TOM stall?

[captplaystation]

Weary & 411A nah you have got it all wrong, the mantra today is
" there is no substitute for utilising our crewing requirements as a revenue earning opportunity"
otherwise pray, explain to me why the two biggest lo-co's in Europe recruit exclusively 2-300hr cadets, when the market is awash with F/O's qualified & experienced on type.

Starting a pre recorded pax safety briefing with the words "your safety on board is our primary concern" is hypocritical if your priority in the selection of flight crew is how much money you can take from them & NOT how experienced they are.

[UNCTUOUS]

Any parallels with ...........?

Are there parallels here with the Turkish incident at Schiphol ?
Sadly - yes.

The bells and whistles, the honkers and hooters, the flashing lights and disembodied electronic voices, the omniscient computers are all - REPEAT ALL - aids for the Flight Crew to use at their discretion and not to rely upon for all flight operations.
They are not (and never were intended to be) a substitute for good airmanship.
But, increasingly, that is how they are being used. We are breeding flight crews who simply have no idea what 'seat of the pants' flying is all about - something that Captain Sully alluded to in at least one of his interviews after his Hudson River escapade.
Yeah - I'll get flamed here but I've been flying aeroplanes for 30 years. During my training and during all subsequent ratings and renewals I had one mantra drummed into me over and over and over again "AIRSPEED and ATTITUDE" and it is still there, running through the back of my mind, through take-off, climb, cruise and approach.
The most high-tech dials I ever get to use are an ADF and a VOR. For all other purposes the standard 'T' gives me all the information I need to fly the aeroplane correctly and accurately.
Have we really reached the point where those basic skills are beginning to disappear in favour of an MSFS approach to professional aviation?
Because, if there is the slightest indication that this might be true, then I may never set foot aboard a commercial aircraft again.

And also the Continental (Colgan Flt3407) Dash8-Q400 crash in Buffalo NY as well.... the only things missing were the dormant auto-throttle and the aberrant RadAlt.

[Scimitar]

PULL THROUGH,

You're being rather coy! I really think you should reply to Posts 113 and 114.

Don't be shy now!

[manrow]

Scimitar

it goes further than that. Anyone making the sort of allegations that PULL THROUGH has done, ought to be prepared to substantiate them, otherwise we must treat them as throw-away lines, and the moderators delete them?

Which is it PULL THROUGH?

[RomeoTangoFoxtrotMike]

Originally Posted by Right Way Up

Agree with all the last posts......

SO WHY HAS IT BEEN BURIED?

LAst year, I posted this on the BA038 thread...

I've just crunched the data on published formal reports by the AAIB back to 2006 (as far back as I could be bothered to go). The average length of time from incident to final report publication is 25.6 months, i.e. a little over two years. This does not, and has not, stopped them issuing recommendations, where appropriate, before the final report.

I'm quite happy for AAIB to resist the rabid frothing of the news media for sensational information to fill their 24-hour outpourings, and instead concentrate on trying to work out exactly what happened...

[MikeAlphaTangoTango]

Report's out: Air Accidents Investigation: 3/2009 G-THOF

44degs NU pitch, 82KIAS.... wow

[BOAC]

Cue Rainboe? Does he think Laurel and Hardy had been at it again?

Seriously, though, Veeerrrryy similar to Schipol. Approaching stall not 'recognised'. Here we go again.

[glad rag]

How quickly can the PF on a 737 adjust pitch trim? (realising that the situation would be first having to recognise the trim limiting the control surface authority) and that the aircraft is normally "IN" trim.

thks.

GR

[Goffee]

local rag's version

Fairly tame for them

[fincastle84]

The captain is now flying with a different airline.

[ImageGear]

What about the SLF ?

Speaking as a slightly knowledgable punter, who has flown a small aircraft to the stall several times and (fortunately) recovered, I would think that at least one or two of the pax would have been aware of the situation and having a serious brown trouser moment. Not to mention the drivers.

I was always aware that an A300 with their humongus "bedsteads" dangling could approach FACT almost as slowly as my "Arrow 200", but it did not stop me from having a "teetering on the edge" feeling whenever I was SLF trash.

I am sure that I would have known that the chips were truly down - am I wrong ?

Imagegear

[Le Tirer]

Bournemouth Airport is in Dorset. Slightly worrying that the AAIB think it is in Hampshire!

"Report No: 3/2009. Report on the serious incident to Boeing 737-3Q8, registration G-THOF, on approach to Runway 26, Bournemouth Airport, Hampshire on 23 September 2007"

[Fredairstair]

Imagegear,

Yes, I'm afraid you are.

Fred.

[CHfour]

How quickly can the PF on a 737 adjust pitch trim? (realising that the situation would be first having to recognise the trim limiting the control surface authority) and that the aircraft is normally "IN" trim.

It only takes a few seconds of nose down pitch trim to regain control.

[HarryMann]

The real danger in these type of 'lost auto-throttle' approaches, seems to be that the auto-pilot carries on happily trimming nose-up below Vref, whilst simultaneously there is no 'SPEED! SPEED!' Annuncaition (@|@)

Training in loss-of-authority at full fwd stick >===> Re-trim nose down seems NOT to be effective, if it is being taught at all in low-thrust-line a/c type training.

Seems to be a bit of an afterthought, or sideline call-out in Boeings manuals too..

WHY?

[BOAC]

The rate of 'manual' tailplane trim change available with flap extended is high but not enough to overcome the enormous pitch up that full power and loads of 'low speed' nose-up trim would generate. 'Lucky' really that the A/T appears to have tripped out otherwise we could have been looking at another Schipol. For me there is gathering pressure for Boeing and possibly all manufacturers to cause A/P disengagement at a much lower nose-up trim setting. Certainly the disconnect warning would be a significant and hard to miss wake-up call.

Hmm......still no 'instant assessment' of 'competence' by our regular summary justice panel? Curious.

Fincastle - any hints?? Might be one to avoid. Anyone know? You'd think it might be time to hand in your 'wings'.

[Starbear]

HarryMann

Training in loss-of-authority at full fwd stick >===> Re-trim nose down seems NOT to be effective, if it is being taught at all in low-thrust-line a/c type training.
Seems to be a bit of an afterthought, or sideline call-out in Boeings manuals too..
WHY?

I think you make a valid point here HM, about the training being a bit of an afterthought on Boeing's part. And this may be because this kind of situation was thought to be very unlikely, with the advent of aeroplanes with moveable stabilisers, unlike the older recognised phenomenon of "jet upset" on fixed tailplanes.. So recovery from unusual attitudes was required to be addressed perhaps only during initial training.

It seems that the pilots of this subject case, recalled only the very first step of the recovery procedure: Full down elevator but never considered reducing thrust and/or applying significant roll inputs, to get the nose to drop, as the elevators were completely ineffectual at that time.

Having said that, I know that this is definitely practised regularly, in some UK airlines as part of the 3 yearly cycle of items to be covered. But its possible that some trainers, companies and pilots don't really treat it seriously enough, because even they don't see it as really relevant on "modern" aeroplanes. Well, it's evident this is not the case.

It's relatively easy to set up the correct scenario in the simulator and with good briefings beforehand, pilots (and indeed trainers) can get a lot from these exercises and hopefully leave with a lot more confidence.

The other point I would make, is that even when training and practice does occur regularly, there is often no standard methodology and it is left to each individual TRI/TRE to devise the best method of how to achieve the upset or attitude in the first place. The recovery procedures themselves are taught in a standard way. This works ok to a degree but some pilots may miss out on seeing some very interesting situations.

[Checkboard]

The Boeing procedure for the "approach to stall recovery" - that is, when the stick shaker goes off at very low airspeed - is simply to leave the autopilot engaged and increase the thrust. At low level (as on approach) jet engines have a great deal of excess thrust, and the aircraft will simply motor out of the low speed condition.

The point being that grabbing the controls, disconnecting the autopilot, and attempting to manually fly (and the autopilot is automatically disconnected if you hit TOGA for a go-around) is the wrong thing to do especially if a startled pilot is still struggling to regain situational awareness. For this accident, or the Turkish at Schiphol, all the pilots had to do to save the situation was shove the thrust levers up.

I flew several of these very scenarios, from very low speeds indeed, in various configurations in the sim just four days ago with no problems.

(Note: The Boeing procedure also states that the autopilot should be disconnected if the performance is inadequate.)

[tightcircuit]

The problem until recently has been that upset recovery and stall recovery were considered and trained for separately. During set peice stall training we were taught to stop trimming nose up at a certain point rather than trimming all the way to the stall so that the recovery all worked very smoothly with minimum if any height loss etc etc and with no need to trim out of it. There are two clear problems with this. Firstly Mr Boeing forgot to train his autopilots not to trim all the way to the stall. Secondly and more importantly this training completely hid the fact that in any real life accidental stall you were almost certain to be fully trimmed and thus in a position where the standard recovery actions would put you in a jet upset position.

It is of course not just Boeing at fault here. All stall training right from very basic flying training is pretty much the same. The natural reaction to a stall that a pilot develops right from his very first stall detail is full power and adjust the nose attitude (using the elevator not the trim!) to stop the buffet (stick shaker). It is not surprising that this is exactly what this pilot did only to be faced with a rapid pitch up that took him a while to work out how to deal with.

Jet upset or unusual attitude recovery has never received as much attention in the airlines as it clearly deserves. When it happens you need to know what to do instantly ie it needs to be instinctive. Stall training needs to become much more realistic and integrated with upset recovery on a/c types where one can lead to the other.

I crossed with Checkboard whilst writing. I don't disagree with what you say but don't forget you were ready for what was about to happen.

TC

[HarryMann]

Thanks Indeed for those last few replies.

I'm of the opnion that 'gross excess thrust' in some new types and variants of older types has blinded some authorities to the need for very careful and accurate handling in these types of situations, a need that was always a prime training focus in the distant past - but for a different reason - 'marginal excess thrust'.

Let's now also include the recent DC-10 landing accident in any reference to control loss as a result of modern aircraft aerodynamic design/thrust line configuration and its potential consequences (as well as Schiphol//Bournemouth/Marseilles & maybe Buffalo)... there are no doubt others, as now we know this one 'got away' from serious incident reporting for a while longer than healthy.

As full fwd stick for more than a couple of seconds is a very unusual pitch command - would that combined with extreme aft-trim (below V-Ref for 1-g flight) not be a combination worth considering for a warning?

Or even simpler, and earlier, a warning when auto-trim moves a set margin below V-Ref for 1-g flight, whilst armed for approach.