Eventually !!Probe Blames Captain for GF Jet Crash

[Ignition Override]

As others pointed out, are pilots at many airlines told to not use the autopilot during a go-around, and what Boeing calls VNAV, FLCH or VS, along with Heading Select for steering? I used the autopilot in Las Vegas after the Approach Controller suddenly "inserted" a B-737 ahead of us, while telling us to go-around (between the invisible mountains at night-I told the Captain that we would remain over the valley lights in case the controller gave us a questionable vector to downwind or base). Were the Gulf Air pilots already on an ILS or LOC etc hand-flown approach when the go-around began, and if so, either the plane flies the published go-around procedures or the pilots could have pushed an autopilot button and used simple vertical and lateral control modes, while following the flight directors??

I know almost nothing about the sad tragedy, but are Gulf Air pilots (and also pilots at YOUR airline) encouraged to engage whichever autopilot modes allow the easiest control of the airplane when the workload is very high? Did those Gulf Air pilots by chance have very little instrument curency or total experience? I'm not blaming the unfortunate crew a bit, but wonder just what we all can learn.

My impression of the Airbus A-320/319/321...(which I've never trained on-yet) design philosophy was that both the aircraft's unique fly-by-wire technology and the most "advanced" level of automation, could compensate for limited pilot experience, if necessary. If advanced technology=safer aircraft, and can be proven to be so throughout global airline operations, then I will avoid using quotation marks in a skeptical manner in the future. Of course several tragedies have taken place due to pilot complacency or misunderstanding this technology, if I understand the articles about the accidents in France and India.

I have not forgotten the accidents involving the B-757, MD-11 etc. What is the common denominator among accidents involving newer aircraft types, limited simulator+line training or cockpit culture and CRM?

[Seriph]

Lodestar if you can't operate the aircraft through all stages of flight with the automatics then you have no business being there. It was always the problem during the early days of the 75 that guy's were getting confused and the most frquently asked question was 'whats is doing now?' The answer is not to reduce the aircraft to the level of a C150. Just about all of the losses of 757's have been crew induced, the same with the Airbus although here the leap in technological interface in the early days caused problems. It was an easy cop out by the instructers to say revert to manual, it is very rarely necessary or desirable to do so. What runs through all these discusions is the underlying belief that when the going gets tough then pilots must be pilots, you don't take the automatics out, you use the increased capacity to do what the automatics can't, think ahead, programme and operate the aircraft not reduce yourself to the level of mere driver and degrade the effectiveness of your other pilot who now has to monitor your flying in addition to his other tasks.

[Lodestar]

Okay Seriph, I tought that was exactly what I said as well.

Pilots should be able to perform all manoevres 100% perfect by flying Raw Data as well as using the automatics!!!!!

But what about if you where flying an approach all raw data (No AP/AT/FD) and you are instructed to do a go around....In many cases there will not be enough time to reengage automatics (except the FD which reengages automatically when setting ToGA)....When you where flying a hand flown approach you should be able to do the same during the event of a Go Around!!

Also it is a misconception that the automatics in an airbus will compensate for the pilots skills! I have flown both Boeing and Airbus and I have to say that the automatics in an airbus are much tougher to handle and sometimes really are totally against Human Nature! Do not forget as well that the whole fly by wire system has several stages of degradation which means that an airbus (Normal stage is normal law..)becomes difficult to handle when it degrades from normal law into Alternate law-Direct law and mechanical back up!!!!
From Direct law on these aircraft requires a lot of stick and rudder so stating a pilot can afford to be less skilled .....NO WAY!!!!

A bus driver has to be equally skilled as in any other advanced airplane and has to really know all his systems....despite what Airbus is trying to say in its commercials!!!They as well need to study up and invest time to keep their knowledge up to date!!!Otherwise an Airbus becomes an unpredictable and consequently dangerous aircraft in the hands of a badly trained pilot!!!!

[Chuck Hog]

Lodestar

I agree to all what you say ... except one thing: the GF072 did not have the automatic reinsertion of FD bars at TOGA ... Airbus considered this not useful when the plane was built (1994), and afterwards they have only recommended this implementation, but did not make it mandatory ... so the crew intiated the go around in dark night, without any kind of reference .. in fact, the SOP impended them to re-engage the FD bars in SSR mode until reaaching the acceleration altitude (in BH, 1500 feet as I believe).

Scaring ...

And I insist that, upon the lecture of the DFDR readouts, a very suspicious lack of response is seen in the graphics: the PIC commands almost AFT sidestick for two seconds, releases and repeats the command, but the plane keeps descending and descending ...

[Rananim]

"the PIC commands almost AFT sidestick for two seconds, releases and repeats the command, but the plane keeps descending and descending ..."

Can this be correct?Have we been maligning the crew when the aircraft was at fault all along?
Please somebody confirm that if you pull back on the stick in one of these deathtraps,the nose comes up.Thats basic.Trim-related lag?Sounds bs to me.U can get out of trim in a Boeing and still get the a/c to do what u want.Now they want to build a 800 seater....

[Covenant]

Rananim

My god! You mean an 80 ton aircraft travelling downwards at over 100 ft/s doesn't immediately start going up again as soon as you pull the stick back?

No it is NOT true that the aircraft didn't respond to the pilot's input. At least not according to the official report I'm looking at. I don't know what report Chuck Hog has been reading, but I guess there's always someone who wants to flog that tired old Airbus/Scarebus theme again. It really is getting a bit boring and a bit tiresome.

The report clearly states that nose down pitch trim is automatically applied to counteract the tendency to pitch up when TOGA thrust setting is selected. Now, I'm not an Airbus jockey (actually, I'm not any kind of a jockey), but could an Airbus operator confirm that this is normal operation please?

Even if the trim was acting counter to the elevators, I rather suspect that full aft stick deflection would have considerably more authority than trim. Again, I'm no expert. Maybe an Airbus pilot could comment?

Here are some salient excerpts from the official report that should lay your fears to rest. Unless, that is, you subscribe to some conspiracy theory that Airbus are somehow involved in a big cover-up and have doctored or influenced the official report.

Approximately 2 seconds after the GPWS warnings began, FDR data indicated movement of the captain’s side stick aft of the neutral position, with a maximum aft deflection of approximately 11.7 degrees reached. However, the FDR data showed that this nose-up command was not maintained and that subsequent movements never exceeded 50% of full-aft availability.

If you were fighting against a control system that was ignoring your commanded input and flying you into the ground, wouldn't you be yanking back on that sidestick for all you're worth and not letting go until the GPWS shut the hell up? I think even the most rabidly anti Airbus among you will have to admit that this was a CFIT incident.

The report continues:

During one of the simulator sessions, the 360º turn and go-around manoeuvres were performed to approximate the flight path and sequence and timing of events recorded on the FDR recovered from A40-EK. However, in these scenarios, the pilots were instructed to recover with full aft stick movement at the onset of the ground proximity warning system (GPWS) “whoop, whoop, pull up” alert. In this scenario, the simulator recovered with about 300 feet of altitude loss.

In the following scenario, a half-back stick command was applied instead of a full back stick command. The delay between the GPWS warning and the stick command was approximately 4 seconds. In this scenario, the simulator recovered with about 650 feet of altitude loss.

In another scenario a recovery was performed by the co-pilot after he verified that the captain took no action to recover from the GPWS “whoop, whoop, pull up” alert. The co-pilot depressed the priority button on his sidestick, announced his control override, and applied full aft side stick input. In this scenario, the simulator recovered with about 400 feet of altitude loss.

Now admittedly that was the simulator, but the FDR did not show anything like this kind of response from either pilot. The PNF didn't even touch his sidestick during the entire accident sequence, so he clearly wasn't aware of the situation.

[edited to correct VS estimate at first nose-up command input]

[Seriph]

Well Lodestar perhaps the aircraft should be operated in conditions such a these with the automaics engaged i.e. no hand flown raw data nonsense then it's simply 'go-around, flap---, gear up, autopilot re engage if the go around was late and the autopilot had been disengaged tfo landing. Hand flying is for nice clear conditions in good weather and only then in a quiet environment. The time cannot be far off when the autopilot will be engaged with the before take off checks and disengaged at the end of the landing roll, 'pilots' will have to know how to operate the system and their should be far fewer cfit's.

[Chuck Hog]

rananim + covenant

See the objective data yourself and create your own opinion, do not lean on indirect subjective comments.

DFDR readouts, vertical parameters, 5 last minutes, 1 last minute.

http://www.bahrainairport.com/civil/...1/planche1.gif

http://www.bahrainairport.com/civil/.../planche1b.gif

green line, sidestick deflection; red&grey line, elevators; light blue line, TRIM (I recall automated TRIM controlled by the fly-by-wire system); purple line, pitch attitude. Analyse the graphics together and you may see something strange.

See also another interesting graphic in

http://www.bahrainairport.com/civil/...t/pdf/fig3.pdf

and check the effects of the commands of the pilot in the pitch attitude and the vertical speed.

[757 Gti]

Regarding the nose pitch down on a go-around.

Virgin had an "incident" about two months ago in Hong Kong. A340 entered wind-shear and the crew selected toga at low level (300ft or so). Trouble was that despite full aft on the sidestick the aircraft pitched nose down (sufficiently for the chap in the Dragon Air office (next to r/w?) to see the entire upper surface of the wing!

The a/c reached 70ft before the nose came back up and the a/c climbed away.

Mr Airbus saw this as full vindication of his systems, the operators are not so sure...

As told to me by a BA training Capt.

757 Gti

[HotDog]

So he pulled out at 70 ft in a microburst. Many non FBW aircraft of different manufacture were not so lucky!

[Chuck Hog]

757 Gti

Same thing happened more than a year ago in Bilbao, with an A320 from Iberia. Hard windshear, go around decision, full aft sidestick from both pilots, and the TRIM automatically noses down to avoid a computed potential stall condition (alpha floor protection). Result: the aircraft impacts the runway at a high vertical speed, nobody resulted seriously hurt but relevant structural damages in the plane.

Airbus recognized the problem of the software and has implemented the change of the ELAC computers. Maybe the Virgin aircraft you mention had not made the neccessary improvements ...

[tulips]

If the Iberia incident had been a 737 and both pilots had pulled full back, the result would not have been a hard landing. It would have been a conventional stall, spin, splat!

The GF 072 aircraft was functioning perfectly and did exactly as its pilot commanded it to do. The fact that the pilot commanded a totally inappropriate flight path is a different matter entirely. A 2-second aft-stick input does not miraculously 'recover' the aircraft; it merely lessens the angle of dive by a corresponding amount. Again, the aircraft did what it was told to do.

Seriph, with your desire to fully automate every aspect of flight, please enlighten me as to how the aircraft is going to perform your 'auto-takeoff, auto-approach and autoland' at a field where there is no landing aid, or when the glideslope is knocked out during a storm, or when you need to do a visual circling off an ILS to a different (non-equipped) runway..... And fyi, yes, I do fly A320 and A340 into fields exactly like these.

Much has been written since that sad night nearly 2 years ago. I believe the report is accurate, and damning. It is, however, indicative of the Company culture and mindset at the time. GF believed for too long that 'it would never happen to us'. Then it did. Much has changed since then, but the cost has been extremely high.

[BlueEagle]

Tulips, I beg to differ only on your remark about a B737 in a similar situation to the Iberia aircraft.

I have flown B737, 747, 757 and 767 in Europe, Middle East and Far East and experienced some really bad weather scenarios, why do you say that a B737 would go,'coventional stall, spin and splat!' whereas the A320 only did a heavy landing? Presumably you are only referring to the action of pulling fully back on the control column by both pilots and having stall protection?

In a B737 and upwards, from my experience, in conditions other than a microburst the Boeings will, with full power and two pilots who know they cannot apply full rearward control without the strong possibility of a stall, climb away.
What makes the Airbus so special?

[Covenant]

Chuck Hog

So you are saying that the official investigation overlooked, either deliberately or inadvertently, something in the data that you have managed to discover from looking at a couple of FDR graphs.

For what my opinion is worth, I read the graphs differently from you anyway:

1) The captain commanded significant nose down input between 16:29:43 and 16:29:53 - more than ten seconds of it anyway. During this time, the aircraft went from about 6 deg nose up attitude to about 16 deg nose down. The aircraft responded to his aft sidestick commands thereafter by reducing the nose down attitude to about 5 deg nose down at the end of the FDR recording. This strikes me as ain aircraft doing exactly what it's been told to do. The elevator response (brown and grey lines) confirms this.
2) Soon after TOGA power was selected, trim moved to around about 1.5 deg nose down and stabilised there during which time the aircraft was established in a stable climb. When the captain started to command the nose down on his sidestick, the trim blipped down a fraction, maxing out at maybe 2 deg nose down and finally ending at about 1 deg nose down.

I don't believe you are telling me that this trim graph indicates that the aircaft flew itself into terrain against the commands of its pilot! All the evidence points to CFIT. There is no evidence from the CVR that the pilots were surprised by the response of the aircraft to their command input. The PF didn't pull back as if he was fighting to bring the nose up. The PNF didn't even activate his sidestick. How do you answer those rather more pertinent facts?

The other incidents that have been mentioned regarding the A320/A340 response in windshear do not have any real bearing on this incident, and particularly not on the question you have raised about the automatic trim. A40-EK was responding only to TOGA selection and had established a steady climb with nose-down trim. In the case of windshear, it is likely that the FBW system was limiting command authority to the elevators because of approaching stall conditions.

I'm sorry Chuck Hog, but I have to say that I think what we are seeing from you and the other Airbus scaremongers is technophobia (I give the benefit of the doubt that it is not just parochialism or, worse, protectionsim). No matter how advanced we become technically, and how educated or professional we are, we still do not really trust machines deep down in our psyche. In essence (and I apologise for crossing threads here), this is why we had the tragic loss in the recent mid-air collision over Germany. In the face of a conflict between advice being supplied by a computer, and the reassuring human voice of the ATC, the Russian pilot chose to trust the human.

Unfortunately, as has been amply demonstrated so many times, most tragedies are caused in some way by human error. If we could bring ourselves to trust machines more, maybe the world would be a slightly safer place.

[Seriph]

Come of it Tulips, you know what I mean. If you can't fly ILS then you still fly non precision or even visual approaches with the autopilot, certainly flying manual circling approaches in difficult conditions has proved time and time again to be dangerous! 3D sat nav will take care of the lot, won't be long, in the meantime when I'm down the back I keep my fingers crossed that we haven't got a macho pilot up front.

[tulips]

Hi Blue Eagle

Yes, that is exactly what I am referring to. I mean that in the Iberia case, both pilots were able to apply full 'back stick', resulting in probably the best possible resulting landing (taking into account sink rate, full power and pitch input). In a 737, or an A300B4, it is not possible to pitch to exactly the critical alpha; one can only get close, which is not quite as efficient.

No slur intended on Mr Boeings product, merely an observation that you cannot have both pilots applying 'full back stick' in a low energy situation in a 737 aircraft without ending up in an unusual attitude, to say the least! The same comparison would be valid in the case of the very first A320 crash. The aircraft ended up in the forest, but my point is that it was the right way up, which has to help limit injuries or fatalities.

The Airbus is not special, just different!

[SID the STAR]

Tulips

are you sure you are flying BOTH A320 and A340?

[tulips]

Hi SID; yes, I reckon a few thousand hours in each type qualifies.

Seriph, if you look at FCOM3 you will see that it is against Airbus SOP to fly a visual circuit with the autopilot. ('At the beginning of downwind, deselect FD'). Further, there are times when a manual circling approach is required, whether the pilot likes it or not. That is the time when he/ she had better be able to fly the airplane. Depending on pilot ability, there can be a big difference between a 'demanding' approach and a'dangerous' one, to use your phrase.

Don't forget, the conditions in BAH that night were neither demanding nor dangerous. Clear skies, serviceable aircraft. It was only dark.....

[Seriph]

The autopilot will always do it better than you Tulip, you just need to know how to tell it to.

[tulips]

Yes, sir, Seriph. Thank you.....