Diamond Bob, #302, barek, #308....

Thank you both, I appreciate any information that helps me understand the pilots' situation that is absent vitriol and condescension. Many thanks....

At this point I would like to ask if information could be supplied in the same manner relating to the "AP2 ON" switch, throughout. It was left on like the FD, and I wonder if it had anything whatever to do with the climb, as the FD may have.....

The drill calls for AP OFF, and if left on, does that resemble "Re-Select" in any way? The accident might boil down to a drill unobserved, and if so, the tragedy assumes some logic, absent thus far.

It has been explained that AP is not available after degrade to AL, but does that mean Unavailable if re-selected, or does it include "if left on".....

jc, I agree with you, a good slap to the face of the PF could have saved the day. That being said, I see two GLARING mistakes; 1) Pushing back from the gate knowing the severity of the weather insteading of delaying departure for improvement of known severity of WX. 2) After making mistake #1, going to the back to take a nap with the IRO in the left seat with known severe wx to be dealt with. That pretty much sealed their fate. FWIW, I am not a Airbus driver, I have been in the Boeing products all of my career (727, 757, and 747) so my knowledge of Airbus is zip. However, on the Boeings, we are always trained, that when things are going bad and only getting worse: **** can ALL automation and FLY THE AIRPLANE. It is the first line on all Emergency Checklists. :confused:

jcjeant: thanks, inaccuracy corrected. You said what I was trying to say.

Buffet
 

I'm not a pilot, but have read the full report.

One thing I found interesting in the report was that the pilots may have mistaken the stall buffet for overspeed buffet (as mentioned in post 308) and yet the report asserts that the A330 doesn't suffer from overspeed buffet.

Is this true for other modern jets? And how many pilots know if their type suffers from overspeed buffet or if buffet is always stall buffet?

Hopefully all.......

svhar,
Your post #311 is essentially incorrect except for the Boeing part.
Those colors are in agreement with the local TV weather radar reports during episodes of severe weather, TS and potential tornados.

However, If you go back to ironbutt57 post #281 and click on its content, you will discover it does not refer to weather radar in the imagery at all except for one small image a vertical slice through the CB provided by NASA CloudSat. All the other major images are indeed thermal imagery from satellites, some enhanced by the author or others.

IMO, an apology is in order to BOAC for your snarky remark...

Do any of you know who BOAC is?

I do, and you'll REALLY eat those sarcastic comments if you learn the truth.

I couldn't see any reference to the crew giving any meaningful brief to the cpt on return . As it appears not to have been articulated is it reasonable to suggest that he never knew of the mode change and was therefore ignorant of the loss of some protections ?

Very briefly, guys, I appreciate your comments. I had 'blanked out' this buffoon on the forum and only now seen his latest comments. Best leave the creature to his own world, I fancy.

One you spend enough time on this forum you will find that it is a great mistake to guess at outting a person from under their name cover in a posting.

Best to just imagine them as idiots rather then blowing your own cover :)

Well I really AM one! ;)

It was my impression that the report said the met was just another night in the ITCZ. And haven't we put to bed this canard that they "flew into a thunderstorm"? Certainly there's nothing on the CVR (or the FDR) to indicate that, other than a cabin announcement about some routine turbulence with a bit more to be expected ahead.

My question above, Retired F4, had to do with the CVR, which quoted the Captain, "Wait, the Autopilot, (noise of switch, CAM)"......This occurred late in the chronology, and I assume it meant that the Autopilot (AP2) was left on. I know the AL defeats Reselect, but what does it do with an AP left ON? The Flight Director was left ON, and may have caused some mischief. What does the computer do with an Autopilot that is left ON?

Let me add my dudgeon to the snark directed at BOAC. I have found him to be a remarkably kind and patient expert here, and his credentials are probably understated, if I may say.....

LarryW727 you said So you obviously believe that all the other aircraft that successfully flew that route that night should also have delayed their departure? You might delay takeoff for bad local weather but not for routine ITCZ weather that requires en route deviations. Taking off when they did was not a mistake.

Actually Pulkovo climbed too well at 10 m/sec - they blamed the pilot overcorrecting the up down pitching for the crash

Utter rubbish. The income that sustains my employer comes in part from organisations with whom I disagree. Does that factor change my personal or professional opinion?

No - and any tenuous link you try to draw between the French state stake in Airbus and BEA conclusions is utterly reprehensible. Did the RAE skimp on the Comet enquiry despite the aircraft's state subsidies? Does the NTSB frequently do the same ("Hoot" Gibson case aside)? With all due respect I think you need to find another hobby.

It turns it OFF and latches it OFF until ground crews perform maintenance.

Sorry, Doze, I answered you in the other thread. Briefly, Airbus itself warns to turn OFF A/P with UAS. If it is latched off by the computer and cannot be reselected, why does A/B warn against its "re-selection"? Why bother, if as you say the A/P is shut down completely and forever until ground maintenance? The FD is obviously not treated in the manner you suggest, it came back on, in different modes, several times. Are you sure you know whereof you speak? No offense.

Layman

"I have found him to be a remarkably kind and patient expert here"

I concur. Most people are polite and helpful but there are a few who wish to show they know best by putting others down.

As PJ2 so eloquently sates in one of his posts "those who roast others without all the facts just want their name inlights perhaps, while those who know are either simply heads-downquietly doing the daily work or can't be bothered arguing."

Quite an interesting thread
 

Let me add a few points (from an engineer's perspective – If I am saying something stupid – I do expect a very strong – WTF are you talking about – see below).


1. We are fooling ourselves that human beings are capable of logical reasoning, especially when it comes to split-second decisions in a stressful situation. Decisions like that are made on instinct – driven by pre-programed associations. In most cases, when exposed to danger, a person instinctively runs from danger any way he/she was programmed to run. The hero of our story wanted to run from danger but he didn't know how.

2. For this reason, training is absolutely essential so that proper ways to run from danger are instinctive, which clearly was not present in this case. A kid who practiced for say an hour a day for a few weeks on a toy simulator on some game station would most likely have a better instinctive reaction to the stall warning than the hero of our story did.

3. For this reason, there is something fundamentally wrong, I think, with counting hours of watching autopilot do its thing as “flying experience.” With the emergence of present day-autopilots the process of judging pilots' experience should have been redefined long ago. One way to do it would be to count takeoffs and landings, which would promote pilots who did time on smaller planes long before they were allowed to touch commercial jets. However, I do not see pilots talking about changing that system. Maybe they should.

4. It is absolutely true that a true ace pilot, one that committed his whole life to aviation, could NOT be affected by even most illogical configuration of plane controls. Even if someone/something all of a sudden re-wired the whole damn sidestick backwards, a guy like that would figure it out in a few seconds, because he committed his whole life into merging his mind and body with every flying device he could put his hands on. But, the point is, many of the pilots probably are not aces like that, they looked for something to do and they did/learnt exactly what the “system” required them to do and absolutely nothing more. Now we are getting into my favorite model of stereotyping people into aces and vegetables, or wolves and sheep.

5. Clearly, the guys flying AF447 were not aces, and it was probably by design even if nobody will dare to admit it. Here is why: Every society outside state of war for survival just LOVES vegetables and tries to suppress the aces/wolves. At the end, this is extremely illogical process, but outside real emergencies, vegetables are so much nicer and easier to deal with. They like one another and don't fight with each another like aces do, they are loyal to the system not their trade, they don't cause trouble(at least until trouble finds them), they are not adrenaline junkies like some of the aces are, etc, etc.

6. For above reasons, the whole system was demonstrated to be a complete failure, and there is no way to see it anything but that. Someone allowed “vegatable” pilots behind the controls who were more than happy to do little beside watching autopilot do its thing. Then a small problem arises, the whole automatics shuts down and expects our heroes to suddenly, on a second's notice become ace pilots capable of handling the plane almost without any idiot-proof protections they instinctively learnt to rely on. The main idiot-proof system that still works (the stall-warning) provides completely fraudulent feedback (disconnects at deeper stall, reactivates itself at the attempts to recover from stall). Nothing wrong with this picture?

7. To make matters more interesting, due to lack of communication and specifics of the sidestick design, the PNF has absolutely no idea what PF is pulling back on the stick and that he is doing it even after he pretends to agree to not do it. When PNF finally masters enough courage to try to take controls himself, he has no idea that the other guy counters his actions, which discredits the only attempt to recover from stall as action that brings no result.

8. If you think vegatable pilots are bad, imagine vegetable engineers, people who never had any desire to create new things, and are perfectly happy to do little besides playing office politics. Yes – the corporate engineering is full of those and this is why good pilots should not be shy about criticizing stupid things the corporate engineering came up with on the premise that “they know what they are doing”. As every real-world engineering is ALWAYS over budget and late, fixing screwups found late in the process is very hard because it risks massive delays. Tremendous pressure is always put on those who, loyal to their trade and not office politics, want to fix the screwups. They are often portrayed by the bean counters as people who want to destroy the good company with their idiotic “nitpicking”. Therefore, the only chance to fix engineering screwups comes up after a major FUBAR.

9. I have never worked for Airbus, so I don't know how bad (or good) things are over there. But the companies I worked for, the things that I have seen made my skin crawl. Worse yet – if I told anyone the details, I would be sued and “the law” would destroy me rather than help me. That's today's corporate culture which in my view has nothing to do with healthy capitalism, which I always believed in.

10. My view that human beings are inherently illogical comes precisely from watching “vegetable engineers” do their thing. If you scratch your head over 2 pilots doing completely stupid thing for 2 minutes, imagine watching 30+ engineers doing similar thing for months. Having weeks and weeks to think about it and still doing it. Generally, one vegetable engineer, most likely the boss's top ass-kisser would come up with the idea in order to promote his position, then convince everyone that that's what the boss wanted. Then everyone goes along and does not dare to question things. Not daring becomes its own logic and so it goes. Not thinking is running from danger of risking the alienation of the management and co-workers. The only way to stop such nonsense outside complete FUBAR where the crew would lose their jobs would be someone being brave enough walking to them and saying something like: WTF are you IDIOTS doing? It is sad but in my experience only a strong shock like that can make people think in such lock-down situations. A direct, UGLY challenge where they have to prove they were not screwing up or lose face. Needless to say, being loyal to my trade first and foremost, I had the pleasure and the privilege to be the one doing it over and over. At one job, I was expressly forbidden by the boss from using word “idiot”, which I interpreted in my own way as a challenge to learn more English synonyms of the word idiot, which I printed out of thesaurus and framed on the wall. I never lost my means of survival doing things like that – but I would never lie to anyone and pretend that it was easy.

11. The “WTF are you IDIOTS doing” story brings up the last point. The PNF is half-aware that PF is not doing what he should be doing, but he never masters enough courage to properly assert this point. Calling for the captain to come to the cockpit is pretty much the extend of his bravery. If he mastered enough courage to do “WTF are you doing” and properly asserted taking over the controls, he could have prevented the disaster. When planning the shock/upset simulator training, it would also be a great idea to test the pilots if they are able to properly identify the situations where the other pilot does something completely idiotic, and assert control to prevent disaster.

As an addition: annex 3, page 2: The AP2 disengaged at 2:10:06, 3 seconds before ATHR disengaged, and never went on again. (AP1 not shown.) By the way, the FD1 + FD2 were off for the better part of the last 3 minutes, so no "flying after the FD all the time" as suggested somewhere else.

As to the BEA relation to Airbus or Air France: Despite I had my doubts before (mainly due to the mishandling of the Mulhouse case), I don't think anymore that there is any relevant or "protective" link. Perhaps BEA knew about their public image since they almost always invited experts from other countries (at some points they had to according to ICAO annex 13) and documented crucial moments with pictures such as the openings of the flight data recorders. All facts I can crosscheck are correct, the conclusions I can draw from the raw data in the annexes are basically the same as they did, no major discrepancies found so far.

Perhaps we should face that supposed-to-be-professionals screwed up entirely for more than three minutes, not just for one wrong hand movement in the wrong second.

Why are certification requirements not adapted to recent findings? Why are aircraft marketed with bold statements like "the pilot can't do wrong, the plane sorts out his errors"? Did this add to the mental picture the PF had? As someone said, handing back from computer to pilot as a safety backup strategy does not work anymore for a generation that is flying computers immediately after ATPL. Do we have to rethink safety strategies?

They weren't suicidal, they fought for their own lifes as well and sadly lost. But how come that their abilities were so limited, despite thousands of hours?

As individuals: How come that flying manually is something not much appreciated in the industry? How could they build up certain skills when "managing computers" is the work description? How could they avoid wrong reactions (TOGA at high alt) when this is standard sim drill, since high altitude flying is almost entirely ignored? Why is basic flying in simple aircraft not fostered more in order to build basic skills?

As a team: The captain wasn't in his seat, and due to his CV I'm convinced he would have had the abilities to handfly without major problems. But how was he trained and tested to lead a crew? Great pilots are not automatically great leaders. Did he overestimate the skills of his PF? Was he reluctant to interfere more vigorously, being a nice guy? Hierarchy was a negative factor in KLM4805, JAL123, ... but without any hierarchy (clear roles) seems to be just as bad. Where was CRM??