Airbus prepares safety warnings following A321 incident

[DC-ATE]

Rananim -
I think he already said that judging by your location and age,it would be a waste of time

If you're referring to me, fine. I'm not going to argue the point. I'm probably the wrong one to do it anyway. I never scratched a piece of tin in thirty years of flying and only shut down ONE piston engine [an R-2800], and throttled back on ONE turbine engine [a JT-8]. As close as I came to onboard computers was the 737-300. I spent most of my time telling the Co-Pilots to get their head OUT of the cockpit and look outside for traffic instead of playing with the computer all the time.

All I can say is.....Good Luck with all your fancy stuff. We got along just fine without it. I will admit though, it was nice to have INS between the mainland and Hawaii. But.....there again, we found the Islands without it too.

[White Knight]

Could be that pilots [real pilots, not the newer computer pilots] like to have a feeling of being in control rather than have some computer telling them what to do all the time. And then when the 'software' fails, they become passengers, not pilots.

I fly the 'Bus - the thing does what I tell it to. No question about it... It's like a big vicious snarly dog really. Kick it in the balls and it's all yours

[Razoray]

DC ATE

There are just as many "incidents" [maybe more] now as in the past.

Really.......??????

Fatal Crash Rates per Million Flights

Airbus A320/319/321
47million flights Rate .12
Boeing 737-600/700/800/900
28million flights Rate .14
Boeing 727
76million flights Rate .49
Douglas DC 9
62million flights Rate .57
Douglas DC 10
9 million flights Rate .66

Stats provided by Airsafe.com

[chris weston]

DC. I'm with you all the way.

But ..... thy bean counters will quote thee the increasing statistical safety of modern aircraft and will cite automatation ad nauseum.

Razor you beat me to it!

CW

[p51guy]

DC-ATE, no he was referring to me but they pulled my post because I referred to Europes bias to the Airbus. He called me ignorant because I thought France and Airbus were protecting their product, especially in reference to the Air France Airbus lost off the Brazilian coast line. They will probably pull this post too so it probably won't be here tomorrow. Read fast. This is how it is done here. Ask anybody.

[goldfish85]

Back some twenty -some years ago, Tom Foxworth (Pan Am, then UAL) wrote a novel called Passengers about the first FBW airliner. I think I'll reread it again.


Goldfish

[vapilot2004]

Liars figure and figures lie.

Razoray - Factor in hull losses and those numbers change considerably.

That said, for most of the modern fleet built since 1980, one type is not inherently safer than another. Each machine has pitfalls that once known can be mitigated in operation.

We run into trouble when new problems arise or preexisting problems formerly hidden beneath layers of metal, wiring or software rear their ugly and untimely heads.

[lamina]

Razoray

The numbers you mention have one thing in common-

The use of EGPWS, without doubt the single biggest contribution to safety in the last thirty years.

[Fargoo]

DC-ATE, no he was referring to me but they pulled my post because I referred to Europes bias to the Airbus. He called me ignorant because I thought France and Airbus were protecting their product, especially in reference to the Air France Airbus lost off the Brazilian coast line. They will probably pull this post too so it probably won't be here tomorrow. Read fast. This is how it is done here. Ask anybody.

There you go, tinfoil hat firmly on head i've quoted you so that they will have to delete two posts to protect franco-airbus interests from the nasty american forum poster

Anyway, back on topic. Does anyone know how long there was between the incident happening and the AAIB being notified? Perhaps the usual ASR was raised and no-one in the airline considered a gennie tripping off line was reason to report the incident. Could explain why the FDR data was overwritten.

Not saying this is right but if the AAIB was informed everytime there was a fault on an aircraft they would be quickly overwhelmed.

Airbus really do need to update the FAC software though to prevent multiple power interupts from building up a rudder trim that may affect the flight path. Not sure why this was never addressed in the 20+ years its been in service.

I'd also quite like to see Airbus / IAE adopt a terminal block style disconnect for the pylon/engine IDG feeder cable junction rather than the plug and socket arrangement they use at the moment. It has and still does cause quite a few power problems. It's been a problem even going back to the E4 powered 757's. Can't recall a properly tightened terminal block connection a la 767 RB211 ever causing these problems.

[demomonkey]

Anyone cast any (informed) opinion on the idea of switching the 'AC ESS' bus to ALTN to see if it restores power?


And to the ludites who smugly type 'told you so'; having flown Boeings and smaller Scarbuses I have to say that the Airbus is damn good and whilst the electrical sensing equipment maybe overly sensitive (95% of things are fixed by a CB reset) it is an extremely reliable aeroplane. Talk of how the old days were so much better is just looking at the world through rose tinted spectacles.

[max nightstop]

Informed opinon on AC Ess to ALTN.....

Yep it might work, but since no one knows why an intermittent fault on GEN 1 would cause all the screens to blank, no one knows what switching the AC ESS BUS to feed from GEN 2 would do. It might have fixed the screens but not the FCC resets that were troubling the rudder trim.

Ultimately, since the fault lay in GEN 1 connections, the answer was to switch it off. If the AC ESS switch had cured the immediate problem of the screens, they might have been left with an arcing contact on GEN1 that was causing more insidious problems.

The fact that this incident wasn't investigated through the FDR ought to be a crime. What the hell were the Operations, Engineering and Flight safety managers doing?

[gusting_45]

Niaive to imagine that improvement in air safety statistics is due to aircraft automation and computerisation. As one who has flown older a/c Lockheed L188, B727, &737 classics, whilst more recently and currently A319/320 to me the biggest loss in the transition to the older aircraft to the newer is the loss of the flight engineer. Without a shadow of a doubt the greatest step backwards in aviation safety, IMHO.

I also had a spent quite a few years working in the IT industry before starting to fly, the statistics regarding logic - syntax - coding errors per line of computer instruction code would truly make your hair turn white.

Nonetheless, I have quite a few years left flying the minibus and it's degree of automation and computerisation doesn't particularly concern me, other things do but not that.

[Graybeard]

Loss of FE?

Back about 1979, when McDouglas had promised the unions no new two-crew plane after the DC-9, and they were following with the DC9-80, it was noticed the airliner with the best safety record of all was the 2-crew 737, followed by the DC-9.

That quashed the argument, the name was changed to MD-80, and some 3-crew 767 were run back into the factory to take out the FE position.

GB

[Flap 5]

Thread creap to loss of FE

Inevitable to see the loss of the flight engineer raised eventually.

The biggest improvement to flight safety concerning pilot error is that of situational awareness. The PFD and navigation displays have made situational awareness much clearer, leading to fewer confused pilots. Pilots are easily confused.

[gusting_45]

Situational Awareness is a lot more than the PFD and ND.

Otherwise, I agree with you.


All the electronic monitoring in the world will not, for me, replace the benefit of another human brain in the cockpit. Computers are fantastic tools but are there only to aid the human.

In my ex-company the F/Es were an integral part of the flight crew and wholly included in managing the flight. I suspect that there are those who would make the same case for the Navigator as well and undoubtedly there are some CFIT accidents that would have been saved by the presence of one.

However, the accountants and bonus driven managers rule the world. Computers are cheaper than people, and the actuaries develop another spreadsheet which shows that the cost/benefit ratio favours paying for a few hull losses over paying for more crew.

Just because I'm cynical doesn't mean I may not be right.

[hetfield]

@gusting 45

I fully agree with you

Hetfield

(3 years FE 727, 5 years FO 727, 21 years Busdriver A300/320/340)

[FatFlyer]

Hi, flickering, blanking screens showing crosses( display computerfault), errors with QNH/STD , rudder trim limit fault. FAC fault, are all problems which I see almost every day on the bus(along with window heat controller)
These sound very similar to the problems the BMI crew had except ours are caused by poor ground power units when sitting on stand with fluctuating voltages or handlers knocking the connector, and not at 36000 feet.
Possibly voltage spikes from faulty GCU?

[DRJHNEWMAN]

Airbus incident A321

Have these faults been rectified?

[goldfish85]

Does anyone know the MSN of the subject aircraft ?

According to my files, it's 2190


Goldfish[IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/DICKNE%7E1/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot.png[/IMG][IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/DICKNE%7E1/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.png[/IMG]

[vapilot2004]

Have these faults been rectified?

On the incident aircraft, one would hope so. On the fleet, I highly doubt it. Given more time, I am sure we will soon see some telexes addressing the issue once a determination is made as to the direct cause and proposed solution.