That skydeity apparently forgot that he had disconnected the autothrust and expected the engines to spool up! He was looking out visually for the runway, manipulated the side-stick but not the throttles. Mental fog, possibly.

This is very scary to say the least ... gimme a firefly bob up front please anytime ..against one of the new breed of p2f boy wonders...its reasonable to expect that the whole crew can actually fly the aircraft without an autopilot eh? or maybe not ...:=

The real problem is the current malaise of pilots' over-reliance on the automatics coupled with some carriers' refusal to allow their pilots to practice their manual flying skills - (at a suitable time and place of course.) Automation has become so good and reliable on all modern types that we naturally expect it to work all the time.

Pilots no longer scan the way they needed to while hand-flying and I've found it very informative to cover the engine instruments during an auto-approach and ask the other guy what the thrust setting was. 90% of the F/Os didn't know, which frightened the life out of me. Try it some day for yourself - you may be horrified too.

It's all in that excellent video about the children of the magenta line. It all works so well 99% of the time that we'd better really know our automatics when it all goes pear-shaped - regardless of whether it's an A or B a/c. Unfortunately, from 20 years of TRE experience, I've found that most pilots don't know it. Then add in the surprise factor and it can all go badly wrong in a very short time.

Hetfield,

Could you have a look to the Avherald incident description ?

My suggest is only to avoid non-sens comments in this topic.

So why don't you delete your post?

Air France is like korean air in the 90`s. Almost everyear they crash an airplane and have some incidents.

Better if they started recruiting koreans to improve their safety record.

Conclusions yet to be done, if you know all the circumstances of the event.:=

WHATTHEFUH is spot on and the training depts. of most Western Airlines also know it. Slowly we find more bits and pieces being added to LPC/OPC's which point to line pilots being found to have poor basic flying skills as well as only scant grasp of the autoflight system. We have recently had stall recovery, manual handling details, Unreliable speed drills, mishandled landings heavily covered, and you can sense from the briefings that the attitude is 'we want to make sure you know the basics'. Unfortunately, the elephant in the room is the massive growth in the number of inexperienced Captains and very inexperienced FO's being rostered together. Everyone knows its only a matter of time before one of the LoCos has a serious loss attributable to crew experience but seem curiously unwilling to address the problem for fear of offending those few who are getting hugely rich in the background.

I thought that the post by Gretchenfrage was of value. Knowing what input the other Pilot is making without asking them, would be a design feature.

However, Clandestino spent a long time dissecting that post and added;

''Alpha floor is generic term for automatic high power command when AoA gets way too high. Even 737 NG have it and on them it's called...Alpha floor''

I must have the old version of the handbook then! ;)

Clando, do your self a favour and please reread the post and try to understand it. :ok:

In the meanwhile there is an update on avherald.

AF7633 was recovered by alpha prot not alpha floor.


Incident: Air France A321 at Paris on Jul 20th 2012, speed drops to alpha prot on approach

:D:D:D

This is why I did not delete my post...:rolleyes:

A318

And your message is?

No matter if alpha floor or alpha prot, like you know there are only a few knots difference.

Anyhow this flight was about 30kts slow on final approach.

" Everyone knows its only a matter of time before one of the LoCos has a serious loss attributable to crew experience."

macdo, what has this to do with LoCo?

Is AF a LoCo?

Were the AF crew inexperienced?

To go back 4 or 5 pages, this got as bad as it did because of lack of awareness, which is just as likely to be caused by complacency and over reliance on automatics as on lack of experience.

Re generic alpha prot. #64, #73,
AFAIK the generic mechanism is to control alpha with elevator (pitch command); the application of power is normally via trigger to a fixed thrust setting.
The difference between a fixed power setting and control is important as there may be systems / situations where additional power is not available.

Is that the landing checklist was conducted by the PNF ??
The item autothrust is included in this list
So the PF must know !

Odd, I used to chastise my flight students when, on final approach during an instrument approach procedure, they were unable to keep their speed within + / - five knots of the briefed approach speed.

I would presume that professional pilots have slightly tighter standards, given how very important a stabilized approach is. Granted, on a gusty windy day, or with a lot of turb, you may get some variations that you don't normally get, but among professionals the pride of how darned well one flies the approach was once a given.

So the guy not flying in this case, on final, was doing the flying pilot what favors by not singing out "five knots slow" ... and upon not hearing "correcting" ... where then the standard follow up to the first alert that the plane is off of profile ... to make sure the man flying is in the game?

Automatics, all well and good, but if the aircraft is not flying the approach to spec, the pilot must. One needs to be mentally in the game. HAL may get a stray voltage, or a spurious input, or even a spurious human input, and then it's yours!

I don't think I've said anything new here, but I do worry that what I discuss above about pride in precision may no longer be a foundational assumption.

Or maybe I am wrong.

On the bright side, the last few commercial flights I was on were pretty smoothely flown. This includes one where the flight deck crew initiated a go around because they were not happy with the aircraft on the ground encroaching to close to the runway.

Was that HAL, or were the pilots flying the aircraft?

It also includes a crew for American Eagle who were on final into DFW but waved off due to, as they explained over the PA system to us after they were established and getting sequenced in for our approach, that they had been put into an interval that was not sufficient. I got the impression that someone had cut in front of them, or was being sqeezed in, but as I wsan't in the cockpit, I am not quite sure what was the actual situation.

There are still good crews out there, and thanks for that. :ok:

Here it seems that none of both was flying the aircraft :)

Not true. This is why the ELACs, SECs and FACs are duplicated with functional redundancy across all six units. HAL is a *bad* analogy because it implies a centralised decision-making apparatus, when in fact it is distributed and redundant.

Could have been either. If autopilot and autothrust are engaged and the FMC is properly set up, a TOGA command will cause it to fly the escape/go-around procedure automatically. If the approach is manual the pilots can either do it off their own back or follow the FD.

In the case discussed .. it was not one .. or other
It was an approach mode "hybrid"
Part controlled by automation ... and other (autothrust) controlled ?? manually ...
A mixture of genres that was dangerous in this case
So .. not recommended

And I emphasize again :
Is that the landing checklist was conducted by the PNF ??
The item autothrust is included in this list
If yes (I hope that AF pilots comply checklists!) the PF must know !

Dozy, I don't care that you wish to nitpick the analogy. I am keenly aware that AFCS and AP systems have depth and range of features. I actually spent some years of my life flying. As noted early in this thread, one of the robotic features kicked in to remedy a well out of standards deviation. That is the core of my point, and it is my position that the maintaining of a professional level of standards is a HUMAN not ROBOTIC responsibility and task. It shall not be delegated.

HAL is a metaphor for letting the robot, of whatever complexity or advanced design, be in charge.

You are reaching here, and not making yourself look any sharper.