is not one of them that can state they were not warned in the event of the smoking hole which none of us want or even contemplate occurring.

Therefore while the Execs may duck and weave around the legal system, each and every pollie who did nothing will be fair game for the media if it happens.

Senator Albanese should have a fun time while he explains his dismissal of the findings, although based on current polls he and many of his friends may have bought enough time to avoid being held accountable when they get booted out or into opposition.

Fair enough psycho joe: I haven't flown that particular Airbus, which sounds more nose-high, but the principle is to get it into a known safe part of the envelope using power and attitude. If 0º is the normal descent attitude, that's something an A330 pilot will know. The point is, have an easy to recall power and attitude that will keep you safe for a few minutes while you sort out the mess.

Gnadenburg: One part of the original Boeing/Airbus jet upset training was to de-train military pilots operating large transport aircraft. You are spot-on: the rudder was the issue; the rudder was used a lot in a small military jet, but in an airliner, it's for engine failures and crosswinds – but mostly a footrest.

Standards of training needs to be seen in context. RAAF pilots' course aims to turn out the next bunch of fighter pilots; not the next FO for an A330. However, the general airmanship, discipline and the dedication to high-levels of professional knowledge (in context), needed to pass the course, will hold a pilot in good stead in any role.

I have been trained in: GA; airlines; RAAF and OEMs (4 times) – the RAAF won hands-down for quality of training; Ansett was also very good; OEM training was appalling; GA was poor compared to the others, but that was in the 70s.

The RAAF multi-engine world included a VMCA demonstration in the multi-engine syllabus. Everyone considered it practicing bleeding but it went unchallenged until the loss of the B707. I think it came out in a 4 corners report, but there were a few other near-losses. The military, in general, have a philosophy of training pilots in the extremes of the flight envelope, but applying that mentality to transport category aircraft went too far.

I haven't seen a detailed analysis but my guess would be that there are just as many appalling accidents involving high-time pilots with excellent pedigrees in the front seats as there are low time "culprits". American, Air France, Fedex Qantas, Southwest etc etc-all have had accidents involving handling skills, situation awareness, CRM or systems knowledge. Qantas and BA both managed to nearly end up with big jets involved in fuel starvation despite having fuel in the tanks!

The key point is the training and checking environment, and the wider airline culture that operates in. If the world aviation industry is to grow at much better than 1-2% per year then some carriers (and all the jobs that go with them) will be growing at a rate that means they will want to rely on cadets to fuel their expansion.

It may be outside of the experience base of some who comment, but properly managed with excellent training, mentoring and follow-up, cadet schemes can and do work well. Clearly you don't want bare minimum capability in the LHS with cadets flying their first jet-and no serious airline would contemplate that.

Motivation for the introduction of cadet schemes is another thing. Greed by management is not the worst thing, if, and only if, the Chief Pilot and the head of the 217 regime do their job and fearlessly so. Quality SOPS, independent check pilots, good union involvement in safety committees and pilot welfare, good safety and QA programmes, a genuine "just culture" backed with a strong seniority system that guarantees independence for decision makers, quality and un-rushed LOFT, recurrent and PC sessions that really add value in cockpit management and handling skills, remedial training programmes and finally-nothing in training, rostering, fatigue management, endorsement etc that could be described as "minimal".

And those who have been around a while in many environments can put their hand on their hearts as one and attest that in the longer term, doing it properly saves money, not costs money.

If that's not the case then we can all see where the rot has started.

But please, no more of the emotive "who do you want flying on that dark and stormy night".... stuff, it just might be two high time drivers who both agree they're doing a great job right up to the end.

From someone who doesn't know much about cadets, the history of such past schemes etc, it's pretty clear that this one isn't working. Add to it that this one is all about conditions of employment and saving the airline money rather than putting the appropriate experience up front, you would think that the regulator would be very concerned?

How does Jetstar continue to get away with these incidents when Tiger and Ansett were shut down over their incidents?

There's something very smelly about all of this. You used to be able to get on a jet airliner in this country with FULL confidence that you had the best available in the two front seats.

Now you have to make an active choice about what risks you take when choosing an airline to fly in this country. I've got enough info to make that choice, the flying public do not.

Jeeze it must be hard work for some of you guys being such skygods who are so firm in their belief that they would have saved the day on the Air France flight if they were there as 'australians' are the best pilots in the world (now that quote did make me laugh). Surely all that any of us can hope for is that if such an unfortunate mix of circumstances should ever occur to us on a dark stormy night somewhere that through a mix of good airmanship, good flying skills and a huge dose of GOOD LUCK that we may survive. To expect that you can do better is asking for trouble.

Not at Jetstar...
 

This is what a quality cadet program looks like:

Unfortunately it is nowhere to be seen at Jetstar.

The holes in the swiss cheese slices continue to move towards alignment.

PG

PS. CASA - You are shamefully disrespecting the public safety you are entrusted with :=

After reading the accident report and the transcript, I think airmanship and good flying skills are the actions that are being questioned from this crew?

And I hope the blokes and girls up the front of any aircraft that I fly in aren't relying on a huge dose of GOOD LUCK to make it through any abnormal situation they may 'find' themselves in.

But this is what I am saying, we all have to acknowledge that sometimes good luck does play a big part in surviving these things. The A320 into the Hudson without doubt showed great airmanship and flying skills, it also though had a hell of a lot of luck involved, the river was calm, there were ferries near by, the birds struck at a height that allowed them to clear the Brooklyn bridge by not more than 100ft. The LHR 777, good airmanship and good flying skills + a huge amount of good luck that they happened to be on the ONLY runway at LHR that had a significant undershoot area. The list could continue, no matter what you may think luck does play a part in these things, or call it fate, good fortune, what ever. I just find it a bit strange when people sit back and are so quick to criticize our fellow airman who 'undoubtedly' mishandled a situation, but what would YOU do, how do we know until we experience these things, read Chuck Yeagers autobiography, he is without doubt one of the best test pilots to every fly and he states several times during the book that he is only still here through a good dose of good fortune and airman who he considered to be his equal or superior are no longer here because there luck ran out.

Surely all the Air France episode shows is that even 'experienced' pilots can mishandle an aircraft straight to an accident, the American Airlines Airbus that lost it's tail was mishandled by a very experienced crew, as was the BMI 737 into East Midlands, a very experienced crew shut the wrong engine down, as was the Air NZ / German A320 where a highly experienced crew stalled the thing into the sea.

What I find more dangerous than these potential cadets is the arrogance of some pilots who feel that because they have had the good fortune to have had a mainly incident free career they consider themselves to be highly experienced and therefore impervious to 'screwing up'

OK, fair enough, but if you don't put yourself into those situations in the first place you wont have to rely on good luck. Sullenbergers situation was a little (a lot) different to the Air France jobby.

The main thing now is to learn from it, so that it will never be repeated.

Military training has become a dangerous argument in favor of cadet schemes and it is often espoused by ex-military people.

Yes, Western military training is an excellent preparation for the airlines. It is essential it is coupled with piloting attitudes devoid of red flags. The quality of training can never be replicated in the civilian world due cost and risk. There's a documentary I watched on F18 training for Canadians where their trainees cooked an engine during an in-flight re-light demo and one candidate damaged an aircraft on landing with aircraft carrier design limitations! That was in one episode!

Military experience from non-Western ideologies produces some of the worst airline pilots imaginable. It can couple cultural faults with cockiness- Korean Air Force for example.

Military training should be respected and seen for what it is. Its limitations and sometimes inappropriateness needs to be considered. Sadly, piloting standards in the civilian airline world have declined so rapidly due low cost carriers and cadet schemes, that military training is now way above the mark and the transitional issues to the civilian world are seemingly ignored.

Leaders from within our industry use military training as an argument in favor of cadet schemes. This is a foolish argument when the driver for the cadet schemes is cost.

I think it's totally wrong that people can buy their way into a job. How can the airline be putting the best people there, cadet or otherwise, if they are selling the seat. Pay to fly schemes should be banned. Jet star cadetship is not much better.

Cadet schemes are now totally cost driven. It is such a powerful factor that training departments are putting under-done pilots on the line due management pressures.

The real risk will be the generational mesh- when cadets are junior captains flying with fresh cadets. Technology and tombstone based training will address the risk; but will there be gaping holes in piloting skills and knowledge base?

Gnadenburg

From what I understand the ROK Air Force fighter pilots are excellent and fearless at that job, being fighter pilots. Unfortunately that skill set (as Stephen Coonts said "Balls the size of grapefruit and brains the size of a pea" doesn't translate well into the airline cockpit. The complete mission focus, lack of need for CRM, passenger comfort, storm avoidance, "delay until ready", "safety first" etc etc needs to be refocused into the world of airlines. For many years Korean fighter pilots didn't get that focus translation when they joined KAL or Asiana. Now as far as is possible within any airline, they do. Or at least that need is recognised.

I imagine any airline that took on fighter pilots without transition training into the airline culture would get into trouble.

Algie

I would take a Western fighter pilot without transition training over a cadet (without any real training at all) next to me in the flight deck any day, more-so if there is a serious emergency to be dealt with. The very skills that make a pilot a good fighter pilot also make them a good airline pilot: the ability to think under pressure, able to think in four dimensions, able to adapt quickly to a changing environment, ability to coordinate crew members (that may not necessarily be in the same aircraft), and good stick and rudder skills.

The real stand out examples in my career of airline pilots with poor CRM, mission focus, poor decision making skills, poor airmanship, and lack of customer focus were not fighter pilots. To put that in perspective though, and to recognise that 'no organisation has a monopoly on F-wits', one of the most stand out poor pilots I know eventually made it to be the CO of the RAAF VIP squadron in the early 90s :rolleyes:

Here's a bit more fuel for the debate from planetalking:

AF447 disaster will dog air safety arguments in 2012 | Plane Talking

And I do remember, though I don't have it in front of me right now, that in my 2nd Edition of "Handling the Big Jets" which I received 40 years back, the author Davies of the UK CAA advocated airlines using small jet trainers (presumably of the Macchi/Hawk/Gnat variety) to keep airline pilots up with their basic "edge of envelope" handling skills. I do know that Alitalia had 4 MB-326D trainers presumably for that purpose in the 60s and 70s.

Davies probably knew more about basic and advanced handling techniques and issues than anyone before or since. Yet his advice has never been taken on. And who ignored it? Almost by definition, people who knew less than him!! Heavy jet simulators simply cannot, at the "edges" replicate exactly what happens. In Australia a targeted recurrent (6 monthly) training programme could be outsourced (to a special RAAF PC-9 training squadron or BAE or similar) at probably $15,000 a year for 2 X 1 day ground school then 2 X 2hr sessions in a PC-9 simulator then 2 X 2hr session in the aircraft. That might cost Qantas/Jetstar say $35 million a year but what a bang for the buck that would give this whole sorry issue!! Probably pay for itself in reduced insurance premiums.

A wistful thought maybe......but much of my career was defined by issues covered in "Handling the Big Jets", either because they were ignored, or because they worked.....and its not too late to get something right.

Algie

T-vasis Yes, it's true BA have been offering a cadet scheme off and on since the 60s. They still recruit pilots from a variety of back grounds too.
BA used to send their cadets to fly turboprops and other regional aircraft to get some more experience. Also, their cadet schemes of old were a different animal to their new cadet scheme which they have just been interviewing for.

Europe as flown by the airlines is a fairly easy place to fly versus Australia. (Nearly 100% Radar environment, SIDS, STARS, ILSs)

I don't know how the Jetstar scheme works WRT being released on the line and what airports/approaches they can go to.

The old scheme BA would pay for the cadet's training. I believe it had a pretty high wash out rate (versus other full time schemes). The cadet would pay for it with a lower income for a few years post training.

I think Redsnail has hit the nail on the head, flying almost anywhere else in the world is a very relaxed easy environment compared to Australia. Australia is a true 3rd world country when it comes to ATC, NAV Facilities, Procedures etc. The worst thing about it is that the ozzie authorities are too busy patting themselves on the back about knowing how to do things properly whilst the rest of the world has its head in the sand to notice just how crap and quite frankly dangerous the Australian environment has become.

This does put an increased expectation on the Cadet pilot, one thing I noticed when doing my first round of line training in Oz was that you spend 99% of the time focussing on complicated procedures like f**ken CTA steps and CTAF's that you don't have time to just concentrate on flying the aircraft. I can honestly say that after flying A320's all over the world for almost 10 years before returning to Oz that after my line training I felt like I had become a worse pilot because the training was so confused and all over the place. Thankfully I had the ability just to chew up and spit out some of the rubbish that I was being fed, unfortunately for the cadets they don't have this option. Lets put this in perspective, my first airline in the UK had the grand total of 10 sectors + 2 sectors for test as your line training allowance as a new pilot on the jet fleet coming from turboprops, the line training from start to finish took 5 days. At the end 99% of the trainees pass without incident. Cadets were afforded the luxury of 20-30 sectors or approx 2 weeks and once again 99% of people passed. This is just not possible in Oz and there perhaps needs to be some recognition that Australia is not the place for cadet schemes.

I doubt flying an Airbus around Australia is too hard.

But I do doubt if a low cost carrier such as Jetstar puts the effort into their cadet scheme to the extent that BA does. Or Qantas.

In reference to SID and STARS and wallowing around on them at 250kts. This is what I refer to as the "green line". Due lack of training, if you take a cadet off the green line they are lost. Where I am, Cadets are not competent in visual approaches or raw data flying ( especially self-positioning onto an approach ).

These are bread and butter skills. OK, you can create SOPS that don't don't require or have a need for these type of skills and consequently, make your operation less efficient. But industry wide, a lack of any experience with these type of skills lends toward the disaster. And we are seeing that with the recently realized pilot loss of control phenomenon. Yet, Airbus has had a problem for some time in this area with a supposedly simple handling aircraft. Three crashes on Go Around and I would imagine many, many close calls.

Gents,

I don't want to move away from the topic by discussing the merits of military training. My concern is the convenience where industry leaders are comparing military training with commercially driven cadet schemes.

They are justifying a training program dangerously pushing the minimums to drive a commercial benefit versus an incredibly expensive military flight training program. This view needs to be smashed.


Algie

My experience with non-Western military pilots has been eye opening. Egyptian and Bulgarian ex-MIG drivers topping the incompetence charts equally. Why did we ever fear the Red Army? Koreans I have heard the issues second hand.

Exactly right, in Europe and the States it is very very unlikely that in the normal course of things you will have to deviate from the green line. This means that the new pilot has time to 'think' about the aircraft and what it is doing. I am still unsure how much training value is involved in a Melbourne - Launceston sector where you end up with a cross between a DME/GPS and Visual arrival off the back of a 25 minute sector where you haven't even had the change to brief. Airbus went a long way to make flying the aircraft simple but when you then throw in stupid SOP's like 250kts by 5000 and 210kts by 3000 you start confusing the situation. I would argue that the airbus was not designed to be flown in Airspace where descents are interrupted by wacko CTA steps that mean instead of flying it like a jet transport aircraft should be flown you have to dirty up just to achieve an unrealistic profile whilst achieving unrealistic speeds. The question perhaps that should be asked is why are these high performance aircraft mixing it with GA at non-controlled sh*t pot little airports whilst trying to fly the thing like a big 172.

Yeah there are a few Jetstar Captains who came from overseas saying that only to realise that because of all the associated BS involved in flying around Australia that it can be quite stressful. In one descent you can cop a speed up slow down (trashing your profile) a clearance to descend that takes you out of controlled airspace, and then have your STAR cancelled track direct to a 3 mile final for a visual approach.

I think the issue is that if the Captain has to worry about all of the above and then additionally has to keep a very keen eye on the FO due to lack of experience major things can be missed due to overload.

Additional to all that there are some control zones that don't even fit into a jet profile!

Whilst I have had both RAAF and GA pilots next to me on unlimited occasions as F/O's and both have performed as one would expect, some of us senior blokes used to get a bit testy with some ex RAAF blokes who were the "ace of the base". Yes, they knew it all, yes, we were lucky to have them, yes, if it were not for this damn nbrs thing they would have been or should have been the CP by now, in fact a few were downright a pain in the arse. Yes they could fly, and were good to have around, but then so were so many GA blokes who had come thru the school of hard knocks. It all boils down to the bloke/girl themselves, give me the steady, cool, unpretentious one every time, but NEVER a 300 hr cadet, who belongs on the jump seat, for quite some time yet.

Off topic a little but thought I would share. Walked into the cockpit of an SQ 744 or 777 (can't recall which) with a 2man crew some time back. Skipper was an expat(aussie) and FO a very green looking singaporean(assumed). I got to listen to the very professional and impressive to me at least pre flt briefing, until, at the end the skipper said if we have any problems at all just sit there and don't touch a thing, I will do everything. Rattled me a bit to think what would happen if the skipper swallowed a chicken bone or developed chest pain. Am I right in guessing this idea of inexperience in the cockpit has been around some time and oz is only now catching up on "worlds best practice"?

Because mate, you operate in Australia, worlds best practice in Aviation :ok:

Just ask CASA, ASA & Qantas. They, between them, know it all.

There is no simple solution. I draw your attention to Turkish airlines 738 flight 1951 which stalled on approach into amsterdam. Captain pilot not flying ex military with 5000 hrs on F4's. FO 4000hr pilot flying conducting line training. Safety pilot in the jump seat.

ATS went into retard mode due to faulty rad alt on captains side. No one noticed till stick shaker that speed was ref - 40.

Who's at fault. FO? The captain as pilot monitoring or safety dude for saying or seeing nothing. There's no insurance against incompetence.

AH
I'm hearing you but full back stick from cruise to crash (apart from a brief reprieve) does not inspire confidence, it shows complete lack of basic flying skills.
I will judge this incident in hindsight and I will say they were totally incompetant, ffs its pretty obvious mate..

That OzSync character can't be a real pilot..far too reasoned and sensible ..surely no place for the likes of him or her in aviation!!

Airline culture? You mean slaved to the automatics and shiver in their shoes if the flight director falls over?

Any pilot be he ex military, ex floatplane, ex night freight, ex corporate or ex RFDS, undergoes a type rating course on the airliner he will fly. That course includes the principles of CRM. Included on that type rating course are numerous briefings. In other words the course is an integral part of the so called `transition training` into the airline culture. Where is the problem that you imagine specifically with former fighter pilots? It certainly did not exist in my experience.

In the small Central Pacific airline I was privileged to join many years ago, most pilots were ex military including several of the senior captains who were former fighter pilots or jet bomber pilots. One had flown F4 Phantoms from aircraft carriers during the Vietnam war while one was a helicopter pilot in the same war. Another had flown the F111, as well as the Phantom. Two were former Mirage and Sabre pilots that were in aerobatic teams. One had even flown P51 Mustangs. The airline had an excellent flight safety record while operating into black hole approaches without ILS in Pacific atolls.

AH:

Because the effing Government has sold every airport they can and isn't building any new ones.