AF 447 report out
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If you are at FL350 over the ocean you have no obstacle clearance so why climb at at a 5 degree deck angle because you lost airspeed. They climbed at 15 degrees for some strange reason. Why not just stay at 2.5 degrees nose up and get out the UAS check list like normal pilots do? I like to support pilots but these two don't get my support.
Originally Posted by TTex600
I still hold the position that the totality of cockpit visual displays, aural warnings, and ECAM, contributed to the crews inability to determine their true condition.
Originally Posted by Lonewolf50
Sorry, but you misunderstand. Naval aviation operations require CRM in multi-place aircraft
Originally Posted by Lonewolf 50
Your response was a lot of words that added nothing. You can't make a decision to take the controls unless you know when it is needed. To do that, you have to have enough SA to know what the aircraft is doing. You also have to have a belief that you may some day have to take the aircraft from someone else.
Originally Posted by Lonewolf 50
There are some cultural norms to be undone when one is so trained.
Originally Posted by Lonewolf 50
Or are you trying to say something else?
Originally Posted by Lonewolf 50
My point is that without training (see what Tex keeps harping on) the habit pattern and scan patterns, and scan shifting patterns, can erode due to disuse.
It is not they didn't see and read their instruments. Whether they did not understand what they were telling them is debatable but it is certain they had no idea what to do and eventually CM2 panicked into performing the maneuver that proved to be quickly lethal. There were other crews that were clueless but were saved by doing virtually nothing. There were those who made similar unwaranted pull-up but respected stall warning and reversed control inputs. There was many a way out of the predicament even without ever applying the UAS procedure and it is tragic that CM2 has chosen the disastrous one, while CM1 was unable to understand it would turn out to be fatal.
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@Bubbers44:
OK, since no-one has postulated any believable reason for this, I propose a brand new theory, and no, I have not run this by Bearfoil/Lyman yet: 
Bonin (and possibly the whole crew) was experimenting with LSD or Mescaline for the first time. (I'll be sure to write to the BEA to apprise them of this theory.)
They climbed at 15 degrees for some strange reason. Why not just stay at 2.5 degrees nose up and get out the UAS check list like normal pilots do? I like to support pilots but these two don't get my support.
Bonin (and possibly the whole crew) was experimenting with LSD or Mescaline for the first time. (I'll be sure to write to the BEA to apprise them of this theory.)
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No it wasn't LSD, it was lack of hands on experience. They could not handfly an airplane. They both started with minimum skills and were taught automation. With the lack of pilots qualified the airlines will hire the lowest qualified pilots because of cost and that is the future.
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Originally Posted by Clandestino
Originally Posted by TTex600
I still hold the position that the totality of cockpit visual displays, aural warnings, and ECAM, contributed to the crews inability to determine their true condition.
All you have to offer is crew incompetence. You could save yourself many keystrokes by just joining Bubbers44 in his quest to damn the dead.
I have no quest to damn the dead but how would you feel if a loved one was in the back of that aircraft and because they couldn't fly without automation, killed them?
It's interesting to observe the changing attitudes towards pilot performance over the last three or four decades. Originally, superhuman skills were attributed to most aviators, so incidents/accidents were obviously primarily the fault of the crew, rather than systemic in the aircraft or operation. Then followed the CRM era with the realisation that pilots did have limits and that aircraft and procedures surrounding them were not always helpful in terms of a safe operation.
Now we're at the stage where there is an excuse for everything if you go back far enough. Very touchy-feely and nice for us (pilots) but there must be a professional bottom-line of competence, below which you have to start taking personal responsibility. Not knowing basic performance attitudes and recall/memory items from checklists falls below that line, IMHO, purely from a point of self-preservation...
FFS, Clandestino
1. Comments like that make me wonder the level of understanding you have of an instrument scan is. If you use one, or have used one then I find your choice of response confusing.
Are you playing games here?
2. If sound habits are not imbedded in training, and in type training, and then practiced, then those habits cannot be applied in flight. Scan breakdown is a common enough occurrence to warrant understanding it, it's sources, and it remedies.
While the pitch and power chorus have yet to sing off key, a concern to me as a prospective passenger on a given day is that the tenors, baritone, and basso profundos may erroneously assume that a pilot flying in the year 2012 operates a passenger aircraft while using a functional scan pattern.
Pitch and power and performance monitoring to desired parameters is a result of an effective scanm. (Or, perhaps it is a result of the passengers nearest the side sticks trusting the robot -- who the hell knows?)
I am not convinced that my assumptions of what tools pilots use is true anymore. Perhaps what you are getting at is that being concerned about a scan breakdown is a dead end if there isn't an actual scan pattern habitually used nor practiced. Is that your gambit?
There is no recording of what is going on inside the brain housing group, so your mind reading exercise regarding the two forward most seated passengers in AF 447 (is that why you use CM1 and CM2), has limited usefulness, even though I find it amusing in some cases.
Cheers.
So they might be, but what has it to do with AF447? For Finnegan's sake, we have analysis of DFDR and CVR and they show nothing like the alleged "scan breakdown". Both pilots promptly recognized they have lost speed display.
Are you playing games here?
2. If sound habits are not imbedded in training, and in type training, and then practiced, then those habits cannot be applied in flight. Scan breakdown is a common enough occurrence to warrant understanding it, it's sources, and it remedies.
While the pitch and power chorus have yet to sing off key, a concern to me as a prospective passenger on a given day is that the tenors, baritone, and basso profundos may erroneously assume that a pilot flying in the year 2012 operates a passenger aircraft while using a functional scan pattern.
Pitch and power and performance monitoring to desired parameters is a result of an effective scanm. (Or, perhaps it is a result of the passengers nearest the side sticks trusting the robot -- who the hell knows?)
I am not convinced that my assumptions of what tools pilots use is true anymore. Perhaps what you are getting at is that being concerned about a scan breakdown is a dead end if there isn't an actual scan pattern habitually used nor practiced. Is that your gambit?
There is no recording of what is going on inside the brain housing group, so your mind reading exercise regarding the two forward most seated passengers in AF 447 (is that why you use CM1 and CM2), has limited usefulness, even though I find it amusing in some cases.
Cheers.
Last edited by Lonewolf_50; 21st Aug 2012 at 13:46.
Originally Posted by TTex600
your point has nothing to do with mine.
Originally Posted by TTex600
You could save yourself many keystrokes by just joining Bubbers44 in his quest to damn the dead.
Originally Posted by Lonewolf 50
I don't think you understand what an instrument scan is.
Originally Posted by Lonewolf 50
If sound habits are not imbedded in training, and in type training, and then practiced, then those habits cannot be applied in flight.
What previous training and experience had capt Walter Hughen when he hit the severe icing for the first time in DC-2? How come he came with a solution to icing of the air intakes?
What previous training and experience had Maj Samuel Tyson when his no1 prop oversped between Travis and Honolulu? How come he anticipated the havoc shattered prop would eventually bring to engine no2 so he shut it down before no1 prop fell to pieces? How many times did he practice ground effect flight with two engines gone on the same side?
What previous training and experience had capt Harvey Gibson in recovering from supersonic dive in B727 (we'll disregard the manner in which the aeroplane arrived in it a bit)? How come he did not complain about severe control forces and deflections after the bird was recovered, slightly bent but flying, but rather did whatever he needed to do to land her without much ado?
What previous training and experience had capt Robert Schornstheimer in flying the 732 with much of a fuselage missing?
What previous training and experience had capts Fitch and Haynes in flying the DC-10 without hydraulics and no2 engine?
What previous training and experience had capt Chesley Sullenberger in ditching the A320?
What previous training and experience had Genotte, Michielsen and Rofail in flying no hyd A300, damaged by MANPAD?
What previous training and experience had capt Moody in penetrating the volcanic ash cloud?
What previous training and experience had capt Burkill in double engine failure at short final?
No, you just can't train for every eventuality or cover it with checklist. Those who are fooled into belief everything about flying can be covered with a thick rulebook (which can even less cushion the impact nowadays when they are virtual instead made of paper), soon get bitten in the bum by what ole Karl Marx well described in his aphorism about base and superstructure; pilots without very good grip on basics are bound to misunderstand the advanced, type related stuff and that may turn out to be lethal.
Originally Posted by Lonewolf 50
Pitch and power and performance monitoring to desired parameters is a result of an effective scanm
Originally Posted by Lonewolf 50
Perhaps what you are getting at is that being concerned about a scan breakdown is a dead end if there isn't an actual scan pattern habitually used nor practiced.
Originally Posted by Lonewolf 50
There is no recording of what is going on inside the brain housing group, so your mind reading exercise regarding the two forward most seated passengers in AF 447 (is that why you use CM1 and CM2), has limited usefulness, even though I find it amusing in some cases.
CVR recorded what the pilots said. DFDR recorded what the pilots did.
CM1 and CM2 are official Airbus designations for pilots occupying left and right pilot seat, regardless of their rank, function or PF/PNF. It doesn't imply anything beyond that.
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I only fly Pan-Am
I used to fly quite often, long distance, in 747SP, with Pan-Am.
But I wouldn't fly now. Dunno what sort of plane I might be put into and dunno whether I'll have pilots who know what to do, think they know what to do, aren't sure what to do, or plain can't hand-fly.
You guys don't inspire a whole lot of confidence, you're all experts of course but some of your younger co-professionals don't have your approval, and the aircraft systems seem to have a nightmarish convolution of hitherto unsuspected behaviours, so how can the paying public trust whichever pilots they happen to pick out of the check-in bran-tub?
If it ain't Pan-Am, I ain't flyin'.
"But mike-wsm, Pan-Am don't fly any more"
"Exactly!"
PS - I've just been banned from the British Mensa forums so you have a rather angry mike-wsm here.
But I wouldn't fly now. Dunno what sort of plane I might be put into and dunno whether I'll have pilots who know what to do, think they know what to do, aren't sure what to do, or plain can't hand-fly.
You guys don't inspire a whole lot of confidence, you're all experts of course but some of your younger co-professionals don't have your approval, and the aircraft systems seem to have a nightmarish convolution of hitherto unsuspected behaviours, so how can the paying public trust whichever pilots they happen to pick out of the check-in bran-tub?
If it ain't Pan-Am, I ain't flyin'.
"But mike-wsm, Pan-Am don't fly any more"
"Exactly!"
PS - I've just been banned from the British Mensa forums so you have a rather angry mike-wsm here.
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PS - I've just been banned from the British Mensa forums so you have a rather angry mike-wsm here.
Besides, high IQ is not so important. There are studies showing that high IQ is not even strongly correlated with income.
IQ and Income Inequality
Malcolm Gladwell observes that ... “Once someone has reached an I.Q. of somewhere around 120,” he writes, “having additional I.Q. points doesn’t seem to translate into any measureable real-world advantage.”
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Though I have a functional IQ of at least 6, I refused to join Mensa. They seem to be a rather humorless, or, if in GB, humourless, and a stuck-up lot at that.
Gladwell's book is fascinating. Success depends on a whole lotta factors besides smarts; in my case, I didn't "play well with others." I can't fly airplanes because my vision is wonky.
Anyway, veering back to sort-of on-topic:
I'm with Mike; after finding out about the woeful state of transport pilot training these days, I have real reluctance or a strong sense of gambling every time I strap in. Still have managed to avoid the planes from France. They may be very fine airplanes, but if nobody knows how to drive 'em when HAL goes tits-up, I'll be having a very bad day.
I would fly with TTex though. 
He knows eggzackley WTH he's talking about!
(CUE: scoffing from all around)
Gladwell's book is fascinating. Success depends on a whole lotta factors besides smarts; in my case, I didn't "play well with others." I can't fly airplanes because my vision is wonky.
Anyway, veering back to sort-of on-topic:
I'm with Mike; after finding out about the woeful state of transport pilot training these days, I have real reluctance or a strong sense of gambling every time I strap in. Still have managed to avoid the planes from France. They may be very fine airplanes, but if nobody knows how to drive 'em when HAL goes tits-up, I'll be having a very bad day.
I would fly with TTex though. He knows eggzackley WTH he's talking about!(CUE: scoffing from all around)
Though I have a functional IQ of at least 6, I refused to join Mensa. They seem to be a rather humorless, or, if in GB, humourless, and a stuck-up lot at that.
lack of ability to suffer fools seems quite common from professionals in some
quarters.
Anyway, I would agree in that anyone that feels such a pressing need to tell
the world how clever they are might be suspect
...
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Still have managed to avoid the planes from France.
They may be very fine airplanes, but if nobody knows how to drive 'em when HAL goes tits-up, I'll be having a very bad day.
No, you just can't train for every eventuality or cover it with checklist.
I wonder who you are talking to with your listing of some pilots, who knew how to fly and knew their machines. They did did well when things went sideways. Not all pilots do, if we take it back to Wilbur and Orville, or even Otto Lilienthal. A non trivial amount of what we learn, or learned, as pilots was first written in blood.
Those who are fooled into belief everything about flying can be covered with a thick rulebook (which can even less cushion the impact nowadays when they are virtual instead made of paper),
If you are attempting to make an allusion to me, you are simply wrong. If not, then whomever it is you are referring to may wish to address that.
... about base and superstructure; pilots without very good grip on basics are bound to misunderstand the advanced, type related stuff and that may turn out to be lethal.
Scan is part of Flying 101. Well, it used to be, and I hope it is now. I suspect that CFIs still teach such things.
If you require a definition of scan (I doubt you do, and sense that you are playing a game with that) I will suggest that you don't belong in a discussion regarding flying on a forum where Professional Pilots hang out.
That is sort of like ... if one were to hang out on a La Leche League forum, one would need to know what a tit is, and why a baby tends to suckle at it.
Last edited by Lonewolf_50; 21st Aug 2012 at 22:07.
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Instead of repeating my prior posts about how they mishandled this simple failure, why do we think we can put 300 hr pilots in any airplane, tell them to only fly on autopilot, let them get thousands of hours watching the autopilot and expect them to be competent if the autopilot fails?
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While there's a definite question that needs answering about manual handling experience and proficiency, it's always worth remembering one of the lessons of Tenerife 1977 - namely that no matter how proficient or experienced a pilot may be, if their temperament is unsuited to a pressure or crisis situation it can lead them to make catastrophically poor decisions.
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You know Tenerife? There was NO crisis, NO pressure. What makes you think that carnage was aviation related? Captain SkyGod wants to launch, and the Gods will clear the runway for him. Mere mortals best retreat.....
For two hours, Ops was trying to reach the KLM chief pilot....
He was dead on the runway, no more impatient, no more invulnerable....
No more SkyGod.... The second worst sin is Pride... The worst is betrayal....
He knew it all..... Then he was gone.
Impatience is the sign of a rookie. Likewise the false fear that makes him act against his training and experience. Also he who sees reality and makes up his own, challenging the Universe to a game of chicken......
For two hours, Ops was trying to reach the KLM chief pilot....
He was dead on the runway, no more impatient, no more invulnerable....
No more SkyGod.... The second worst sin is Pride... The worst is betrayal....
He knew it all..... Then he was gone.
Impatience is the sign of a rookie. Likewise the false fear that makes him act against his training and experience. Also he who sees reality and makes up his own, challenging the Universe to a game of chicken......
Last edited by Lyman; 22nd Aug 2012 at 01:02.
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Oh, but for the KLM Captain there certainly was. It might not have mattered much in the grand scheme of things (certainly not worth risking 500 lives over), but from the point of view of a management captain, he was facing a dilemma.
Firstly there was the new working time regulations - if exceeded, the whole flight crew would have faced a disciplinary and - if the letter of the law held - likely have been stripped of their licences and faced the consequent end of their careers.
Secondly, the other option would have been to stop in Las Palmas (or Tenerife) overnight. This would have avoided the regulatory risk, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands - if not a million - dollars in passenger and crew accomodation costs, plus parking fees for their 747 and potential legal action from the inconvenienced passengers with the wherewithal to do so.
The first was a career risk in terms of his standing as a pilot, and the second was a career risk from a management standpoint. Either way, the odds were that he'd lose some standing at best, or his entire career at worst.
So he devises a third option - one that cannot be allowed to fail. He takes on enough fuel to make a whistlestop at Las Palmas and then push straight back to Schiphol as fast as they can go. The rest is history.
To most people, his actions make no sense at all - but for whatever reason he believed it was the right thing to do, and the knowledge underpinning that belief died with him.
Firstly there was the new working time regulations - if exceeded, the whole flight crew would have faced a disciplinary and - if the letter of the law held - likely have been stripped of their licences and faced the consequent end of their careers.
Secondly, the other option would have been to stop in Las Palmas (or Tenerife) overnight. This would have avoided the regulatory risk, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands - if not a million - dollars in passenger and crew accomodation costs, plus parking fees for their 747 and potential legal action from the inconvenienced passengers with the wherewithal to do so.
The first was a career risk in terms of his standing as a pilot, and the second was a career risk from a management standpoint. Either way, the odds were that he'd lose some standing at best, or his entire career at worst.
So he devises a third option - one that cannot be allowed to fail. He takes on enough fuel to make a whistlestop at Las Palmas and then push straight back to Schiphol as fast as they can go. The rest is history.
To most people, his actions make no sense at all - but for whatever reason he believed it was the right thing to do, and the knowledge underpinning that belief died with him.