Airbus prepares safety warnings following A321 incident

[autoflight]

I have experienced vibration for many months in an A320 and in this case my company's engineers declined to consider mechanical possibilities. Finally disrupted flights drove company to consult with AB.

1 bolt out of 4 was holding the horizontal stabiliser attached to the aircraft.

Concentration on the electronics must not divert us away from other possibilities that can cause very bad results.

[vapilot2004]

Concentration on the electronics must not divert us away from other possibilities that can cause very bad results.

That's just it isn't it?

Computerization is all well and good and electronics have come a long way beyond what was state of the art just 2 decades ago, but both of these advances in technology have native limitations in understanding via sensors and algorithms when things mechanical, electrical, and/or aeronautical go wrong.

It's not at all down to a science just yet no matter what the sales team may come up with. The sooner we honestly come to grips with these limits of the state of these arts, the better we all shall be - particularly with said systems and their component parts now reaching 'an age'.

A mitigation technique? Keep the PF in the loop at all times.

This last suggestion applies all across the board from shore to shore, manufacturer to manufacturer, and lastly engineering to final "out of beta" product.

[Fargoo]

1 bolt out of 4 was holding the horizontal stabiliser attached to the aircraft.

Really? Only 1 bolt holding the stab on?

[DRJHNEWMAN]

Have These Faults Been Rectified?

Thanks! I Appreciate Your Reply.

[fotoguzzi]

1 bolt out of 4 was holding the horizontal stabiliser attached to the aircraft.

Don't you give that thing a shake before each flight during your walkaround?

(I keed! I keed!)

[Captain-Crunch]

"Shuttering" Mystery

A poster was mentioning that the crew was experiencing "shuttering" which I suspect could be flight spoiler reaction. At least on the previous airframe, the A300/310/B4's, the bird had no inboard ailerons at all like Boeings and Douglas used for cruise, and the outboard aileron is locked out once clean: a feature, no doubt, adopted to save money, complexity etc.

But the downside to this reliance strictly on roll spoiler mixing software for roll control when clean, is that once again you are reliant on lots of questionable computer code. Every heading change was jerky since popping boards up in cruise to bank cause an undesirable yaw, which had to be either countered by an opposing flt spoiler deploying on the other side, or an input by the yaw damper, or a combination of both. When it rained hard in the tropics, the system would give up and fault right when you needed it most: a high bank command. Even when it didn't rain, the system would give up sometimes over 300 kts banking in a high speed descent under ten thousand. This was a normal high speed descent legally permitted in some international operations but the airplane couldn't hold it together and deal with a thirty degree bank down low. A number of distracting flt spoiler faults (five was common) would light up amber and roll control would be partially lost causing the A310 to overbank uncommanded to 45 degrees. It took full opposite control input to right the ship, or a smart non-handling pilot to reset the overhead ignoring the ecam procedures. We got tired of this happening, so quit writing it up since the damn thing was always signed off "byte checks O.K.". It was clearly a known deficiency with Airbus flight control design, in my humble opinion. But you-know-who certified the airplane to fly like this, so we lived with it. Those of us who experienced this unsettling anomoly, would speculate that maybe the software engineers just never envisioned someone operating at over 250 knots below ten thousand.

I have never flown FBW but have jumpseated with the sidestick boys and it makes me nervous. Not modulating your own bank angle and putting your own back pressure into the turns Means Manual Law skills are lost after a time, doesn't it? But they all have faith in the design of their machine, something that I am in short supply of the last few years regarding the industry's over-reliance on automation.

What happens when these FBW airframes get older and cannon plugs and connectors suffer inevitable corrosion? When Airbus flooded the market, a lot of us worried about the composite airframes but our suspicions about an aging vertical fin for example, inspected by an outsourced low-cost maintenance provider was dismissed as Old School paranoia. Surely, we were told, anything new and advanced that the government sanctions must be better for you, right? Next thing you know, one breaks up over new york and the pilot is blamed for using the rudder. A memo comes out telling me not to use the rudder if I can help it!

I just don't know anymore. Let's face it: like the Titanic and the Hindenburg, some vessel designs were doomed right at the drafting table.

Could you miss the mountains in a pull up with this type of g-limiting and bank-limiting A320 FBW sidestick?
No, I don't think you can. FBW will save the airframe from overload first, but ultimately hit the rocks as I understand it. It will reject the pilot's command to pull say seven g's. FADEC will slow spool the engines to save TBO but hit the trees as it did in Toulouse. Flying around on Alpha mode on the back side of the power curve is insane below ten thousand feet but simulator gods, test pilots and check airman seemed unconcerned about fostering such a dangerous habit when we first got the airplane.

At least that was my observation: that illogical reverence for a bunch of software code was committed on a daily basis by the Airbus Cult. "It's Advanced! It's Advanced!" they would all sing in unison. While I was impressed with the power-to-weight performance of these light twins as compared to the older heavy boeings, I sure was not impressed with any of the automation. So I just turned it all off and hand flew it. It was a predictable decent flying airplane when you operated it at the lowest level of automation: da pilot.

But that went over about like a fart in church with the standardization mafia. "I needed to get the Airbus Religion" I was told when I objected to the classification of hand flying as "John Wayning" the airplane. They wanted me to use all these nanny protection devices all the time.

They were nuts imho. The next thing you knew machines were wrecked all over the place due to inability to make normal hand landings.

I don't know about both the A320 and the A330. I don't know about Trent engines either.... on the 777 or the A380. Just like the Comet they all have a good safety record now, but just like digital home computers, corruption may be lurking.

I never did like ETOPS either, or getting my bags and balls x-rayed to go flying. I think I'll avoid all those things from now on if I can. I think I'll only ride on 411A's L-1011 or a nice redundant 747 in the third world somewhere where they treat you nice in security.

I know, I know.

Just let me get my coat and hat....

[Fargoo]

I have never flown FBW but have jumpseated with the sidestick boys and it makes me nervous. Not modulating your own bank angle and putting your own back pressure into the turns Means Manual Law skills are lost after a time, doesn't it? But they all have faith in the design of their machine, something that I am in short supply of the last few years regarding the industry's over-reliance on automation.

At least that was my observation: that illogical reverence for a bunch of software code was committed on a daily basis by the Airbus Cult. "It's Advanced! It's Advanced!" they would all sing in unison. While I was impressed with the power-to-weight performance of these light twins as compared to the older heavy boeings, I sure was not impressed with any of the automation. So I just turned it all off and hand flew it. It was a predictable decent flying airplane when you operated it at the lowest level of automation: da pilot.

Not sure I follow your prose on this one.

as for

byte check

, if someone is signing that in your tech log i'd seriously question any other work they've carried out.

All very strange for one post

[DC-ATE]

Captain-Crunch -

Great post. I'd be interested in knowing what you are, or were, rated on. Thanks.

[Fargoo]

Anyway, back on topic slightly.

I filmed a short (but poor quality) video of the rudder trim and what happens when power is interrupted to the FAC - in this case FAC1.

YouTube - A320 FAC Reset - Rudder trim incrementing

[iceman50]

DC-ATE

Captain-Crunch -

Great post. I'd be interested in knowing what you are, or were, rated on. Thanks.

Only great because it reaffirms the luddite mentality!

Captain-Crunch

All that from someone who has NEVER flown the aircraft!

[DozyWannabe]

Originally Posted by TURIN

To read some of the posts here anyone would think aircraft only started to crash (or at least do something unexpected) when Airbus put their name on the side.

To say nothing of the belief that the introduction of digital flight management systems and the ability to misprogram them is peculiar to AI aircraft (Hint, guys : AA695 at Cali, which was a B757)

Originally Posted by Unhooked

Although I admire the technical brilliance of the aircraft I dont like the fact that even when you disconnect the automatic's and fly you never really have full control of the jet. Every input is monitored and possibly modified by a number of computers if deemed nessasary.

The only time the computers "modify" the input is if you try to exceed 60 (IIRC) degrees of bank, or fail to increase power while pulling hard up in an evasive maneouvre - otherwise with the FMS disengaged, she's all yours.

I recall hearing about an incident with a A340 out of MRU where the AOA vane was damaged in the stand and went unnoticed or unreported. After take-off the aircraft was receiving erroneous AOA info and the more the PF attempted to increase pitch the more progressively the flight computers lowered the nose as the false AOA data was being received. I think the fast thinking commander switched off some of the PRIM's & SEC's (primary and secondary flight computers) and managed to return in direct law.

Which is the correct thing to do in any airliner, almost all of which have some digital automation these days. If the aircraft isn't doing what you want it to do, disconnect them and fly the thing!

(And yes, Rananim - I think that knowledge of how to do just that should be part and parcel of the FBW A3X0 pilot's toolkit. At the end of the day it's no different from switching out the Sperry on the old 727 and Jurassic 737)

Originally Posted by DC-ATE

Ah.....but you forget DOUGLAS and LOCKHEED [the Cadillacs].

So the poorly-engineered cargo door locks and mismatched autopilot computers on their respective final-generation airliners - both of which were causal to fatal accidents - are figments of the imagination?

And.....you'll have to admit that if we never got into these "complex" systems, we would NOT be having these problems.

That's as maybe, but you'd definitely still have the odd augering into the ground when someone pulled a lever or set a switch they shouldn't have (see EAL66 and AC603 - both DC-8s).

Originally Posted by arearadar

Additionally, a friend of mine, having been left without an aeroplane with the demise of Concord, was on an A320 command course. I asked him how he found it and his reply was `What the xxxxxxx hell is it going to do next.

To which the correct answer is "absolutely nothing other than what you tell it to". I'll paraphrase what someone else said earlier and say that if you don't understand what you're telling it to do, you need to do your bl**dy homework sharpish!

I suspect that as a former Concorde (just out of interest, was dropping the "e" intentional? ) pilot, understanding the FBW Airbus series is well within his abilities.

Originally Posted by Clandestino

Regarding the Magic Bus and today's pilots: that Airbus is crash-proof and can cope with less skilled pilot than standard is misperception, promulgation of which is the fault of Airbus propaganda department...

Er, no - The AI marketing department set out their stall as saying that the A320 generation were *more protected* from getting into a dangerous situation than previous generations of airliners - and...

Originally Posted by jcjeant

The probs is that Airbus planes (with all their rings and bells) were announced (or believed) to be protected of crashing .... you know .. like the Titanic can't sink ...
Pure arrogance ......

...it was the press of the time that paraphrased AI's claim of better protection as "it is impossible to crash this airliner", because it made better copy and - as laymen in aviation terms - they could not discern the subtle difference. It is true that Ziegler was something of a loose cannon in this regard, but I don't think that his word would have been the official company line. As an aside, it's interesting you mention the Titanic, as the phrase "practically unsinkable" was also an invention of the press (In this case "Shipbuilder" magazine), and not the official line of either White Star or Harland & Wolff.

Originally Posted by jcjeant

Ziegler said to the press in a interview:
"This aircraft (Airbus) can be controlled by my concierge"

Did he actually say that his concierge wouldn't be able to crash it?

Originally Posted by DC-ATE

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

But how many more airliners are flying worldwide *every day* than there were then?

Originally Posted by Captain-Crunch

Those of us who experienced this unsettling anomoly, would speculate that maybe the software engineers just never envisioned someone operating at over 250 knots below ten thousand.

So why didn't you tell them? Nothing us software engineers like more than fixing a problem!

And I take exception to use of the word "questionable" to describe the work done by AI's software engineers. I was privileged to learn from first-hand information (thanks to my Software Reliability lecturer who consulted with AI) just how much work went into specification, testing (both in the labs and in the air) and providing several measures of redundancy at multiple levels. I also know that they were happy to listen to any reports of a problem and work themselves silly trying to isolate and rectify it.

When Airbus flooded the market, a lot of us worried about the composite airframes but our suspicions about an aging vertical fin for example, inspected by an outsourced low-cost maintenance provider was dismissed as Old School paranoia. ... Next thing you know, one breaks up over new york and the pilot is blamed for using the rudder. A memo comes out telling me not to use the rudder if I can help it!

Here we go again... It has been proven that the vertical stab failed at a point way beyond it's ultimate design load - i.e. it handled far more strain than it was designed to take, so I think that fatigue caused by ageing composites can quite easily be ruled out in that case. More on your first point shortly.

Could you miss the mountains in a pull up with this type of g-limiting and bank-limiting A320 FBW sidestick?
No, I don't think you can.

I beg to differ, but for starters - how close are you to the mountains?

FADEC will slow spool the engines to save TBO but hit the trees as it did in Toulouse.

Again, the digital automatic engine controls were *shut off irreversibly* by deliberate pilot action - they were under full manual control by the time they crossed the threshold and neither FBW nor FMS had anything to do with it.

But that went over about like a fart in church with the standardization mafia. "I needed to get the Airbus Religion" I was told when I objected to the classification of hand flying as "John Wayning" the airplane. They wanted me to use all these nanny protection devices all the time.

And here I go back to your point earlier. Was this in your company? If so then you have a simple pattern to follow; get together with a few like-minded people to put your concerns to the Chief Pilot - if he doesn't listen then the next step is the regulator via your union. If they don't listen then contact the manufacturer directly. This will eventually put you in danger of becoming a whistleblower - which could harm your career - but you'll at least be able to sleep at night knowing that you did everything you could.

What bothers me about a lot of posts in this thread is the number of anecdotes about how the management at some airlines are reluctant to consider potential failures in automation and "encourage maximum use of automation at all times". This is not a fault with any manufacturer or design, but a management failure at the airlines concerned.

I'm pretty sure that the engineers at AI (and for that matter most if not all manufacturers) would be happy to hear from pilots about any issues relating to the product, because at the end of the day their reputation gets tarnished if there is an accident.

To clarify - almost everyone reads the front page stories about an airliner crash when speculation is rife and no-one knows much of anything, but significantly fewer read the bylines months or years later when the actual cause is determined and reported. The result of which is that some people still believe that (paraphrased) "The computer thought the plane was trying to land" (Habsheim), "The composite fin attachment lugs were weak and therefore failed" (AA587), "A missile streak was seen before the explosion" (TWA800) and "The aircraft was on fire before it hit the ground" (too numerous to mention!)

but just like digital home computers, corruption may be lurking.

I've gone into this before and taken several paragraphs to do it, so I'll keep it to the piston-engine analogy I used then. Computers in the aviation realm are like the engine in your old pick-up truck - by which I mean they are specified with reliability over long periods of time as the paramount concern, designed and engineered using older, proven technology and given multiple layers of redundancy as a backup. Home computers on the other hand are more like an F1 racing engine - specified to run as fast as possible, designed using the latest bleeding-edge developments - and as such it is expected that they will only run for a (comparatively) short time before something goes wrong and they will require restarting.

Phew! Sorry to go on so long guys, but as I've said before the amount of misunderstanding on this subject saddens me a great deal. I'd like to add that clearing up such misunderstandings are my only intent here - I'm not especially pro- or anti- any aircraft manufacturer and don't want to get drawn into the bunfights that ensue.

My lifelong love of aviation means that I do a lot of reading on the subject and (as ex-ATC) I'd love to return to the sky at the controls again one day if my luck permits. However everything I have read, watched and taken in over the years has taught me that no manufacturer has ever been whiter than white when it comes to acknowledging faults in their product - though I'd say that both Boeing and AI have learned some lessons there in recent years and the result is some pretty damn good flying machines from both of them and from others.

I'm sure that the issue in the OP will be resolved swiftly, and I hope that one day we can put all this political garbage behind us.

[bearfoil]

AA695 Cali input one of two identical beacons broadcast from the ground. The one that would have them follow the coast south was not the one selected. The one (of two identical beacons) they selected put them into the granite. Let's be fair.

One rather famous AB developing engineer was heard to say (for the Press) "The Laundrywoman can fly this aircraft." One rather large knock on ABI is its permissiveness in allowing rumour and bunk (of the positive variety, natch) to proliferate without comment. Marketing is for seats, not aircraft, imo.

bear

[DozyWannabe]

Originally Posted by bearfoil

AA695 Cali input one of two identical beacons broadcast from the ground. The one that would have them follow the coast south was not the one selected. The one (of two identical beacons) they selected put them into the granite. Let's be fair.

Again, as I understand it, not true. The beacon they were supposed to select was called ROZO, and to enter that directly they needed to input the whole designation into the keypad (i.e *R*-*O*-*Z*-*O*-*enter*). What they actually did, and in fairness to them their charts were not explicit, was input *R*-*enter* which switched them into a mode which listed all matching waypoints. They hit *enter* again, which selected the first on the list. Unfortunately the first on the list was not the ROZO beacon they wanted, but the Romeo beacon which was somewhere near Bogota if I recall correctly. The only reason this accident is not more prominent in the history of mode-confusion incidents is because the pilots then compounded the initial error by not paying close enough attention to what the aircraft was doing in response to the erroneous entry they had made.

Rightly or wrongly, the Cali accident is primarily attributed to the crew's failure to properly monitor the aircraft's progress once the incorrect input was made. To my mind, if they had paid more attention in that regard, the "What's it doing now?" cry would certainly have gone up.

One rather famous AB developing engineer was heard to say (for the Press) "The Laundrywoman can fly this aircraft." One rather large knock on ABI is its permissiveness in allowing rumour and bunk (of the positive variety, natch) to proliferate without comment. Marketing is for seats, not aircraft, imo.

So now that's 3 different versions I've head of this story, attributing ability to fly the A320 to a maid, a concierge and a laundrywoman. Does anyone here actually have a confirmed, attributable quote, or is this a case of chinese whispers?

At any rate, most attribute the quote to Bernard Ziegler - who was most certainly not an engineer of any sort on the product (us engineers tend to be a pernickety lot, because we're the ones with our arses on the line if we make unverifiable claims that later prove incorrect - whereas sales guys are expected to add a little merde du vache), and as I said above I have yet to hear a version of the story where he specifically said that the maid/concierge/laundrywoman would not be able to crash the aircraft. I don't think even Ziegler, controversial figure that he is, would have gone that far.

[DozyWannabe]

Originally Posted by kwateow

Bernard Ziegler was never sales or marketing, although he fancied himself at it.

I have a feeling he was what we would call a "product evangelist" in this day and age. Even so, he was still no engineer.

But remember that it was allowing loose canons to express themselves that gave Airbus the marketing edge in the 1980s & 90s.

Hmm... not sure. I'd say that Habsheim and the resulting backlash probably undid a lot of the confidence initially inspired by that tack. I think (and I've had some agreement) that what allowed AI to go from a single wide-body type offering to going toe-to-toe with Boeing - and successfully come out on top occasionally within a decade - was the unprecedented degree of flight deck commonality across the FBW range from the narrow-body short-medium haul A320 all the way up to the wide-body long-haul A340 (and later A380) - reducing conversion training costs by a significant margin and by extension making it easier for independent airlines to start small and expand to long-haul operations at a much lower cost than was previously possible, as long as they bought Airbus aircraft to make that expansion.

I say this as a non-business person (and with 20:20 hindsight), but I believe that Boeing missed a trick when they decided to develop the 737NG as they did - they'd made major advances in flight deck commonality with the 757 and 767, and they could have extensively reworked the 737NG to become part of that progression (and capitalised on the 737's enduring popularity at the short term expense of commonality with the Classic and Jurassic, and associated training and conversion costs).

Unfortunately the 737's popularity worked against that idea, because there were more Jurassic and Classic 737s in service than 757s and 767s combined. As such the NG was an extensively re-engineered beast compared to its elder brethren - and in many ways thoroughly modernised, but conversion across Boeing's product range was still more complex and expensive than what AI had to offer. As such it could almost be argued that Boeing became the victims of their own success, as the very ubiquity of their best-selling short-haul airliner forced on them difficult business decisions that AI, working from a clean sheet in terms of short-haul airliner design, didn't have to worry about.

[DC-ATE]

iceman50 -
Luddite - One who opposes technical or technological change.

Can't argue with you on that. It hasn't always been for the better though, has it?!

[DozyWannabe]

Originally Posted by DC-ATE

Can't argue with you on that. It hasn't always been for the better though, has it?!

I'll back out of this discussion after this post (realise I've been on this thread a lot in the last 24 hours), but I think that in most cases it has. Take that argument to the extreme and we'd still be nomadic hunter-gatherers hitting each other over the head with rocks!

More seriously though, I think that most technological advancements end up being for the better in the long term, though many either had growing pains, or were used for less salubrious things before coming right (e.g without the V2 rocket, humans might never have walked on the moon). I suspect what you're talking about is that technology has changed the nature of the profession you once held in a way you don't particularly care for, and you're not alone in that amongst people of almost every trade and profession, let alone just pilots!

[DC-ATE]

DozyWannabe -
I'll back out of this discussion.....

I will also being as how I'm an "inactive" Pilot now and merely looking back [as well as forward wishing things would go better for you all], at what was working pretty good.

Enjoy, and good luck.

[Razoray]

I just watched Nova's show on AF447. And although nothing new was brought to light they concentrated on the question of modern aircraft being over sophisticated and pilots becoming reliant on automation and loosing hand flying skills. They also mentioned that modern air flight simulators could not reproduce authentic situations to practice some evasive measures. They finished thier conclusions that the AF 447 pilots may have become overwhelmed and didn't take care of "flying the plane..."

That is when it hit me. The argument should not be about too much automation, or Airbus vs. Boeing, but about proper, or improper training......when pilots are in deep **** they need to rely on their training....but if the training is not there to match the situation.....everyone is screwed!

It's their "use the force" moment!

[CONF iture]

DozyWannabe

"Le 320, même ma concierge pourrait le piloter" is a formula from Bernard Ziegler.
It was at a time when the faith in the technology was absolute, the computers were there to correct the mistakes made by the pilots ... The formula understandably was not eared anymore in Toulouse after the 330 crash at the hands of the chief test pilot in 94.

Bernard Ziegler, known as the father of the 320, did graduate from Polytechnique and Supaero, don't you think he was an engineer ?

How can you pretend to clear up misunderstandings when you demonstrate so many yourself :

• The register of the protections for a 320 are certainly not limited to the bank and the alpha floor.
• Where does Airbus approve the possible necessity to have to switch off, on the pilot call, flight control computers ? Do you want to quote a QRH or FCOM procedure ?
• Habsheim : Thrust was manual, does not mean that each FADEC was not performing his own engine management.

[jcjeant]

Hi,

Bernard Ziegler was firstly a pilot who killed 6 peoples as he was flying in a forbidden aera

France: Death in the Cathedral - TIME

In August 1961 the Vallee Blanche Aerial Tramway was badly damaged when an aeroplane of the French Air Force piloted by Bernard Ziegler tore its hauling cable. Three cars crashed and six people were killed.[1]

For more you can read the complete story of this "Airbus evangelist" ...there:
Bernard Ziegler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

. As a test pilot, he flew the first flights of the Airbus A300, A310, A320 and the A340.

Airbus cowboy Bernard Ziegler - Airmail Magazine

DoozyWanabee

Originally Posted by jcjeant
Ziegler said to the press in a interview:
"This aircraft (Airbus) can be controlled by my concierge"
Did he actually say that his concierge wouldn't be able to crash it?

So .. we can conclude than only the pilot can crash a Airbus .. the plane is out of all blame