"A380 is a zero-crash aircraft" say Airbus

[fmgc]

Anyway, my point is, check your facts before spouting such rubbish on PPRuNe.

MOR, I would suggest that you do the same, you are totally inaccurate in your comments.

You might find this interesting.

[BOAC]

Just to endorse the post by Carnage - I'm sure anyone who knows anything about an event or issue will probably not recognise the same when they see/hear the media description of it, and yes Channel 4 is well known for getting things wrong and were actually found guilty of this in a trial.

It is possible that the quote 'statement' from AB was either NOT what the man said, but a 'journalist's licence' 'titilation' of the statement OR it was a poor translation from the French. It is also possible he did say it, of course, but I would be - no - must be kind!

I think very few of us involved in aviation believe in the possibilty of a machine with NO pending failures or design faults which could cause a disaster (even more so when software has a huge hand in things). History is, (as someone said vis-a-vis the Titanic) littered with 'unsinkable'/'unbreakable' proven wrong, so I suspect it is a misquote - at best. It would also, I suspect, leave AB wide open to massive legal claims for damages if they were 'wrong'?

[barit1]

Bus429
OK, I'll accept the "design certification error" on the DC-10 re consequences of pylon departure; BUT the B747 fleet has lost (I believe) two freighters when an inboard pylon departed and carried the outboard away as well. It's pure luck this hasn't happened on a pax 747.

Don't know if the Airbus types are similarly vulnerable.

[DozyWannabe]

I suppose one thing that events like these over the years show is that while competition between privately-held entities can be good in terms of bringing products to market, and providing customers with what they want, there are occasions when safety is compromised as a result.

Examples include the case of the Stella, when the unofficial practice of two companies 'racing' to the Isle Of Wight resulted in severe loss of life, the aforementioned Titanic, when an extended arrangement of watertight doors may have caused added inconvinience for passengers, but may well have saved the ship (the Lusitania and Britannic being unfair comparisons due to the probable involvement of ammunition), then later the DC-10, where a desire to reach the market ahead of Lockheed led to corners being cut in the design stage - cases in point being AA191, where a redesign of the hydraulic slat actuator system would have prevented the stall which claimed the aircraft despite the loss of the engine and pylon, and of course the infamous cargo door locking issues which later caused similar problems in the 747 Classic as well.

I must say that in context, the Airbus comments do read more like he's talking about a 'crash' as it applies to the onboard computers. Unfortunately it is in the nature of commercial entities to attempt to cover their arses in cases like these, and no-one is really blameless here. The controversy surrounding the Habsheim accident is well documented above, but lest we forget, Boeing did their best to argue that pilot error was the cause of the Colorado Springs accident - and here is where an overly litigious culture on both sides of the Atlantic should definitely take some blame.

[MOR]

If you can't visually judge the difference between 100' and 30' your landings must be shocking!

You completely miss the point. When you are landing, you are judging height visually (or with the help of an electronic voice). In this case, the pilot was basing his flight path on the barometric altimeter, which was reading incorrectly.

fmgc

What's your point? The article you link to is the same one I was quoting from...

BOAC

I might agree with you were it not for the relatively large amount of empirical evidence that the programme was based on. Perhaps you would care to comment on exactly what in those two programmes you found inaccurate.

I guess you three must be Airbus drivers, as you seem very keen to accept the AAI line on this accident...

[Carnage Matey!]

In this case, the pilot was basing his flight path on the barometric altimeter, which was reading incorrectly.

Just below and left of the barometric altimeter display is a radio altimeter display. The FO also has an indepent radio altimeter display on his PFD. Not reslving the 70' difference between the two readouts sounds a bit gash too me.

guess you three must be Airbus drivers, as you seem very keen to accept the AAI line on this accident...

I've flown Boeing and Airbus and I can tell when someone is attributing blame to a system which isn't responsible for it. The Habsheim pilots messed it up. End of story.

[DozyWannabe]

MOR

You completely miss the point. When you are landing, you are judging height visually (or with the help of an electronic voice). In this case, the pilot was basing his flight path on the barometric altimeter, which was reading incorrectly.

...The article you link to is the same one I was quoting from...

You're selectively quoting though.

What that article suggests is that mistakes were made on both sides - Airbus, for being over-confident in their computer technology (which was later remedied - though unfortunately not without further loss of life), and the pilots for not taking sensible precautions, like making sure the barometric altimeter was correctly calibrated before take-off.

What saddens me is that this culture of 'mine's better than yours' is actually hurting the cause of safety, because both manufacturers are too busy tearing chunks out of one another rather than concentrating, or dare I say it collaborating, on their designs to make air travel safer for everyone.

[BOAC]

Perhaps you would care to comment on exactly what in those two programmes you found inaccurate

- MOR - read my post again?

[Atreyu]

Wow, i've never seen such mud slinging, between airbus and boeing 'camps' and individual's themselves! lighten up!

fdr, CB's?

AT

[Flight Safety]

What troubles me about the quote from Mr. Joye (if indeed he said this), is that a flight test engineer could become very complacent during flight test, if he believes he's testing an already flawless design. I want test pilots and flight test engineers to have the absolute freedom to challenge a design if they find or think there's something wrong with it.

A test pilot or test engineer must be constantly looking at everything and having full dialog with the design engineers during flight test. Both groups (flight test and design engineering) must be working together to make sure a new aircraft is as safe as it can possibly be, making whatever changes they feel are necessary to achieve that goal. A test pilot or test engineer who's not doing this because he believes (or has been told) that he's testing an already perfected design, is nothing more than management's glorified rubber stamp.

Flight Safety

[Grunf]

DozyWannabe:

Too bad this doesn't materialize (cooperation). However some level exists on critical matters for example on problems with vapors in wing reservoirs or problems with the wiring.

This types of problems do get the experts in the field around the same table (all the major manufacturers + regulators) in order to extract some mutually beneficial solution (SFAR 88 etc).



Flight Safety:

From my experience Test Pilots and Flight Test Engineers do get involved from the beginning, starting at conceptual phase. As soon as you start putting down the "orange" parts you get them in the game, even earlier if test pilot is in mind.

I remember a specific egress door being designed to accommodate a slightly "balky" figure of a certain chief flight test pilot (including his parachute). Good thing it was never tested.

Of course you involve them in each and every phase of the project. Again, from experience, they were quite instrumental in the flight test phase.Also, knowing them helps a lot, in terms of trust, and consequently it helps in getting back to the board (not literally) and resolving "issues" arising from flight tests.

So, my guess the guy who said that is more then competent. However, what comes out and gets misinterpreted is another story.


I guess in everyone's interest is to produce the safest possible product in order to reduce the possibility of failure. I guess AI's PR team thought it would be a right thing to say. Little they know...

Cheers

[DingerX]

lomapaseo's right, more or less, "Zero-crash" and what it means are a matter of semantics. And, whatever it means, there are plenty of single failures that will lead to a crash: for example, anything that causes massive structural failure is "game over".


But I wouldn't fault Joye too much. On the marketing side, he's right: on a high-profile aircraft like this, you cannot have the thing crash, at least not before hundreds are built. The Swissair MD-11 didn't just kill Swissair, it killed the aircraft as well. The Concorde was killed by its first crash. The Comet -- well, I think the RAF is just now or has just recently retired those airframes, but its commercial service was slaughtered by a design defect.

They can't afford to pull an A320-into-the-trees stunt; or any of the more memorable Paris airshow stuff. So saying it's a "Zero-Crash Aircraft" really can't hurt them. If it does, it's over anyway.

[PAXboy]

Flight Safety

... a flight test engineer could become very complacent during flight test, if he believes he's testing an already flawless design. I want test pilots and flight test engineers to have the absolute freedom to challenge a design if they find or think there's something wrong with it.

Makes sense to me, a Pax. The comparison I am going to draw will probably be rejected as nothing like the testing of IT systems on an a/c.

When testing computer systems that take human input and process it and produces results, they are (usually) tested in the following manner. The tester is shown how to use the system as if it was already finished. The tester then designs test that follow the correct pattern of usage and those that will not. In other words, they also test a system by acting as someone who had not been correctly taught how to use it and see what faults are generated (if any).

Now, flight crew are trained how to use the equipment but may make a mistake. Does this suggest that the system must be tested - at least in part - by those who are not part of the design team? Perhaps they already do.

In all walks of life we have seen people design systems ranging from a paper based form [fill in the blanks] to a computer system to run the trading floor of international banks and if you send in someone who has never seen the system before, show them what they ought to do and then wait ten minutes as they find the failure point for you!

[G-DANM]

I think airbus must remember that the A380 is not going to remain a spotless aircraft just rolled off the production line with brand new parts. Even with all their computers there is always a human element in the engineering side that is impossible to remove. If they made the plane pilot proof, all it needs is for an engineer to bodge a job on it (Alaskan MD83 rings to mind) and it can be enough to bring the plane down. Nothing to do with Airbus but as with all air crashes, in the eyes of the customer the aircraft is at fault.

[MOR]

DozyWannabe

pilots for not taking sensible precautions, like making sure the barometric altimeter was correctly calibrated before take-off.

If you read the article, you will discover that the crew did perform an altimeter crosscheck before departure, and that the error occured between then and wheels-up. It wasn't a calibration error.

Carnage Matey!

Just below and left of the barometric altimeter display is a radio altimeter display. The FO also has an indepent radio altimeter display on his PFD. Not reslving the 70' difference between the two readouts sounds a bit gash too me.

How could that be gash? The article states that the altimeter error occurred after the runway crosscheck. Once the aircraft is off the ground, there is no valid crosscheck between the two (barometric and radio that is).

Again, from the article, the captain had deliberately chosen to NOT use the radalt, his reason being that the altimeter and VSI readouts, being analogue, were easier to interpret correctly.

He was also right to do so so another reason, which is that radalts are prone to jumping around as you fly over ground obstacles. You should NEVER use a radalt as a height reference when flying at low level, unless you are flying in the protected area where it's uses is intended (ie on the final part of an ILS approach).

I'm not trying to excuse the crew, simply to point out that some of the comments regarding this accident are well wide of the mark.

Particularly laughable is the idea that, because C4 may have made a mistake in some of their stories, everything they do is automatically suspect. In these programmes, they used very reliable experts and the actual DFDR information from the accident aircraft (allegedly the accident aircraft, anyway). What Ray Davies found was that when the captain commanded a climb, the software over-rode him and commanded a pitch reduction. No matter what the captain did, he was never going to recover from that position. Of course if it had been a Boeing he might have got away with it, but that is neither here nor there. I don't rate either manufacturer over the other, they both make nice aircraft with, occasionally, fatal flaws.

Not like my favourite 146, not one of those has ever crashed through mechanical or avionic failure... but that is an argument for another day.

[Carnage Matey!]

How could that be gash? The article states that the altimeter error occurred after the runway crosscheck. Once the aircraft is off the ground, there is no valid crosscheck between the two (barometric and radio that is).

Its simple airmanship. You've got one, possibly two baro altimeters saying 100 ft. The visual picture looks like less than 100ft. You have two independent radio altimeters indicating 30 ft. You have an aural auto callout as you descend below 100ft. You've got a third standby baro altimeter reading something else. Something in that picture doesn't add up and to press on with an unresolved conflict like that is rather poor decision making. Even if you don't want to use the rad alt because of ground obstructions (and IIRC the display line was along the runway, hence no large objects on the ground to affect the reading), there's still a 70 ft discrepancy between the radio and baro altimeters, which is 40ft too much even with maximum tolerance on the 320 baro.

Particularly laughable is the idea that, because C4 may have made a mistake in some of their stories, everything they do is automatically suspect

May have made A mistake!!!??? Many of their 'showpiece documentaries' have been shown to be little more than works of fiction from their creators with barely more than a glancing blow at the truth. It would be intersting to run a poll amongst the professional flying community to see who really gave any credence to a C4 program related to aviation.

What Ray Davies found was that when the captain commanded a climb, the software over-rode him and commanded a pitch reduction.

At precisely what stage did that occur, because you'd best have precise facts if you want to make allegations in a TV show. Did this override occur before or after the go-around was sequenced? Was any form of alpha protection triggered by this time? Was the pitch reduction in response to the decaying speed caused by bringing the thrust levers back to idle late in the flypast? None of these points seem to be addressed in your posts. Its easy to selectively quote events in a TV show. It doesn't mean thats the full story. A few seconds here or there makes all the difference but Joe Public will never know or understand.

No matter what the captain did, he was never going to recover from that position

Couldn't agree more. He'd flown himself up a metaphorical valley with no way out. Nor would he have been likely to have recovered in a Boeing. He'd probably have been flying in stick shaker for most of the flypast and an attempt to increase pitch at the end would more than likely have seen him stall out of the sky and go into the forest nose first rather than tail first.

[BOAC]

Severe thread creep here(!) but I must side with CM here, and having spent some of my flying career at 100' or below I say that IMO NO sensible pilot would attempt to fly at 100' AGL using a pressure altimeter. Also any non-sensible pilot who did that should have been a little concerned to see 30' of air beneath the a/c. The way I see this accident (NB personal opinion only) is that the attempt to complete a low, slow fly-by was ruined by doing it downwind (windsock clearly visible), causing the Captain to attempt to fly even slower to reduce g/s, leaving him too low,slow and with engines spooled down. Cause then, IMO 'Display-itis' - a well known cause. Forget IMO 'altimeter errors'

Regarding the Boeing/AB thing, it IS debatable whether Mr B would have give him the last few feet with the last remaing 'spare' knot or two - sufficient maybe to just brush the trees - but as CM says, it was probably the AB protections which stopped the aircraft stalling and dropping in wing down which would probably have killed most on board.

Maybe the mods can split this thread so we can continue discussions about display flying and second-rate TV stuff and return this thread to whether the 380 is completely SNAFU proof?

Edited to add (again) my favourite cartoon, seen on the AIS desk at Tegel just after the crash: two birds in a nest, one says "Qui a dit merde?"

[fmgc]

MOR

Don't forget that the article that you are quoting from are the pilot's comments in response to the official investigations so perhaps a little squewed from the truth.

Not matter how low the chap flew he should not have been relying on the protections to give him full power anyway. He should have just gone around and put the thrust levers into TOGA.

He did go to prison by the way:

We already know that the French authorities aren't shy about accusing airmen of criminal acts. Captain Michel Asseline was imprisoned after crashing an Airbus at an airshow at Mulhouse-Habsheim in Alsace, France in June 1988. While Asseline may have messed up in a big way (this is still a subject of vigorous debate), was this truly a criminal act?

Taken from:

Aviation Today Article

[Joetom]

Much good information.

Must remember in the early years of 320 ops. 4 big accidents.

1. Air France/Trees
2. Indian Airlines/Landing Short
3. Air Inter/as above
4. Lufthansa/Landing Over Run

Many other 320's had the close shave.

Aircraft/Pilot interface training then increased, shame it took so long.

I belive the 380 will not have the same problems as the old 320, I do think she will have problems with lack of investment at the airports.

I belive the later 380's, say 2011/12 will be a Boeing Beater.

[Carnage Matey!]

1. Air France - discussed above.
2. Indian Airlines - inappropriate use of Open Descent mode causing high rate of descent close to the ground and recovery action taken to late. Could occur using FLCH on a Boeing as well.
3. Air Inter. Mis-selection of 3000fpm descent rate of instead of 3 degree flight path angle. If you can't tell the difference.......
4.Lufthansa - the only one of the four that did not contain an element of gross mishandling.

Many other 320s had the close shave? How many 737s have been lost due to rudder hardover?

Whenever somebody fouls up in an Airbus they immediately blame 'the technology'. Why didn't we seem the same damning of the 757 after 'the technology' flew a 757 into a mountain in Cali? If you tell the autopilot to do daft things it'll do them unerringly. It's not a substitute for airmanship and common sense.