We got the first DC9 Super80's and had problems with captain climbing too slow or too high. It was so frustrating but as an FO you can only do so much. We were falling out of our 350 altitude one day and were told you have a PSA 727 at 330 5 miles in front of you opposite direction. I responded but we couldn't maintain altitude. We crossed over him at FL340 and they immediately cleared us down but heard the irritation in his voice. I told him you are too slow but he kept climbing.

He must never have heard that old adage about pulling back to go up, and pulling a little bit more to go down. :E

Hi,

Ironic that hundreds of messages in this thread concern the stall .. how to get there and how to get out .. while three pilots have never uttered the word
The word stall is only given by the synthetic voice alarm
These three pilot did not know that the aircraft was in stall
So the important point to discuss is why they did not know

Read some posts below to get the typical pilot misconception :
Not totally wrong (al least under certain circomstances), but still the wrong concept. All aircraft have an AoA where they stall. Under the given conditions (weight, air desity...) this corresponds to a stall speed.
Many pilots understand the stall to be a speed problem, it is not !
So if you think stall is a speed issue, and you know your speed indication is invalid, it is very, very easy (and maybe it is the natural behavior of humans to seek for the most easy answer in a panic situation) to assume that the stall warning in that case is invalid as well. Especially if the noise of the airflow at high AoA (supersonic around the cockpit) makes you believe that there is enough speed and your indication is still invalid.

Read the report carefully again please. Unly when already deep in stall the pilot kept the stick full back. To get into that (most probably not recoverable) situation the pilot did not apply "stick all the way back" unless for some very short moments.

With respect as a non pilot, with about 8 hours of flying training, if the evidence is that you are in a stall, you put the nose down, not up.

Now the evidence may have not been there.

Anxiety, information overload, is not an excuse.

Evidence.

I reckon they buggered up, and I ain't a pilot.

I agree, which raises the question of attitude indication. Even a basic PPL knows that if the attitude and the power are correctly set, the speed will be correct. Especially the attitude! Why the hell did they ignore the extreme nose-high attitude indication?

And thank you Volume. There is indeed no such thing as stall speed - only stall AoA. I've many time stalled aeroplanes at high IAS, and flown them unstalled at zero IAS.

Had anyone taught these guys to fly?

[quote-SSD]Why the hell did they ignore the extreme nose-high attitude indication?[/quote] - at the risk of frightening the Oozlum bird out of the tree yet again, I find the suggestion that they thought they had an 'overspeed' problem at 38000ft with 16 degrees nose up

a) non-sensical
b) if true, extremely frightening

BOAC, we need to hire smarter pilots. Remember when we needed over 4,000 hrs and tons of jet time to get a job? Now we don't and see what happens?

the human brain can malfunction in strange ways; and probably it's close impossible to understand how for someone who wasn't there. I am in no way blaming the crew, AF 447 is imho a training failure, possibly not limited to AF, but systemic.

If the pilot's brain "malfunctioned" , the cause of the crash is pilot error.

It is an x-o calculation.

If he was fed misinformation, by systems, and relied on this, in the absence of common sense as decided by his peers, he was responsible for the loss.

If the misinformation due to systemic error was overwhelming and utterly confounding, for a pilot in his situation, as judged by his peers, he is innocent.

That's an oversimplification. Without proper training, spatial disorientation is a real problem. So are knee-jerk reactions like pulling up in a (near) stall condition; most people will "instinctively" react that way, before being properly trained (a fact that many professional pilots may forget, due to their training, but that's how the brain works, initially). Perfectly normal sense can't always be trusted, and there's numerous cognitive biases we need to be aware of and try to mitigate. On top of that, there's the startle effect. Unless you've trained and are prepared for an exact scenario, there's a chance that your brain will be much slower, and it might even do the wrong things altogether. Human brains didn't evolve to fly airplanes, they need to be trained.

Pilots should know what they are doing flying an airliner, neither of these guys had a clue. What will holding full up on the sidestick accomplish? Have any of you guys tried it? Maybe once.

The human brain can also malfunction when it's shagged out due to insufficient rest.

.But we pay subservient homage to all these new-fangled gadgets instead of paying attention to the job of flying the beast, so why should we ever question their demands - like obeying ones' wife !!

If the gadget says you are in a stall, react accordingly and when finally convinced that the idiot was wrong, then kick its ass - but not at the first call. Never heard of High Speed Stall ?

I once got an audible, electronic, "Terrain" warning when correctly established on a Cat III ILS approaching a mountain shrouded airport in low visibility at night. I immediately went into basic drill - i.e. When In Doubt Lash Out, and called for go around power and got the hell out of it. My co-pilot was unimpressed, why ? we were established on the ILS ? Yeah! Right! never heard of a false glide slope, buddy ?

Won't bore you with the rest of it, but my point is why shouldn't the AF crew have assumed that the 'Stall' warning was correct, at least initially?

Remember the crew practising stalls at altitude with the gear remaining retracted, and cancelling the gear unsafe horn every time they closed the throttles. When they eventually prepared to land, and out of the habit of the last hour or so, didn't lower the gear, and when the warning horn sounded yet again the Captain silenced it with the phrase -"shut up, Gringo" then proceeded to land gear up.

If you've paid for a warning device, then obey it, initially at least. If it says Stall, assume that you are in a stall.

All You Want To Know About AF447 Is Here
 

In the Tech Log, there is a common thread titled "AF447". It contains 17,657 posts contained in 11 sub-threads. The first post in each sub-thread gives links to the BEA Reports on AF447 as well as other informative links. Nearly everything anyone can think of, speculate about, imagine, or theorize is contained in the sub-threads. There are many informative graphs, charts, technical explanations, photos, drawings and A330-300 flight controls and emergency procedures. There are great explanatory posts by experienced pilots that flew A330's for years and experienced military pilots who were among the first to fly FBW aircraft.

For those who have not browsed this wealth of information, I would recommend you do so. One of the things you will discover is that more than 30 crews experienced UAS at high speeds and altitudes and all managed to survive their experiences, the exception to this being the crew of AF447. The crew of AF447 received the same training as many other AF crews and perhaps other airline crews. However that night, starting with the briefing in Rio, they managed to not apply the training they had recently received prior to this flight, did not apply SOPs or even mention key procedures to be followed upon experiencing UAS or utilize good cockpit resource management. It is all there in the reports and postings, check it out.

I would beg to differ. Your examples of cognitive bias should be cognisant to a professional pilot, particularly two, to avoid a disaster such as this.

It appears to me as a layman that it was pilot error.

I'm a citizen. In a stall nose down. It ain't rocket science.

If the inputs were wrong then there may be a case to argue extenuating circumstances.

For a flight over such a large distance, to end up in the ocean, with modern meteorology defies understanding.

Case closed, let's just wait for the next one. Twit.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT.
 

Not really. We don't know what went on on PI's flight deck as there was no CVR back then, but they seemed to simply disbelieve a bit of kit that was known to shout 'wolf' (the stick pusher) because they hadn't noticed an unintended configuration change (droops retracted well below the speed they should have been). They only had a few seconds to suss out the real situation and that wasn't enough time.

In the case of AF 447 the two 'pilots' clearly missed very obvious clues as to what was going on for quite a long time and didn't apply basic techniques in flying the aeroplane.

BARKINGMAD: from the AF447 final report
 

Angle of Attack Measurement
The crew never formally identified the stall situation. Information on angle of
attack is not directly accessible to pilots. The angle of attack in cruise is close to the
stall warning trigger angle of attack in a law other than normal law. Under these
conditions, manual handling can bring the aeroplane to high angles of attack such
as those encountered during the event. It is essential in order to ensure flight safety
to reduce the angle of attack when a stall is imminent. Only a direct readout of the
angle of attack could enable crews to rapidly identify the aerodynamic situation of
the aeroplane and take the actions that may be required.
Consequently, the BEA recommends:

that EASA and the FAA evaluate the relevance of requiring the presence
of an angle of attack indicator directly accessible to pilots on board
aeroplanes.