American Airlines Flight 742 "flight control system" problems

[captjns]

No justification of calling anyone that stalls a modern day jet from 35,000' into the Atlantic a capable airman, regardless where they're from. Possibly harsh, and such comments won't bring back those who entrusted their lives to whom they believed to be qualified and capable of both normal and non-normal situations. Books are important, and simulators too. Perhaps some need to get their heads into the jet, and give the simulator a break.

Jet upset training (classroom, video presentations, documentation, and full flightnsimulator) has been included in the training program of most modern carriers well before this needless tragedy occurred.

From initial training some 40 years ago, I was taught to refer to the attitude indicator during sever turbulence penetration, and potential upset situations. Same is still taught today, and if practiced will result with a successful outcome.

[Centaurus]

Jet upset training has been included in the training program of most carriers well before this needless tragedy occurred.

The jet upset training I have witnessed in simulators is nothing more than straight forward recoveries from a mild spiral dive or a mild nose up maybe sixty degrees angle of bank. One well known international airline "teaches" jet upsets (unusual attitudes) in the simulator only to the definition parameters stated in the FCTM which are:

Pitch attitude greater than 25 degrees nose up.
Pitch attitude greater than 10 degrees nose down.
Bank angle greater than 45 degrees.
or, within above parameters but flying at airspeeds inappropriate for the conditions.

So a typical test of competency to recover from an unusual attitude is where the instructor puts the aircraft into a 15 degree nose down spiral dive at 50 degrees angle of bank and tells the student to recover to level flight. After all, those figures meet the defintion of "Upset". Sometimes it is a visual manoeuvre or it may be simulated IMC. Basically PPL stuff before first solo.

Those parameters may define an Upset but they are quite benign and easily recoverable.

[aa73]

I have a hard time understanding why some PPruners here are criticizing the pilots' actions based on passenger reports??

So, because the pax were talking about "big red lights" and what was SUPPOSEDLY said on the PA, and the F/A may have been nervous, we now have the full and accurate report by which to hang the flight crew. I see.

Have we learned nothing?

Kudos to the flight crew for safely handling the situation.

[bubbers44]

I think we all think the pilots did an excellent job of landing the airplane. The reporting is in question.

[RobertS975]

Flight control problems in a MD83 can be very serious, especially if it involves a stripped jackscrew that controls the horizontal stabilizer trim. Remember AS 261 back in January 2000.

[Alexander de Meerkat]

bubbers44 - It is always better to counter arguments by refuting what was said rather than what was not said. No one said 'it is ok for your pilots to lose airspeed and pull up into an 11 degree pitch up attitude at FL350 which we all know will result in a full stall'. I can see you are not an Airbus pilot and therefore have limited grasp of the situation, but the whole point of an Airbus is that normally you cannot stall it. 'Lack of pilot skills', as you describe it, is not simply stick and rudder proficiency, all very good as that is. Operating a large passenger jet like an Airbus requires a whole host of other skills, including a thorough grasp of the failure modes and being able to separate the wood from the trees in a high stress environment - a rare skill in my experience. Unfortunately the aircraft in this case had degraded into a reduced flight law status, which was not recognised by the crew. Furthermore you say that 'at FL350 level flight AOA would be nose attitude'. That statement does not entirely make sense to me, but from what I understand you are saying that if the pitch attitude on the artificial horizon (PFD in Airbus parlance) says 2 deg then you would see that as an accurate readout of AoA. That is absolutely not the case and the crew's misunderstanding of that was ultimately what killed everyone. It is entirely possible to have the pitch attitude around 2-3 degrees and still have an AoA of 20-25 degrees, which was the case here. They got into a stall because they pulled back on the sidestick in a reduced flight mode (Alternate Law in Airbus-speak). That induced a stall (an aural warning went off 75 times in the descent sating, 'Stall, Stall' but they never acknowledged it once). The actual attitude on the horizon was only a few degrees but their AoA was massive - something they never recognised. There were two compouding factors - the RHS First Officer for some reason (overwhelming anxiety?) kept his sidestick deflected fully back throughout the whole experience which was not spotted by the LHS First Officer and it therefore made his inputs largely redundant. The second factor was that they had experienced an erroneous speed indication earlier on one side, due to icing of a pitot probe, that had completely blown their mental understanding of the situation. Combine that with a host of strange warnings they could not process, night time, bad weather, no Captain present to take absolute control clearly and positively - you have a cocktail for catastrophe present. There is absolutely no doubt their training was inadequate, but that is another issue. To simply see them as two idiots who lacked basic flying skills is a gross and unhelpful simplification of the situation. Were they ultimately to blame? Without a doubt. Were there a number of other factors which contributed to a totally recoverable situation? Absolutely.

As an Airbus trainer and examiner (check airman in US-speak), my observation would be that if a genuinely unexpected loss of airspeed takes place (not one everyone is expecting because that is what they are doing in that particular recurrent training cycle) it has about a 50% chance of being recovered by the crew. Many would disagree with that view, but that is my view nonetheless. Crashes are rarely one cause as we know - a whole series of events come together in a particular moment of time which together lead to disaster. Many lessons have already been learnt by Airbus operators about this accident - including the need to have stall training on an aircraft that is not theoretically able to stall! When I did my type rating many years ago we never did stall training. That has now changed dramatically and I believe that the vast majority of Airbus pilots facing the same situation as the AF447 crew would be able to recover the aircraft to safe flight. Sadly, it often takes an accident for the right training to be in place.

[bubbers44]

Maybe you can accept poor airmanship as normal but I can't. Sorry. My friends who flew aircraft were held to a higher standard. Loss of airspeed was not an emergency. We flew attitude and power. No 11 degree pull ups at high altitude because we knew the aircraft couldn't do it. It wasn't very hard to do.

[bubbers44]

By the way I took a pay cut not to have to fly the Airbus because I didn't trust it like I did the Boeing aircraft. I trust my thousands of hours of flight more than an Airbus computerized flight computer.

[bubbers44]

Rereading your post, 2 degrees nose up attitude does mean 2 degrees angle of attack if you are in level flight. They had a perfectly good altimiter so holding level flight was not a problem wasn't it. 2 degrees nose up with level flight would have meant 2 degrees aoa. They needed their captain in the cockpit when the AS went south because only he was competent to handle the aircraft. They obviously were not.

[RetiredF4]

Alexander de Meerkat
.......but from what I understand you are saying that if the pitch attitude on the artificial horizon (PFD in Airbus parlance) says 2 deg then you would see that as an accurate readout of AoA. That is absolutely not the case and the crew's misunderstanding of that was ultimately what killed everyone. It is entirely possible to have the pitch attitude around 2-3 degrees and still have an AoA of 20-25 degrees, which was the case here

How true.

But note, that bubbers 44 is making his statement in relation to level flight (bolding by me)

bubbers44
Rereading your post, 2 degrees nose up attitude does mean 2 degrees angle of attack if you are in level flight

Although there is not an exact match under all conditions (especially dynamic ones like turbulence), it is a usable one and would not have killed them.

But to use that info there is a need for basic understanding what AOA is, what it does and what influences it.

[fantom]

...19.2 units...

[Ashling]

bubbers

There are plenty of examples of commercial pilots being unable to fly the aircraft and/or respond to loss of instrumentation and stalls correctly. Perhaps it is better to question the integrity of the system that places them on the flight deck in the first place.

Way too easy to point the finger at individuals.

[bubbers44]

I have taught aerobatics a lot as a civilian and have done hundreds of hammerhead stalls which requires a 90 degree pitch attitude but still isn't a stall when airspeed approaches zero because the angle of attack is also about zero. The rudder over in the vertical dive allows you to recover with no stall. AOA as we all know is the angle between the aircraft attitude and angle of flight. Level flight means pitch attitude is the same as AOA because the angle of flight is level. Turbulence may change angle of attack but the same rules apply. When AF was in their steep descent angle after their full stall they needed to reference their attitude to the steep descent path to recover but they didn't know how.

Automation has decayed basic piloting skills the last decade and it looks like this is the future unfortunately.

[bubbers44]

To the airbus instructor. Have fun with your rules. I will stick with Boeing because I trust Boeing and the rules are always the same. Fly the fricken airplane. Be a pilot. Automation isn't required.

[bubbers44]

99 percent of us Boeing pilots could recover from UAS by the way. Why can't you do more than 50 percent? Automation dependency?

[misd-agin]

99%? Ask the CKA at the Flight Academy. You'll be interested to hear their actual observations vs. uninformed opinions.

And the rules are not always the same on Boeing. 777 and 787 anyone?

[bubbers44]

I guess it is 99% of the good pilots I know that would have no problem with UAS. You must be talking about other pilots. What airline do they fly for? What is so hard about holding 2 degrees above the horizon that your pilots can't figure out?

[bubbers44]

I think I know who you are talking about. Our check airmen in the sims were jealous because they couldn't be real airline pilots, just instructors so tried to put us down to boost their egos. We didn't get to go into a sim that couldn't crash and spend your life with no chance of ever getting violated or explaining why you did anything. We did.

[PBY]

I think that it is not a coincidance that AF447 crashed. It is the fruit of Airbus training. Airbus always used to say, that captain does not need to be a good pilot, but must be a good manager. By the way I am a airbus instructor. But what I see in the sim and on the line is mind-boggling. Such a basic inability to fly the aircraft. No clue about pitch and power and how to set it. By the way, airbus is a good airplane. But the training is a disaster. It has always been like that. Now airbus in its infinite wisdom removed the pitch and power setting for 3 degree glide slope from the manuals. Because now we have magic. Below level 250 we put all the ADRs off and we have back up speed scale. They have just forgot a small detail. If angle of atack indicator gets stuck, it is not going to work and basic pitch and power would be helpful. But Airbus flight training department always need people to get killed before they come up with changes.
Another great idea in the airbus QRH is how to recover from the stall. They are asking to level the wings even before you are out of stall. It is a great entry into the spin. Before I joined the airlines, a good friend, an airline pilot told me, that many airline pilots don't have basic flying skills. I was looking up to airlines. I did not believe it. But now I believe it.

[DozyWannabe]

Originally Posted by PBY

I think that it is not a coincidance that AF447 crashed. It is the fruit of Airbus training. Airbus always used to say, that captain does not need to be a good pilot, but must be a good manager.

No they didn't. Can you point me to where you read that?

Now airbus in its infinite wisdom removed the pitch and power setting for 3 degree glide slope from the manuals. Because now we have magic. Below level 250 we put all the ADRs off and we have back up speed scale.

Are you sure? BUSS is an optional fit, so it's not going to apply to the whole fleet, plus it won't address the issue above FL250. Pitch and power settings won't have disappeared from the FCOM - IMO they should be a memory item anyway.

Another great idea in the airbus QRH is how to recover from the stall. They are asking to level the wings even before you are out of stall. It is a great entry into the spin.

Are they asking to level the wings, or are they saying not to exceed a certain bank angle? I suspect the intent is to avoid a spiral dive.