AF 447 report out
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CafeClub;
Have a look at the following post from the Tech Log.
As OrganFreak said, there is a "price" to pay - for the life of the aircraft.
Have a look at the following post from the Tech Log.
As OrganFreak said, there is a "price" to pay - for the life of the aircraft.
Last edited by mm43; 7th Jul 2012 at 03:48.
Soylentgreen
Please define a Fully Trained Pilot
I've never heard of such an example
some know somethings and others know something else and they all know the same little of something else
Please define a Fully Trained Pilot
I've never heard of such an example
some know somethings and others know something else and they all know the same little of something else
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I was happening demo in sim A320 ,my learn about unreliable airspeed aka overspeed, which leads to Flight control normal law protections.
I cannot moved the sidestick even my partner beside, overspeed protection taken over controls to the nose pitch up and the sidestick stuck at aft position.
within seconds airspeed dropped and leads to stall...my condolences again to Af447.
I cannot moved the sidestick even my partner beside, overspeed protection taken over controls to the nose pitch up and the sidestick stuck at aft position.
within seconds airspeed dropped and leads to stall...my condolences again to Af447.
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mm43 you nut
As OrganFreak said, there is a "price" to pay - for the life of the aircraft.
Doesn't make much sense now. Er...where'd I say it? 
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Why did the pilot flying pull back on the stick at 37,000 feet when the stall warning first initiated?
This reminds me of the 3 Miles islands nuclear accident where the operators collectively concentrated on the reading of a single faulty gauge to initiate a meltdown. Only when the relieving crew came on duty at 07:00 (3 or 4 hours after the incident) did someone immediately realized the error and stopped the plant from exploding. But during 3 or 4 hours a group of very trained engineers disregarded all other valid warnings believing they were false and concentrated on a single thing that happen to be the wrong one..
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Having read most of the posts, (not all, I will; admit, ) in the previous thread and in this one it does seem to me that many have advanced points that are valid but no one seems to tie them all together under sensible headings, say The aircraft and controls, training and flight management.
I realise, of course, that apparent shortcomings are not always so, and some are compromises that avoid others, however that doesn’t mean they are not worthy of discussion. I have also mentioned a distrust of fly by wire before and was upbraided because, as someone pointed out, direct controls, hydraulics and cables have been known to fail too. Again, given the complexities of the ‘laws’ that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthy of discussion.
Just from my own reading items that need further consideration in the aircraft might be,
1) Stability of modern aircraft in ‘coffin corner’ and the extent to which we allow designers to rely on computers to maintain control while aircraft are configured at the very edge of the envelope for better economics.
2) The sidesticks. No feedback. It may be something in French mechanical philosophy, we had a Citroen Safari once. The power steering and the brake, especially, had an entirely different feel to contemporary power augmented controls. Feedback to the steering was artificial, I think, and there was none to the brake button.
3) Automatic Trim. Given the lack of feedback in the sidesticks automatic trim is almost a necessity. The problem with that is, as has been pointed out, that after the stick has been held full back for some time trim is full up and it requires full forward stick to get the nose down and there are suggestions that even that would not be enough. (But surely after some time of full forward stick the trim would go ‘down?’)
4) The aircraft drops out of Normal Law into manual control immediately and without prior warning when more than one pitot appears to give an erroneous reading. It’s entirely logical but it is flawed. It means the pilots don’t really have time to get their head in the game before they have to act.
5) The stall alarm is disabled below 60 knots ( so it does not annoy while taxi-ing.) It seems reasonable, but if your head is not in the game . . . . . . . . . . I can easily imagine putting the nose down a little, hearing an alarm and thinking “Can’t do that, it triggers the alarm . . . . . . .” Surely the alarm cancel could be connected to the U/C load switches?
Training and Aircrew.
1) Most aircrew don’t do stall training once they get onto airline aircraft. Some say they have never done it, even simulated, at high altitude.
2) The primacy of instinct rather than training in stressful situations is well known and especially when the training is several years ago. For training to ‘kick in’ it must be frequent, current and automatic. I understand that training for extremely rare events is awfully expensive but so is the alternative.
3) There’s little comment on here about disorientation and illusion. I understand that pilots are trained to read the aircraft’s situation from the instruments however in the dark and with the aircraft being tossed around it might be easy to be disoriented. I have read often of pilots who commented after an event (eg, Gann.) that they had only survived because they had experienced the exact same thing before while in the care of an old timer. How many pilots have experienced a high altitude stall, in a storm, in the dark, with suspect airspeed, even in a sim?
4) There have been several comments that indirect indicators should have alerted the pilots to their situation, eg, “They should have realised if they were climbing on fixed power they would eventually stall,” ( and therefore no need for an AoA,) and some pilots may have that kind of presence of mind, however I don’t think we can rely on that when people are under pressure. I always used to think that I was good under stress, however I have discovered that actually I am useless, under stress I am pretty well unable to reason, I don’t suppose I am alone in that. It is, perhaps, important that we make sure that direct indicators are always available.
5) There is also the “I have decided that’s what is wrong . . . “ syndrome so we stop looking for other causes and adapt all the symptoms to our expectation. I don’t know how we train against this.
Flight management.
1) The decision to fly the most direct route, even though storms were known along it must be questionable. If airlines don’t make money we’ll not be travelling so freely, however how do we balance risk and economics?
2) Crew relief, given that one of the pilots had six thousand hours, hardly seems unreasonable. On the other hand one might reflect that makes it all the longer since he practiced stalls in the real world. It has to be a concern, though, that the captain wouldn’t be ‘au fait’ with the course of events when he returned to the flight deck and the other pilots didn’t seem able to tell him.
I realise, of course, that apparent shortcomings are not always so, and some are compromises that avoid others, however that doesn’t mean they are not worthy of discussion. I have also mentioned a distrust of fly by wire before and was upbraided because, as someone pointed out, direct controls, hydraulics and cables have been known to fail too. Again, given the complexities of the ‘laws’ that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthy of discussion.
Just from my own reading items that need further consideration in the aircraft might be,
1) Stability of modern aircraft in ‘coffin corner’ and the extent to which we allow designers to rely on computers to maintain control while aircraft are configured at the very edge of the envelope for better economics.
2) The sidesticks. No feedback. It may be something in French mechanical philosophy, we had a Citroen Safari once. The power steering and the brake, especially, had an entirely different feel to contemporary power augmented controls. Feedback to the steering was artificial, I think, and there was none to the brake button.
3) Automatic Trim. Given the lack of feedback in the sidesticks automatic trim is almost a necessity. The problem with that is, as has been pointed out, that after the stick has been held full back for some time trim is full up and it requires full forward stick to get the nose down and there are suggestions that even that would not be enough. (But surely after some time of full forward stick the trim would go ‘down?’)
4) The aircraft drops out of Normal Law into manual control immediately and without prior warning when more than one pitot appears to give an erroneous reading. It’s entirely logical but it is flawed. It means the pilots don’t really have time to get their head in the game before they have to act.
5) The stall alarm is disabled below 60 knots ( so it does not annoy while taxi-ing.) It seems reasonable, but if your head is not in the game . . . . . . . . . . I can easily imagine putting the nose down a little, hearing an alarm and thinking “Can’t do that, it triggers the alarm . . . . . . .” Surely the alarm cancel could be connected to the U/C load switches?
Training and Aircrew.
1) Most aircrew don’t do stall training once they get onto airline aircraft. Some say they have never done it, even simulated, at high altitude.
2) The primacy of instinct rather than training in stressful situations is well known and especially when the training is several years ago. For training to ‘kick in’ it must be frequent, current and automatic. I understand that training for extremely rare events is awfully expensive but so is the alternative.
3) There’s little comment on here about disorientation and illusion. I understand that pilots are trained to read the aircraft’s situation from the instruments however in the dark and with the aircraft being tossed around it might be easy to be disoriented. I have read often of pilots who commented after an event (eg, Gann.) that they had only survived because they had experienced the exact same thing before while in the care of an old timer. How many pilots have experienced a high altitude stall, in a storm, in the dark, with suspect airspeed, even in a sim?
4) There have been several comments that indirect indicators should have alerted the pilots to their situation, eg, “They should have realised if they were climbing on fixed power they would eventually stall,” ( and therefore no need for an AoA,) and some pilots may have that kind of presence of mind, however I don’t think we can rely on that when people are under pressure. I always used to think that I was good under stress, however I have discovered that actually I am useless, under stress I am pretty well unable to reason, I don’t suppose I am alone in that. It is, perhaps, important that we make sure that direct indicators are always available.
5) There is also the “I have decided that’s what is wrong . . . “ syndrome so we stop looking for other causes and adapt all the symptoms to our expectation. I don’t know how we train against this.
Flight management.
1) The decision to fly the most direct route, even though storms were known along it must be questionable. If airlines don’t make money we’ll not be travelling so freely, however how do we balance risk and economics?
2) Crew relief, given that one of the pilots had six thousand hours, hardly seems unreasonable. On the other hand one might reflect that makes it all the longer since he practiced stalls in the real world. It has to be a concern, though, that the captain wouldn’t be ‘au fait’ with the course of events when he returned to the flight deck and the other pilots didn’t seem able to tell him.
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Response to Solyent
Solyent wrote...
"So, from a cognitive perspective, the accident makes sense. A big part of this was the human-machine interface, which did an extremely poor job of letting the pilots know what was actually going on.
Could they have done better? Of course. Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? Far from it. "
__________________________
I'll take you task on this Solyent. From the cognitive perspective you have considered a limited set of factors....but assuming your argument holds for the cognitive circumstances prevailing in the cockpit, the accident still does not make sense. The cognitive environment informing the aircraft and avionics designers - even after all the accidents and incidents we have had over many years - leaves much to be desired. Bad HMI engineering, poor scenario modeling, poor checks on corner cases/bounday cases, poor design processes and inadequate checks (as well as poor pitot design) have led to a situation where, possibly, a set of cognitive elements have conspired to deliver this outcome. Bad, bad design and the usual chain of events at work.
Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? They most certainly are. They are charged as professional pilots to mantain complete discipline and situational awareness in the cockpit at all times. No distractions, no excuses. They accepted the rank, pay and responsibility. They failed. Bad circumstances no doubt. Sensory confusion, loss of external references....never fun. But their responsibility through and through).
"So, from a cognitive perspective, the accident makes sense. A big part of this was the human-machine interface, which did an extremely poor job of letting the pilots know what was actually going on.
Could they have done better? Of course. Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? Far from it. "
__________________________
I'll take you task on this Solyent. From the cognitive perspective you have considered a limited set of factors....but assuming your argument holds for the cognitive circumstances prevailing in the cockpit, the accident still does not make sense. The cognitive environment informing the aircraft and avionics designers - even after all the accidents and incidents we have had over many years - leaves much to be desired. Bad HMI engineering, poor scenario modeling, poor checks on corner cases/bounday cases, poor design processes and inadequate checks (as well as poor pitot design) have led to a situation where, possibly, a set of cognitive elements have conspired to deliver this outcome. Bad, bad design and the usual chain of events at work.
Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? They most certainly are. They are charged as professional pilots to mantain complete discipline and situational awareness in the cockpit at all times. No distractions, no excuses. They accepted the rank, pay and responsibility. They failed. Bad circumstances no doubt. Sensory confusion, loss of external references....never fun. But their responsibility through and through).
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Interesting discussion here....
If one sees one's aircraft gaining 2 thousand feet, going from 350 to 370, never mind what the ASI is reading, if anything; you have to realize that you don't get a sustained gain of 2 thousand feet 'for free.' That is so very basic that it should over-ride all the binging and bonging and flashing and beeping in the world, except that here it obviously didn't.
I have noticed with interest the sort of stall recovery training given in two-crew aircraft. Where once we were taught, in little airplanes, to get the nose well down and accept a loss in altitude, the advanced way to do this was presented as a call-out of 'Stall!' at the first indication, going to full power, but putting the nose on the horizon reference and powering out with no or very little loss of altitude. A good recovery was judged on minimum altitude loss rather than getting to the right AoA, when that seems mistaken to me. Here it looks as if they kept the aircraft to a very tidy level-flight attitude while falling like a stone in a deep stall. That would have been somewhat correct for recovery from the sort of stall presented in the usual training scenario I just sketched.
If one sees one's aircraft gaining 2 thousand feet, going from 350 to 370, never mind what the ASI is reading, if anything; you have to realize that you don't get a sustained gain of 2 thousand feet 'for free.' That is so very basic that it should over-ride all the binging and bonging and flashing and beeping in the world, except that here it obviously didn't.
I have noticed with interest the sort of stall recovery training given in two-crew aircraft. Where once we were taught, in little airplanes, to get the nose well down and accept a loss in altitude, the advanced way to do this was presented as a call-out of 'Stall!' at the first indication, going to full power, but putting the nose on the horizon reference and powering out with no or very little loss of altitude. A good recovery was judged on minimum altitude loss rather than getting to the right AoA, when that seems mistaken to me. Here it looks as if they kept the aircraft to a very tidy level-flight attitude while falling like a stone in a deep stall. That would have been somewhat correct for recovery from the sort of stall presented in the usual training scenario I just sketched.
Last edited by chuks; 7th Jul 2012 at 08:25.
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A Summing Up of all that never hitherto "added up"
So to sum up the BEA final AF447 delivery, my much earlier analysis of the recorders' tale (here) was pretty much on the money, particularly with respect to the stall warning system. Because the AF447 hapless trio were embedded in a deep stall, the type of stall entry that can only be entered via a high AoA tumble from the very thin air of high altitude, the stall warning audio alert quickly cut out at a speed well below the 1g level stall speed. This is probably due to the practical limitations of the designed operating range for the AoA vane's deflection whilst riding out there in the relative airflow. No Airbus designer had ever entertained the proposition of being able to operate at a maintained >40 degrees AoA. *In addition to the nose-high low IAS stall entry, the aircraft had auto-trimmed its THS (trimmable horizontal stabilizer) into a fully back-trimmed/nose-high position during the inadvertent climb from cruise altitude. This happened soon after the autopilot disconnected due to iced-up pitots/ airspeed read-out loss and the pilot allowing/causing the nose to pitch-up by applying TOGA power. But the pilots would've been quite unaware that this auto-trimming was happening during that zoom-climb. Post stall-entry, in the ensuing high-rate descent, this back-trimmed configuration had the deadly effect of keeping the nose attitude nose-high and thus sustaining a stabilized stall (with the additionally assisting pitch-up moment of the wing-mounted/underslung engines at high power). High nose attitude (maintained via elevator authority) plus full THS backtrim and high power is a certain formula for deep-stall entry and stabilization - with a very high rate of descent.
Thus the aircraft began its steep descent embedded in its deep-stall regime and the only hope was that the pilot(s) would ultimately realize this and use stick-fwd elevator authority to lower the nose to unstall. However every time they tentatively initiated this, the stall warning system/AoA vane would traverse back into its operating range and give them a resounding stall alarm (this proving to be a sufficient deterrent to continue attempting what would have been an otherwise natural and instinctive recovery action). In an ideal situation, the stall alerting audio would continue to operate right down to zero actual airspeed – but it didn’t and thus it proved to be an insurmountable psychological obstacle to any affirmative corrective action (i.e. it just confused the hell out of the pilot whenever he tried a nose-down input. Why? Because its low side trigger alert threshold was so illogical and unfamiliar - and they had no meaningful speed display to resolve the conundrum). Adding TOGA power as a response to the surprise Autopilot disconnect and loss of airspeed was also undeniably causative, yet quite instinctive. It also certainly didn’t help that the sidesticks are pretty much out of view of the other pilot, so it was never clearly and visually annunciated to the other two pilots whether (or not) inappropriate manual inputs were being made by the PF. That sidelined Airbus pecadillo of "unseen control input" is yet another hitherto unencountered and unspoken hazard of automation. Automation surprise still has plenty up its ample sleeves.
Additionally, of course, the deep-stall is uncharacteristically without any of the buffeting caused by a normal aerodynamic stall’s flow breakdown, over and aft of the wings, turbulently impacting the tailplane....and thus defining the stalled condition. So the ride down to the ocean surface would’ve been eerily as smooth as silk and quite unlike any stall event that the pilots had ever experienced - i.e. another vital stall cue taken away. So from a design and training deficiency viewpoint, the enigmatic end result - without stick-shaker, airspeed read-out, stick-pusher, continuous stall warning or recognizable buffet cues - was a total sucker-bait scenario. It’s understandable therefore that a solution within the time and height available proved fatally elusive. It was all simply “beyond their experience”.
I'm not certain, but I think I recall an Airbus statement to the effect that the deep-stall characteristics of its aircraft were never tested. If that's true then the lawyers will soon be all over that - and the fact that the pilots were out of their depth due to never having been trained to cope or even exposed to the theory. In fact manual flight at cruise height in a degraded control law was an alien circumstance and never practised - nor entertained as a challenge. So why is an aircraft much more sensitive to minor pitch excursions at high altitude? Think high TAS. Two degrees of pitch change at 200 knots IAS at low altitude might generate a 1000fpm climb. However at around 40Kft that minor pitch excursion's effect will be at least doubled (as the TAS is twice as high). Pitch control at height is therefore deemed to be "skittish" - but near the aircraft's ceiling, it's also critical.
And of course, hearkening back to the origins of this accident, it’s apparent that the Thales pitot-tube heating was never capable of coping with the impact of actual ice particles (of which Cirrostratus/Cirro-Cu cloud is comprised). The Thales Pitot heater could stop water from freezing on contact but didn't have the heating capacity to stop ice particles impacting and agglutinating. The pitot heaters were being overpowered by the different characteristics of ice particle impact. No-one at BEA, DGAC or AirFrance (or Thales) ever awoke to that or factored it into the concerns that arose from an ever mounting score of prior such incidents. Risk appreciation, management and control would appear to be still in its infancy. We're still learning our 3 R's at the hard school of knocks.... that vital Risk Recognition and Rectification recipe for disaster avoidance.
Thus the aircraft began its steep descent embedded in its deep-stall regime and the only hope was that the pilot(s) would ultimately realize this and use stick-fwd elevator authority to lower the nose to unstall. However every time they tentatively initiated this, the stall warning system/AoA vane would traverse back into its operating range and give them a resounding stall alarm (this proving to be a sufficient deterrent to continue attempting what would have been an otherwise natural and instinctive recovery action). In an ideal situation, the stall alerting audio would continue to operate right down to zero actual airspeed – but it didn’t and thus it proved to be an insurmountable psychological obstacle to any affirmative corrective action (i.e. it just confused the hell out of the pilot whenever he tried a nose-down input. Why? Because its low side trigger alert threshold was so illogical and unfamiliar - and they had no meaningful speed display to resolve the conundrum). Adding TOGA power as a response to the surprise Autopilot disconnect and loss of airspeed was also undeniably causative, yet quite instinctive. It also certainly didn’t help that the sidesticks are pretty much out of view of the other pilot, so it was never clearly and visually annunciated to the other two pilots whether (or not) inappropriate manual inputs were being made by the PF. That sidelined Airbus pecadillo of "unseen control input" is yet another hitherto unencountered and unspoken hazard of automation. Automation surprise still has plenty up its ample sleeves.
Additionally, of course, the deep-stall is uncharacteristically without any of the buffeting caused by a normal aerodynamic stall’s flow breakdown, over and aft of the wings, turbulently impacting the tailplane....and thus defining the stalled condition. So the ride down to the ocean surface would’ve been eerily as smooth as silk and quite unlike any stall event that the pilots had ever experienced - i.e. another vital stall cue taken away. So from a design and training deficiency viewpoint, the enigmatic end result - without stick-shaker, airspeed read-out, stick-pusher, continuous stall warning or recognizable buffet cues - was a total sucker-bait scenario. It’s understandable therefore that a solution within the time and height available proved fatally elusive. It was all simply “beyond their experience”.
I'm not certain, but I think I recall an Airbus statement to the effect that the deep-stall characteristics of its aircraft were never tested. If that's true then the lawyers will soon be all over that - and the fact that the pilots were out of their depth due to never having been trained to cope or even exposed to the theory. In fact manual flight at cruise height in a degraded control law was an alien circumstance and never practised - nor entertained as a challenge. So why is an aircraft much more sensitive to minor pitch excursions at high altitude? Think high TAS. Two degrees of pitch change at 200 knots IAS at low altitude might generate a 1000fpm climb. However at around 40Kft that minor pitch excursion's effect will be at least doubled (as the TAS is twice as high). Pitch control at height is therefore deemed to be "skittish" - but near the aircraft's ceiling, it's also critical.
And of course, hearkening back to the origins of this accident, it’s apparent that the Thales pitot-tube heating was never capable of coping with the impact of actual ice particles (of which Cirrostratus/Cirro-Cu cloud is comprised). The Thales Pitot heater could stop water from freezing on contact but didn't have the heating capacity to stop ice particles impacting and agglutinating. The pitot heaters were being overpowered by the different characteristics of ice particle impact. No-one at BEA, DGAC or AirFrance (or Thales) ever awoke to that or factored it into the concerns that arose from an ever mounting score of prior such incidents. Risk appreciation, management and control would appear to be still in its infancy. We're still learning our 3 R's at the hard school of knocks.... that vital Risk Recognition and Rectification recipe for disaster avoidance.
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Pitots certified outside normal operating conditions
Apart from poor piloting what strikes me most is that the pitots are certified in operating conditions that are not reprentative for high altitude cruising. A giant hole in the swiss cheese IMHO.
see page 204 in the Bea report.
No news since it was already in the interim report.
see page 204 in the Bea report.
No news since it was already in the interim report.
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Contacted:
boba306:
Sort of sums it up.
a) It seems at some point a certain aircraft no longer allows rule number 1 ......
b) It seems as well that some pilots are not adequately trained ......
c) and it seems that better training of them will sort out a) ......
If your answer is definitive, then it cuts through all the 'noise' and the acres of comment.
Seems that, again, the most basic of Aviation fundamentals was forgotten.
When things start to go wrong:
Rule number 1. Fly the aircraft.
Seems that, again, the most basic of Aviation fundamentals was forgotten.
When things start to go wrong:
Rule number 1. Fly the aircraft.
I was happening demo in sim A320 ,my learn about unreliable airspeed aka overspeed, which leads to Flight control normal law protections.
I cannot moved the sidestick even my partner beside, overspeed protection taken over controls to the nose pitch up and the sidestick stuck at aft position.
I cannot moved the sidestick even my partner beside, overspeed protection taken over controls to the nose pitch up and the sidestick stuck at aft position.
a) It seems at some point a certain aircraft no longer allows rule number 1 ......
b) It seems as well that some pilots are not adequately trained ......
c) and it seems that better training of them will sort out a) ......
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Gotta love RUSTY
"Dare I say those of us who were brought up on basic a/c with basic autopilots
(no autothrust or FMC or EFIS) were "hard wired" for manual flight. We may be a
bit rusty but it's no big deal if we have to hand fly. The modern generation of
pilots have not got this framework to fall back on when it's all falling apart"
(no autothrust or FMC or EFIS) were "hard wired" for manual flight. We may be a
bit rusty but it's no big deal if we have to hand fly. The modern generation of
pilots have not got this framework to fall back on when it's all falling apart"
Why ? Because the beancounters see it as more cost effective to run an airline with pilots who can offer more years of service, rather than pilots who KNOW how to fly the effin plane. What is the cost of safety these days? I'm sure AF will know that answer very soon
Every year, the airline industry is losing well trained and qualified pilots because bean counters in HR determine who gets hired. Not the Chief Pilot, not the TRI , TRE etc. The younger pilots of today don't have the opportunity to learn to fly. They are NOT trained how to manually fly and how to challenge the dynamics of airspeed vs altitude. They aren't taught how to keep a heavy piece of metal stable and horizontal when something goes wrong. Especially when the computer goes haywire.
Not all now! But Too many in the hiring pool are kids who bought their type rating, never had the opportunity to gain hours on a/c without computers, never had to work up to the majors. And some, well a few have blatantly lied on their log books or falsified docs.
I told my " Rusty" today that while I'm sure he would enjoy flying a newer, shinier, smaller ("Rusty" flies a 747 classic baby) I wouldn't want him anywhere else than what he was about to take off in and I could not be more proud of him. Because my man KNOWS how to fly.
If I had the choice to non rev in 1st or biz class on a 777 or non rev sitting on top of a pallet inside his 747, I would ride with him every time. I know I'm safer. 
Now if I could just teach him how to cook.
Last edited by SassyPilotsWife; 7th Jul 2012 at 12:13.
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I keep asking why these guys did not have a metal default in their heads for a normal pitch & power combination incase of a failure in the aircraft systems?
, since the airbus gives limited visual backup of the power output vs thrust lever position , since pitch and power needed for a level unacclerated flight on such a widebody is much dependant on density altitude, weight and speed -you will not do much with basic pitch and power settings without speed reference in the middle of the night on a thunderstorm area and severe turbulence, especially when you are shocked that systems start to quit and you have not a real idea how to deal it.
its for sure something different than basic ppl training in a single piston and vmc .
airbus designed its aircraft not be touched manually in cruise flight- things like pitch and power are not of interest to the pilot since its all computer controlled. in my opinion - when airbus designs its aircraft to give ( in cruise) maximum control to the computer and minimum control to the pilot the systems should work in every case instead of quitting due to ice crystals and leaving the pilot with a manual recovery where his experience in manual flying and stall prevention on a a330 in FL350 is close to nothing due to the airbus design .
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Automation= wonderful when used correctly
There are only two possibilities for why an altimeter would be relentlessly unwinding down (to sea level in this case). Your nose is pointed too far down or too far up (you are in a STALL!)
Unfortunately these guys were so massively confused by the automation that was "half working and half not", that they were reduced to the equivalent of a bowel of Jello. This theoretically could happen to ANYONE BTW, who is in disbelief/denial about what is going on around them.
As a low time pilot I lost my A/S indication because | neglected to turn my pitot heat on in what became IMC conditions. I was familiar enough with this particular light piston twin to sort out an approach in fairly solid IMC conditions with power and attitude alone. This was before GPS so I asked the radar controller to monitor my ground speed. I was/am a flight instructor so it was just applying what I taught.
Later in life for a while I was an instructor at Flight Safety on the Challenger jet but was still not too comfortable with it's FMS because I hadn't been properly trained to use it; so given a night circling approach scenario in the Sim. I chose NOT to use it and hand fly the approach instead. It certainly felt a lot more stressful than watching someone who DID know how to use the FMS properly for much of the approach (they screwed up the landing though), but at least I recognized my limitations and felt more "connected" during the approach doing it in a way I knew and understood (hand flying).
So I guess my point is you MUST know all the intricacies of the automation OR... somehow keep your cool and be prepared to manually do the flying if necessary.
Unfortunately these guys were so massively confused by the automation that was "half working and half not", that they were reduced to the equivalent of a bowel of Jello. This theoretically could happen to ANYONE BTW, who is in disbelief/denial about what is going on around them.
As a low time pilot I lost my A/S indication because | neglected to turn my pitot heat on in what became IMC conditions. I was familiar enough with this particular light piston twin to sort out an approach in fairly solid IMC conditions with power and attitude alone. This was before GPS so I asked the radar controller to monitor my ground speed. I was/am a flight instructor so it was just applying what I taught.
Later in life for a while I was an instructor at Flight Safety on the Challenger jet but was still not too comfortable with it's FMS because I hadn't been properly trained to use it; so given a night circling approach scenario in the Sim. I chose NOT to use it and hand fly the approach instead. It certainly felt a lot more stressful than watching someone who DID know how to use the FMS properly for much of the approach (they screwed up the landing though), but at least I recognized my limitations and felt more "connected" during the approach doing it in a way I knew and understood (hand flying).
So I guess my point is you MUST know all the intricacies of the automation OR... somehow keep your cool and be prepared to manually do the flying if necessary.
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aerobat77
Rubbish, do you or have you ever "flown: a real airbus?
airbus designed its aircraft not be touched manually in cruise flight- things like pitch and power are not of interest to the pilot since its all computer controlled. in my opinion
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I am another retired heavvies driver (B744) who is at a loss why an experienced crew (almost all had lots of GA/gliding experience, so a good understanding of basics like stall/stick&rudder flying) looses it almost right from the beginning.
The next moment (I mentioned it before) the PF gets more or less frozen in his actions, a well trained and rehearsed crew concept breaks down in a snap.
Basic instinct takes over, like pulling the stick to its aft limit, to get away from approaching death. How many of us had this horrible experience and lives to tell? Bet that almost all crashes, with aircrews in their last seconds, will have the stick or Yoke pulled to its aft limit. Stalled or not.
As a result of his actions the plane did not at all react to his input, worse, the thing just would not go up and kept descending, not even with full power and a high nose UP. That further made him loose the situation.
I have, like no one else, a single answer to this crash, it will take for years to study it. The industry as a whole will have to learn from this so that all those who died did not in vain.
For the choice of the routeing: I have flown the stretch many times. I remember only seeing once or twice some dim lights of Ferdinando de Noronha, a small island there. For the rest it is pitch black outside. No lighted fishery fleets(like the Indian Ocean), or even better lighted oil platforms like in the Gulf of Mexico. This would never had happened over lighted areas like Europe, although I did not read IF they got ever into (nightly) VMC conditions. But if so, with a sinkrate of 7000'/min, it was only seconds before impact. The agony suffered in the back by all who realised more or less that the situation was getting out of hand must have been terrible.
The ITF (ITCZ) itself is not so much a big deal, thousands of crews are passing it every day, be it east of Brasil, or right over Africa, or throughout Asia.
In the planning phase it is difficult to find the "best" route, as CB activity develops, changes and dies within hours. For crews a challenge to find routes through passes. That indeed needs experience up front, there are sooo many variables, there is no golden rule how to pass or cross a system like that.
Circumnavigating comparable systems when over US territory is much easier for pilots, as the ATC system is way more effective in rerouteing traffic, away from cells or reported turbulent areas. Once I got rerouted as early as with our landfall over NY, due to a quick developing system on our planned route to MEX, hours later.
On transatlantic routes the pilots are much more on their own in figuring out to avoid bad areas.
Maybe less experienced crews tend to remain too close to the "magnetic" magenta line, I went off track 150 miles if needed to.
But now I enter the balcony level of Statler and Waldorf. I for one have never had to deal with situations like this or Sully's and I am glad I never had to proof how I would have reacted.
The next moment (I mentioned it before) the PF gets more or less frozen in his actions, a well trained and rehearsed crew concept breaks down in a snap.
Basic instinct takes over, like pulling the stick to its aft limit, to get away from approaching death. How many of us had this horrible experience and lives to tell? Bet that almost all crashes, with aircrews in their last seconds, will have the stick or Yoke pulled to its aft limit. Stalled or not.
As a result of his actions the plane did not at all react to his input, worse, the thing just would not go up and kept descending, not even with full power and a high nose UP. That further made him loose the situation.
I have, like no one else, a single answer to this crash, it will take for years to study it. The industry as a whole will have to learn from this so that all those who died did not in vain.
For the choice of the routeing: I have flown the stretch many times. I remember only seeing once or twice some dim lights of Ferdinando de Noronha, a small island there. For the rest it is pitch black outside. No lighted fishery fleets(like the Indian Ocean), or even better lighted oil platforms like in the Gulf of Mexico. This would never had happened over lighted areas like Europe, although I did not read IF they got ever into (nightly) VMC conditions. But if so, with a sinkrate of 7000'/min, it was only seconds before impact. The agony suffered in the back by all who realised more or less that the situation was getting out of hand must have been terrible.
The ITF (ITCZ) itself is not so much a big deal, thousands of crews are passing it every day, be it east of Brasil, or right over Africa, or throughout Asia.
In the planning phase it is difficult to find the "best" route, as CB activity develops, changes and dies within hours. For crews a challenge to find routes through passes. That indeed needs experience up front, there are sooo many variables, there is no golden rule how to pass or cross a system like that.
Circumnavigating comparable systems when over US territory is much easier for pilots, as the ATC system is way more effective in rerouteing traffic, away from cells or reported turbulent areas. Once I got rerouted as early as with our landfall over NY, due to a quick developing system on our planned route to MEX, hours later.
On transatlantic routes the pilots are much more on their own in figuring out to avoid bad areas.
Maybe less experienced crews tend to remain too close to the "magnetic" magenta line, I went off track 150 miles if needed to.
But now I enter the balcony level of Statler and Waldorf. I for one have never had to deal with situations like this or Sully's and I am glad I never had to proof how I would have reacted.
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Originally Posted by Orville W
I'll take you task on this Solyent. From the cognitive perspective you have considered a limited set of factors....but assuming your argument holds for the cognitive circumstances prevailing in the cockpit, the accident still does not make sense. The cognitive environment informing the aircraft and avionics designers - even after all the accidents and incidents we have had over many years - leaves much to be desired. Bad HMI engineering, poor scenario modeling, poor checks on corner cases/bounday cases, poor design processes and inadequate checks (as well as poor pitot design) have led to a situation where, possibly, a set of cognitive elements have conspired to deliver this outcome. Bad, bad design and the usual chain of events at work.
Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? They most certainly are. They are charged as professional pilots to mantain complete discipline and situational awareness in the cockpit at all times. No distractions, no excuses. They accepted the rank, pay and responsibility. They failed. Bad circumstances no doubt. Sensory confusion, loss of external references....never fun. But their responsibility through and through).
Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? They most certainly are. They are charged as professional pilots to mantain complete discipline and situational awareness in the cockpit at all times. No distractions, no excuses. They accepted the rank, pay and responsibility. They failed. Bad circumstances no doubt. Sensory confusion, loss of external references....never fun. But their responsibility through and through).
As a current, qualified narrow body Airbii Captain, I can say this: One doesn't know what one doesn't know.
Before this accident, and this online forum, I had only the computer based training given by my airline and the Airbus AOMVol one from which to draw from for tech info. I passed a type rating course and checked out on the line with what I now know to be a very minimal understanding of how the Airbus is controlled.
Fortunately, in six years in the Airbus I've never experienced anything close to what happened to AF447. Had I have had the experience, I think I would have relied on twenty years of experience flying cable controlled, steam gauge turbo jets and discovered a way to overcome the problems. However, when you take two guys with nothing but Airbus cruise experience, who I must assume were trained the same as most of the rest of us, and you place them in a surprise situation in which their airplane presents them with conflicting/confusing information......I think you'll end up with AF447 more times than not.
If it makes you feel good blaming the pilots, go ahead, I won't change your mind. But if you consider ever flying as SLF, you might want to hope that this accident changes at least: training, procedures, and CRM procedures for Airbus control and "surprise" events.
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OrvilleW wrote:
OrvilleW - Thanks for your followup. It seems to me in the case where even a small % of adequately trained pilots can not handle the situation, then it rather pointless to blame them.
Silly example #1: both wings fall off. 100% of pilots crash? Would you blame the pilots in this situation?
Silly example #2 : a computer bug inverts the airspeed indicator and altimeter. Let's say 85% of pilots crash in this case. Do you blame the pilots for being "non professionals"?
I have no idea what the % has to be before we consider blaming the pilots vs. blaming the system. Does it matter?
Solyent wrote...
I'll take you task on this Solyent. From the cognitive perspective you have considered a limited set of factors....but assuming your argument holds for the cognitive circumstances prevailing in the cockpit, the accident still does not make sense. The cognitive environment informing the aircraft and avionics designers - even after all the accidents and incidents we have had over many years - leaves much to be desired. Bad HMI engineering, poor scenario modeling, poor checks on corner cases/bounday cases, poor design processes and inadequate checks (as well as poor pitot design) have led to a situation where, possibly, a set of cognitive elements have conspired to deliver this outcome. Bad, bad design and the usual chain of events at work.
Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? They most certainly are. They are charged as professional pilots to mantain complete discipline and situational awareness in the cockpit at all times. No distractions, no excuses. They accepted the rank, pay and responsibility. They failed. Bad circumstances no doubt. Sensory confusion, loss of external references....never fun. But their responsibility through and through).
"So, from a cognitive perspective, the accident makes sense. A big part of this was the human-machine interface, which did an extremely poor job of letting the pilots know what was actually going on.
Could they have done better? Of course. Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? Far from it. "
Could they have done better? Of course. Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? Far from it. "
Are they entirely, or even primarily to blame? They most certainly are. They are charged as professional pilots to mantain complete discipline and situational awareness in the cockpit at all times. No distractions, no excuses. They accepted the rank, pay and responsibility. They failed. Bad circumstances no doubt. Sensory confusion, loss of external references....never fun. But their responsibility through and through).
Silly example #1: both wings fall off. 100% of pilots crash? Would you blame the pilots in this situation?
Silly example #2 : a computer bug inverts the airspeed indicator and altimeter. Let's say 85% of pilots crash in this case. Do you blame the pilots for being "non professionals"?
I have no idea what the % has to be before we consider blaming the pilots vs. blaming the system. Does it matter?