Air Asia Indonesia Lost Contact from Surabaya to Singapore
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To be fair, I have never flown a jet (so am unfamiliar with Airbus systems). But, the Airbus is type certified, as all certified aircraft, to a standard which includes the requirement that the aircraft must not require unusual pilot skill and attention to safely fly. It can't be presented as terribly difficult to fly through its full range of controlled flight. That's the airplane side of the interface.
The pilot(s) of an aircraft are duty bound to meet that interface halfway, with skill and experience appropriate to the aircraft type and the operating environment. Pilots are entitled to a learning phase, per type, or at least class of aircraft, during which they cannot be expected to have mastered all about the aircraft. But, when they are assigned as Captain, they better have it worked out.
For those times when I have flown passengers, I made damn sure I had mastered the aircraft. On a few occasions, that included taking the plane solo first, to assure my familiarity before carrying a passenger. That flight would ALWAYS include a few stalls - to the break.
Understandably, airline jet pilots don't have the same privilege to take the plane for half an hour refresher, as "small" plane pilots might. But in my opinion, that should be balanced off with these pilots having easy access to smaller aircraft for their refresher flying. I read that NASA Astronaut pilots are "sent" solo flying to remain sharp - so should airline pilots.
Some airline pilots seek out recreational flying, and keep their skills sharp - good for them, they are being true to themselves, and their passengers.
If their employer requires "training", great, but that does not need to be the only occasion when pilot build/maintain their skills.
The pilot(s) of an aircraft are duty bound to meet that interface halfway, with skill and experience appropriate to the aircraft type and the operating environment. Pilots are entitled to a learning phase, per type, or at least class of aircraft, during which they cannot be expected to have mastered all about the aircraft. But, when they are assigned as Captain, they better have it worked out.
For those times when I have flown passengers, I made damn sure I had mastered the aircraft. On a few occasions, that included taking the plane solo first, to assure my familiarity before carrying a passenger. That flight would ALWAYS include a few stalls - to the break.
Understandably, airline jet pilots don't have the same privilege to take the plane for half an hour refresher, as "small" plane pilots might. But in my opinion, that should be balanced off with these pilots having easy access to smaller aircraft for their refresher flying. I read that NASA Astronaut pilots are "sent" solo flying to remain sharp - so should airline pilots.
Some airline pilots seek out recreational flying, and keep their skills sharp - good for them, they are being true to themselves, and their passengers.
If their employer requires "training", great, but that does not need to be the only occasion when pilot build/maintain their skills.
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It seems to me that there are some issues that we are missing and that maybe need to be stressed. First of all I apologize because English is not my mother tongue, so I hope I would be forgiven for grammar errors. Now let's go back to the topic. For start let me explain my background. Ex Air Force pilot, fast jet and tanker, now professional pilot, held rating on B 737, MD 80 series and now skipper on A 320 series. So we can say I have experienced (and indeed I did) all aerobatic that could be done in a fighter, including obviously stall and spin (they were forbidden but you know...at that time you were not a real pilot if you weren't able to fly such things). I have flown the B 707 as a skipper, and I had the luck to actually experience a real stall and recovery (intentional) at FL 350 coupled with a manifacturer test pilot. Then due to autopilot failure I had the chance to hand fly the thing from Milan to Caboverde (no AP, no ATHR) on course to EZE.
Actually there is no simulator experience that can give a faint idea of what is an high altitude stall: no way. In an heavy aircraft you are close to the Baffin Corner and also remember that the inusual pitch attitude is so extreme that can be very disorienting. Sorry for all of you that fly and stall any Cessna Piper or DA, but there are very few similititudes with a heavy sweptwing jet stalling at high altitude. The recovery also is very...interesting: we lost 12000 ft and we both knew what we were doing, we both went through a very detailed briefing and we were in daylight with CAVOK. It is one of the most vivid experience of my aviator career.
I have flown the B 737 and the MD 83 series: control column better than sidestick? Maybe...I am not really sure of that because it seems to me that when things goes terribly wrong in the flight deck no control column or yoke has been able to save the day.
Now for flying manually tha Airbus: actually when we talk about flying manually we talk about flying a beautiful FBW aircraft in normal law without AP and ATHR....with autotrim and a nice sidestick and a beautiful speed trend...so there is no problem to hand fly the minibus in this conditions.Problems arises when the flight law is degrade in Alternate, but in that case there is no way we can experience manual flight in Alternate law because obviously we cannot degrade intentionally the aircraft capabilities like it happened in this accident. One must understand that in Normal Law a pilot can use the sidestick abruptly to the mechanical stops and the aircraft will always give the best capability her can. Actually a EGPWS recovery from warning is flown exactly in this way, or a severe windshear. Completely different situation in Alternate Law, where the envelope protection is degraded.
An Airbus pilot, like any other pilot, must know pitch and thrust for some situations, and must know the capabilities of the aircraft; in my opinion is required a little bit more discipline in order to understand the actual capabilites of the aircrafts in the actual flying conditions: this is addressed only with the training.
Happy landings.
Actually there is no simulator experience that can give a faint idea of what is an high altitude stall: no way. In an heavy aircraft you are close to the Baffin Corner and also remember that the inusual pitch attitude is so extreme that can be very disorienting. Sorry for all of you that fly and stall any Cessna Piper or DA, but there are very few similititudes with a heavy sweptwing jet stalling at high altitude. The recovery also is very...interesting: we lost 12000 ft and we both knew what we were doing, we both went through a very detailed briefing and we were in daylight with CAVOK. It is one of the most vivid experience of my aviator career.
I have flown the B 737 and the MD 83 series: control column better than sidestick? Maybe...I am not really sure of that because it seems to me that when things goes terribly wrong in the flight deck no control column or yoke has been able to save the day.
Now for flying manually tha Airbus: actually when we talk about flying manually we talk about flying a beautiful FBW aircraft in normal law without AP and ATHR....with autotrim and a nice sidestick and a beautiful speed trend...so there is no problem to hand fly the minibus in this conditions.Problems arises when the flight law is degrade in Alternate, but in that case there is no way we can experience manual flight in Alternate law because obviously we cannot degrade intentionally the aircraft capabilities like it happened in this accident. One must understand that in Normal Law a pilot can use the sidestick abruptly to the mechanical stops and the aircraft will always give the best capability her can. Actually a EGPWS recovery from warning is flown exactly in this way, or a severe windshear. Completely different situation in Alternate Law, where the envelope protection is degraded.
An Airbus pilot, like any other pilot, must know pitch and thrust for some situations, and must know the capabilities of the aircraft; in my opinion is required a little bit more discipline in order to understand the actual capabilites of the aircrafts in the actual flying conditions: this is addressed only with the training.
Happy landings.
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Stepturn:
You know the pilot of QF32, the A380 that had an uncontained engine failure, grounded himself for four months after that incident because he didn't think he was fit to fly, such was the impact of the incident. He also makes it very clear that the fact that there were five pilots in the cockpit on that flight was a crucial advantage. In addition to the normal crew of three, there were two additional check captains: a captain who was being trained as a check captain and a supervising check captain, who was training the check captain. While the pilot flew the plane the FO was completely consumed monitoring the ECAMs, with the other three supporting and monitoring both as necessary.
Putting aside the initial mistakes made in this incident, what was subsequently the situation was task overload, disorientation, masking of warnings and alarms, and an opaque and effectively masked primary operating device. Just as in AF477.
To be fair, I have never flown a jet (so am unfamiliar with Airbus systems). But, the Airbus is type certified, as all certified aircraft, to a standard which includes the requirement that the aircraft must not require unusual pilot skill and attention to safely fly. It can't be presented as terribly difficult to fly through its full range of controlled flight. That's the airplane side of the interface.
The pilot(s) of an aircraft are duty bound to meet that interface halfway, with skill and experience appropriate to the aircraft type and the operating environment. Pilots are entitled to a learning phase, per type, or at least class of aircraft, during which they cannot be expected to have mastered all about the aircraft. But, when they are assigned as Captain, they better have it worked out.
The pilot(s) of an aircraft are duty bound to meet that interface halfway, with skill and experience appropriate to the aircraft type and the operating environment. Pilots are entitled to a learning phase, per type, or at least class of aircraft, during which they cannot be expected to have mastered all about the aircraft. But, when they are assigned as Captain, they better have it worked out.
Putting aside the initial mistakes made in this incident, what was subsequently the situation was task overload, disorientation, masking of warnings and alarms, and an opaque and effectively masked primary operating device. Just as in AF477.
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Isn't the final failure in all of this the poor CRM. The PIC knew what to do but not once did he take control or announce it.
I'm also a bit puzzled as to how any Airbus pilot would know to do that - take control. As far as we know - every pilot understands stall recovery is the same for all aircraft - nose down. Why would any PIC ever take control when his basic assumption is that the PF is obviously doing the right thing to start with?
He/She would be confused as heck watching the instruments and wondering why the aircraft is not responding as it should. He'd second guess the instruments before he second guessed his co-pilot. As time passes and altitude loss increases, effective CRM erodes, giving way to stress and fear and the longer it continues the less likely the chances of recovery.
The stall procedure in an Airbus needs to include PF's verbalization of the side stick position. 2 accidents would have been avoided by one simple PF call - "Sidestick Back".
I'm also a bit puzzled as to how any Airbus pilot would know to do that - take control. As far as we know - every pilot understands stall recovery is the same for all aircraft - nose down. Why would any PIC ever take control when his basic assumption is that the PF is obviously doing the right thing to start with?
He/She would be confused as heck watching the instruments and wondering why the aircraft is not responding as it should. He'd second guess the instruments before he second guessed his co-pilot. As time passes and altitude loss increases, effective CRM erodes, giving way to stress and fear and the longer it continues the less likely the chances of recovery.
The stall procedure in an Airbus needs to include PF's verbalization of the side stick position. 2 accidents would have been avoided by one simple PF call - "Sidestick Back".
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Some airline pilots seek out recreational flying, and keep their skills sharp
Isn't the final failure in all of this the poor CRM.
This situation required a dictator: "push the stick full forward NOW or I'll thump ya!" or better "Give me the friggin aeroplane, I'll get us out of this mess!" or I should say "My controls!!". As Han Solo said when they realised they were in the guts of the monster, "No time to discuss, this isn't a committee!"
Understandably, airline jet pilots don't have the same privilege to take the plane for half an hour refresher, as "small" plane pilots might. But in my opinion, that should be balanced off with these pilots having easy access to smaller aircraft for their refresher flying. I read that NASA Astronaut pilots are "sent" solo flying to remain sharp - so should airline pilots.
Some airline pilots seek out recreational flying, and keep their skills sharp - good for them, they are being true to themselves, and their passengers.
Some airline pilots seek out recreational flying, and keep their skills sharp - good for them, they are being true to themselves, and their passengers.
Basic flying skills are the foundation of everything, we build anything on top of those.
As such, I also feel there should be recurrent training for them to make sure they are rock-solid.
It might be so, yet being anonymous internet forum it (as expected) suffers from quite low wheat/chaff ratio, mostly brought on by good folks who get their kicks from proudly displaying their aeronautical ignorance here. I find it especially funny when convoluted and basically wrong theories are supported by reference to author's self-professed experience & expertise.
I'll try to answer a few questions I think might be worth answering, to the best of my ability. As usual, feel free to correct me.
1. What happened here?
Pilot induced upset, followed by pilot caused and pilot sustained stall that was broken only by disintegration of the aircraft upon impact with the sea surface. G trace shows no turbulence signature, aeroplane behaved i.a.w. flight control orders made, as long as it was aerodynamically possible to do so.
2. How often does it happen?
AFAIK, there is no proper study of it but there are fairly useful indications that it happens very, very seldom but when it does, it tends to be fatal.
First, in connection with AF447 investigation BEA analyzed frequency of multiple pitot blockages and found 40-odd of them on 330 and 340. All of them resulted in degradation of flight control law to alternate and AP disconnect. Some of them even went unreported as the crew didn't think much about having to handfly in altn mode, at high altitude. Some received stall warning. AF447 was unique not just because full back stick was sustained after stall warning, it was the only one where reaction to stall warning was to pull! So much for the "uncoupled sticks are gonna kill ya and we need stickshakers because overloaded crew won't hear anythıng"
Second, do you really believe that in this day and age of enlightened investigation authorities, flight data monitoring, Flightradar24, AvHerald and social media it is possible for some airliner busting couple of levels in extreme attitude and RoC unsustainable even at SL, empty and with maximum thrust and then stalling but somehow recovering and landing safely to go unnoticed? Yeah, neither do I. There were some lucky escapes like Dynasty 006 back in 1985. where diving aeroplane managed to get into VMC so the crew finally figured out their AHs were not toppled and recoverd or Flagship 3701, which was a real shame that the crew finally managed to kill themselves as the post-accident interview, revealing what in the world were they thinking as they forced aeroplane into stall and how did they manage to gather their wits (I suspect the distinct lack of them in the first place made the task easier), to bring it into more-or-less controlled glide would be precious.
3. What do we do to stop it from happening again?
I don't know. It's really just the matter of psychology and from my (quite limited, I admit) perspective, I don't see any particular effort, coming from any aviation psychologist, in trying to make useful theory what the
happens in severe pilot-induced-upsets. AF447 report was very weak on it, QZ8501 is utter disgrace.
However, I can tell you a few ways that some believe might reduce chance of the QZ8501-like event reoccurring but won't do good at all.
You can't prevent it by fitting connected controls; there are far more cases of conventional controls aeroplanes being pulled into stall or spiral dive till impact than FBW Airbi and having interconnected yokes did not help at all. For all the cries of "I need to see what my effoh is doing to his stick!", no FCOM or FCTM reference to "As PNF, observe your PF control input procedure" was ever brought forward.
You can't preventing it by installing AoA gauge. Pilot who forgets about maintaining proper attitude, which is the very basic of flying from the first second of his very first flight, stands no chance of checking alpha.
You can't prevent it by installing pusher, for it was shut off at Staines and overridden at Buffalo and Jefferson City.
You can't prevent it by increasing upset recovery training. Aerobatic aeroplanes quite differ in characteristics from transport ones. It is not true that airliners' high altitude stall characteristics are unknown; they are tested but recovery is effected immediately past alpha max and that's the data that is fed to sim manufacturers so sim can realistically reproduce it but no test pilot is suicidal enough to pull to alphas above forty, so that is the area of quite some conjecture. Anyway, the biggest objection to more training is that everyone knows it is training and one is prepared and knows what to do. In real accidents, crews were presented with flyable aeroplane and they only had to minimal corrections (or nothing at all) to keep it flying. It's not that AF447 or QZ8501 crews did not do the UA or stall recovery properly, they never initiated it after creating upset themselves in the first place.
You can't prevent it by having more CRM or more experience. A pilot who has a panic attack and reverts to atavistic notion that aeroplane is trying to kill him by diving and only way to prevent it by pulling the stick was very well described by Wolfgang Langewiesche in his deathless tract "Stick and rudder", back in 1944. Conventional wisdom has it that better training of airline pilots and multi-crew concept should eradicate this kind of accidents in airline environment. Alas, this is only partly true. While better training really seems to reduce the number of occurrences, in the accidents where one pilot goes brains off and gets into upset, the other is very inefficient in figuring out what's going on, no matter what his experience might be. Capt Irıyanto was a former fighter pilot so he for sure knew a lot about unusual attitudes and stalls, yet his attempts at recovery were weak and ineffective, showing that he dıd not understand the gravity of the situation. AF447 CM2 was former glider pilot, so he had to know about energy management. Captain of Swiftair MD-83 who kept pulling all through the spin into the spiral dive was freakin' TRE! What more experience and skill do you want?
Issue is what made these pilots forget the very basics of flying a couple of minutes before they perished. For the time being, it's either we don't have enough data to answer this question or our analysis tools are inadequate. Perchance both.
I'll try to answer a few questions I think might be worth answering, to the best of my ability. As usual, feel free to correct me.
1. What happened here?
Pilot induced upset, followed by pilot caused and pilot sustained stall that was broken only by disintegration of the aircraft upon impact with the sea surface. G trace shows no turbulence signature, aeroplane behaved i.a.w. flight control orders made, as long as it was aerodynamically possible to do so.
2. How often does it happen?
AFAIK, there is no proper study of it but there are fairly useful indications that it happens very, very seldom but when it does, it tends to be fatal.
First, in connection with AF447 investigation BEA analyzed frequency of multiple pitot blockages and found 40-odd of them on 330 and 340. All of them resulted in degradation of flight control law to alternate and AP disconnect. Some of them even went unreported as the crew didn't think much about having to handfly in altn mode, at high altitude. Some received stall warning. AF447 was unique not just because full back stick was sustained after stall warning, it was the only one where reaction to stall warning was to pull! So much for the "uncoupled sticks are gonna kill ya and we need stickshakers because overloaded crew won't hear anythıng"
Second, do you really believe that in this day and age of enlightened investigation authorities, flight data monitoring, Flightradar24, AvHerald and social media it is possible for some airliner busting couple of levels in extreme attitude and RoC unsustainable even at SL, empty and with maximum thrust and then stalling but somehow recovering and landing safely to go unnoticed? Yeah, neither do I. There were some lucky escapes like Dynasty 006 back in 1985. where diving aeroplane managed to get into VMC so the crew finally figured out their AHs were not toppled and recoverd or Flagship 3701, which was a real shame that the crew finally managed to kill themselves as the post-accident interview, revealing what in the world were they thinking as they forced aeroplane into stall and how did they manage to gather their wits (I suspect the distinct lack of them in the first place made the task easier), to bring it into more-or-less controlled glide would be precious.
3. What do we do to stop it from happening again?
I don't know. It's really just the matter of psychology and from my (quite limited, I admit) perspective, I don't see any particular effort, coming from any aviation psychologist, in trying to make useful theory what the
happens in severe pilot-induced-upsets. AF447 report was very weak on it, QZ8501 is utter disgrace.However, I can tell you a few ways that some believe might reduce chance of the QZ8501-like event reoccurring but won't do good at all.
You can't prevent it by fitting connected controls; there are far more cases of conventional controls aeroplanes being pulled into stall or spiral dive till impact than FBW Airbi and having interconnected yokes did not help at all. For all the cries of "I need to see what my effoh is doing to his stick!", no FCOM or FCTM reference to "As PNF, observe your PF control input procedure" was ever brought forward.
You can't preventing it by installing AoA gauge. Pilot who forgets about maintaining proper attitude, which is the very basic of flying from the first second of his very first flight, stands no chance of checking alpha.
You can't prevent it by installing pusher, for it was shut off at Staines and overridden at Buffalo and Jefferson City.
You can't prevent it by increasing upset recovery training. Aerobatic aeroplanes quite differ in characteristics from transport ones. It is not true that airliners' high altitude stall characteristics are unknown; they are tested but recovery is effected immediately past alpha max and that's the data that is fed to sim manufacturers so sim can realistically reproduce it but no test pilot is suicidal enough to pull to alphas above forty, so that is the area of quite some conjecture. Anyway, the biggest objection to more training is that everyone knows it is training and one is prepared and knows what to do. In real accidents, crews were presented with flyable aeroplane and they only had to minimal corrections (or nothing at all) to keep it flying. It's not that AF447 or QZ8501 crews did not do the UA or stall recovery properly, they never initiated it after creating upset themselves in the first place.
You can't prevent it by having more CRM or more experience. A pilot who has a panic attack and reverts to atavistic notion that aeroplane is trying to kill him by diving and only way to prevent it by pulling the stick was very well described by Wolfgang Langewiesche in his deathless tract "Stick and rudder", back in 1944. Conventional wisdom has it that better training of airline pilots and multi-crew concept should eradicate this kind of accidents in airline environment. Alas, this is only partly true. While better training really seems to reduce the number of occurrences, in the accidents where one pilot goes brains off and gets into upset, the other is very inefficient in figuring out what's going on, no matter what his experience might be. Capt Irıyanto was a former fighter pilot so he for sure knew a lot about unusual attitudes and stalls, yet his attempts at recovery were weak and ineffective, showing that he dıd not understand the gravity of the situation. AF447 CM2 was former glider pilot, so he had to know about energy management. Captain of Swiftair MD-83 who kept pulling all through the spin into the spiral dive was freakin' TRE! What more experience and skill do you want?
Issue is what made these pilots forget the very basics of flying a couple of minutes before they perished. For the time being, it's either we don't have enough data to answer this question or our analysis tools are inadequate. Perchance both.
Airbus stall Training
My nephew sent me this last month ...
Airbus Stall Training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WuPoVjOXLY
... and posed this simple question: "If they knew they were in a stall, even I would know what to to do - and if they didn't realize, how is that even possible?"
Beats me.
edit to add: What Clandestino said, but with less fibre
Airbus Stall Training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WuPoVjOXLY
... and posed this simple question: "If they knew they were in a stall, even I would know what to to do - and if they didn't realize, how is that even possible?"
Beats me.
edit to add: What Clandestino said, but with less fibre
Last edited by unworry; 9th Dec 2015 at 08:39.
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FD indication in a stall?
This accident, along with AF447 has led me to wonder what the FD would be displaying as the airplane was descending in the stall.
As the aircraft descended through the initial altitude (FL320 I think), would the FD have been commanding a nose up pitch order, thus further confusing a pilot who's been trained to "follow the FD"?
As the aircraft descended through the initial altitude (FL320 I think), would the FD have been commanding a nose up pitch order, thus further confusing a pilot who's been trained to "follow the FD"?
Originally Posted by Clandestino
You can't prevent it by fitting connected controls; there are far more cases of conventional controls aeroplanes being pulled into stall or spiral dive till impact than FBW Airbi and having interconnected yokes did not help at all.
As for "You can't... you can't... you can't..."
Yes you can, Clande: the aeroplane crashed because the crew couldn't hand-fly (got it into a stall) and second couldn't recover (I simply do not believe you that the captain, an ex fighter jock, would not have been able to recover had he been able to override a control column [if fitted]). The sidestick positions tell the story; they were opposing each other all the way down. Even blind Freddy can spot the message there. I wonder how many times had the captain pushed the priority button for 40 seconds in anger?
I've done plenty of sims, and done some semi-weird stuff in them, including severe windshear/wake encounters where the thing ended up on it's back. They don't have to be perfectly representative of a fully stalled wing-walking aircraft completely out of the flight envelope; we could go a long way to fixing this "we can't handfly" issue by just expanding (or perhaps starting?) what we do already. Chuck it around, pull it through to the stall, flick it, try a loop or two, get yourself "out of control" and try to recover. Do a whole (shortened) session with the FD off. All this can be done now, without massive explorations to expand flight envelopes or to reprogram sims.
And I do not agree that we need to all start flying Aerobats to keep our hand in. You train the way you fight, and maintaining stick and rudder skills is easily doable in our current sims; there just has to be the will from the regulators to force it on the bean counters that are in charge of the operation these days...
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of course this is a pilots forum and pilot issues should come first. Please don't lose sight of the fact though that the safety chain is only as strong as the weakest link.
Excluding af447 a number of recent accidents have seen repetitive defects not being properly dealt with which was the first hole becoming aligned in our piece of cheese.
There is enough human behaviour information and knowledge out there now that will support the line that even the most able pilot will make at some point make mistake potentially resulting in disaster because they are human. Therefore even if you improve pilot basic training etc.. (which I fully support) the true safety benefits will only be achieved by filling in all the holes in the cheese.
Within the maintenance world there are many and they are increasing.
Excluding af447 a number of recent accidents have seen repetitive defects not being properly dealt with which was the first hole becoming aligned in our piece of cheese.
There is enough human behaviour information and knowledge out there now that will support the line that even the most able pilot will make at some point make mistake potentially resulting in disaster because they are human. Therefore even if you improve pilot basic training etc.. (which I fully support) the true safety benefits will only be achieved by filling in all the holes in the cheese.
Within the maintenance world there are many and they are increasing.
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My nephew sent me this last month ...
Airbus Stall Training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WuPoVjOXLY
... and posed this simple question: "If they knew they were in a stall, even I would know what to to do - and if they didn't realize, how is that even possible?"
Beats me.
edit to add: What Clandestino said, but with less fibre
Airbus Stall Training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WuPoVjOXLY
... and posed this simple question: "If they knew they were in a stall, even I would know what to to do - and if they didn't realize, how is that even possible?"
Beats me.
edit to add: What Clandestino said, but with less fibre
Last edited by bud leon; 9th Dec 2015 at 10:24.
Only half a speed-brake
Your last two paragraps though: if they came with a dotted line I would have signed them already.
This, I would like to help answer / comment on, but not sure whether I get it right:
the aeroplane crashed because the crew couldn't hand-fly (got it into a stall) and second couldn't recover (I simply do not believe you that the captain, an ex fighter jock, would not have been able to recover had he been able to override a control column [if fitted]). The sidestick positions tell the story; they were opposing each other all the way down. Even blind Freddy can spot the message there. I wonder how many times had the captain pushed the priority button for 40 seconds in anger?
As a PPL I can only imagine a few reasons for the LH wanting to over ride the RH pilot. In all the reasons I can think of, and I am sure that there are many more that wouldn't occur to me, 40 seconds seems an awfully long time to have to press the over ride button. When things are going wrong, they can get a lot worse in that time.
May I ask what is the logic for choosing 40 seconds?
May I ask what is the logic for choosing 40 seconds?
Originally Posted by FlightDetent
Several had been mentioned about a week ago, only to be immediately disallowed from the discussion by the "airbus sidestick kills again - it is a fact!" brigade.
From the report:
Therefore, as on any other aircraft type, PF and PNF must not act on their sidesticks at the same time.
Speaking of "other types", even if you don't do a formal handover/takeover, if you were trying to push the nose down and you saw your silly mate trying to pull back, a short "physical interaction" would resolve the confusion! Think of these guys... the stall warning is blaring, the aeroplane is shaking like billyoh, the captain has tried to take control a couple of times (pressed his button for a few seconds), he's moving his stick with no apparent response... "maybe this is all I'm going to get in a stall..." Confusion reigns supreme. Now if you had said "hey, do you realise your mate is actually opposing everything you are doing with your stick?" he'd probably thump him into reality and get control.
Clandestino,
Good post.
So much blame here, and so little desire to understand.
I too am low on psychology, but it appears that in the thick fog of intense fear, there is a human tendency to revert to the most basic and instinctive actions in order to achieve escape or defence. Going down too much? Pull the stick/yoke back because that normally makes you go up.
When faced with extreme danger, the desired thought process should be:
"Hold on, hold on, what have we got here".
Not
"Going down, will die, must go up, pull up, must go up, pull up".
I would suggest that some people (as you point out, irrespective of experience, training, ability and so on) are much more pathologically prone to the latter rather than the former.
So a solution would be to somehow identify those people and mitigate the risk through training, coping strategy or other means.
PS Getting bored of those with an agenda using this and other incidents to further such agendas.
Good post.
So much blame here, and so little desire to understand.
I too am low on psychology, but it appears that in the thick fog of intense fear, there is a human tendency to revert to the most basic and instinctive actions in order to achieve escape or defence. Going down too much? Pull the stick/yoke back because that normally makes you go up.
When faced with extreme danger, the desired thought process should be:
"Hold on, hold on, what have we got here".
Not
"Going down, will die, must go up, pull up, must go up, pull up".
I would suggest that some people (as you point out, irrespective of experience, training, ability and so on) are much more pathologically prone to the latter rather than the former.
So a solution would be to somehow identify those people and mitigate the risk through training, coping strategy or other means.
PS Getting bored of those with an agenda using this and other incidents to further such agendas.
Pulse,
Press and hold the button and you have sole control of the aircraft, normally accompanied by a clear statement of "I have control". The other stick stops working, and the other pilot gets an alerting light on his glare shield. Release the button and both sticks become useable again.
The 40 second function is to disable the other stick completely, for example if it gets stuck or is being leaned on by an incapacitated pilot. After 40 seconds you can release your button and the other stick remains inop. So much quicker and easier than trying to separate cross-connected columns and yokes in similar circumstances...
Press and hold the button and you have sole control of the aircraft, normally accompanied by a clear statement of "I have control". The other stick stops working, and the other pilot gets an alerting light on his glare shield. Release the button and both sticks become useable again.
The 40 second function is to disable the other stick completely, for example if it gets stuck or is being leaned on by an incapacitated pilot. After 40 seconds you can release your button and the other stick remains inop. So much quicker and easier than trying to separate cross-connected columns and yokes in similar circumstances...