From earlier:
Just a question from maintenance/engineering side: what is the trouble shooting tree needed to isolate this fault when doing maintenance, and how long does that diagnostic take? The old "can't replicate it on deck" reply from maintenance is very frustrating for pilots, and for some maintenance folks.

While the switchology, upset training, and CRM issues and responses are germane, to a certain extent it looks like this crew were set up by a corporate culture issue that may not be confined to this airline.

fox niner, here is the extract from the FCOM

A pilot can deactivate the other stick and take full control by pressing and keeping pressed his priority takeover pushbutton.
For latching the priority condition, it is recommended to press the takeover push button for more than 40 s.
This allows the pilot to release his takeover push button without losing priority.
However, a pilot can at any time reactivate a deactivated stick by momentarily pressing the takeover push button on either stick.
If both pilots press their takeover pushbuttons, the pilot that presses last gets priority.

Hope that helps.

No it doesn't, obviously. You push and hold the red button on the sidestick, and this immediately removes the inputs from the other sidestick. Each pilot gets a bright and clear light right in the face, and the voice says "PRIORITY LEFT" (or right). After 40 seconds of holding the button, the other sidestick is locked out and you can release the button - this is designed to deal with a sidestick fault.

Normal takeover: "I have control", PF releases stick, PNF starts using stick and becomes PF. PNF says "you have control".
Both pilots using the stick: "DUAL INPUT" aural warning, lights in face.
Rapid, emergency takeover: PNF pushes and holds pb which immediately disconnects the PF. Aural "PRIORITY LEFT", light in the face. "I have control". If you do this, you have to get confirmation that the former PF has stopped flying. I have been in this situation in a baulked landing, and I had to keep the button pressed for a few seconds until I could assertively instruct the wide eyed FO to get his hand off the stick and say the magic words. :uhoh:

In this accident, both pilots were PF and the aircraft was summing the inputs. Clearly both were overwhelmed by the initial event, and fear/shock had set in. Both will be fully versed and familiar with all of those sidestick modes, disciplines and warnings.

EDIT: quick search on youtube found this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKNJ-ABAPuY

Maybe you could start a new A vs B thread and you could vent your opinions there.

Where did I mention anything about Airbus vs Boeing?

.

Have people looked at the section of the report dealing with the Cockpit Voice Recorder ?

See Report ;

NTSC


Pages 54 to 60.

If someone can make sense of that, good luck.

.

Those look like stills from an animation not published.

Note the BEA complaint on page 186 "The CVR transcript is very reduced" - and the fact that this complaint was rejected. Shame.

Anyone that has high-speed broadband can very likely download the report quite a bit faster from my website:

Index of /knkt

Lead free solder
 

I am surprised the official report does not tell us what sort of solder it was that cracked. It is well known that lead free solder is brittle and more easily cracks under fatigue loading than the old leaded solder. I have personally repaired many electronic items with cracked lead free solder (although not avionics as it’s not my field).

In space applications lead free solder is banned, although I think that is more to do with tin whisker growth in a vacuum than cracking.

The banning of lead in solder may have saved the odd life from lead poisoning but the loss of life in this accident more than outweighs it and a relaxation of the requirement for safety critical applications like avionics would I am sure hardly affect the rate of lead poisoning, as the volume of avionic products turned out is far less than say consumer electronics. Or do avionics already have such a relaxation?

It's already a while ago since I flew the A320 (which is in deed a very good aircraft!). But regardless of the type of aircraft:

They crashed because the crew was unable to fly the plane raw data... :uhoh:

Basically its very simple: If not really needed, do not reset a computer via CB in flight, especially when a failure continues to reoccur. They easily could have continued with this problem to Singapore. It's a short flight only, or divert if you don't feel comfortable. No big deal...

Bad luck paired with a bad decision, paired with bad flying skills (training...) = crash

.

Quote from HundredPercentPlease ;

"Those look like stills from an animation not published.

Note the BEA complaint on page 186 "The CVR transcript is very reduced" - and the fact that this complaint was rejected. Shame."

---------------

Well spotted - so what worth is there to commenting on pilots' actions ?

I'm not an expert on the hardware side, but my understanding is that aircraft avionics are exempted from the ban on leaded solder, but leaded solder is not mandated. Over the last 30 years there has been a big shift to the use of "Commercial Off The Shelf" (COTS) electronics for aircraft avionics (vs. the Mill Spec stuff we used to use). COTS normally uses lead free solder (we've had occasional issues with tin whiskers in the FADEC world).
IMHO, the big carrot for lead free solder was plumbing (where the lead could end up in the water supply). Leaded solder in electronics is not a major risk provided basic precautions are taken.

Toscana,

No, the AH is misleading, as it may well look normal (slight pitch up). The speed will be low, but this could be misdiagnosed as unreliable airspeed. At low altitude the recovery for that is.... pitch up high and lots of thrust.

Once misdiagnosed, HF determine it's hard to undiagnose and rediagnose.

If you are really in a hurry, you may try 3 Words instead...
"I have Control"

This might be one of those situations where more words might be better.

"let go of the fecking stick you nunce."

In AF both pilots were bemused and the captain unable to intervene even if he had become aware of the problem,, its cause, and the solution. Here, it seems the captain was trying to do the correct thing with control input, but was thwarted. How he could have been thwarted for so long is a question. Is the F/O's seat too far for a punch, or was g an inhibiting factor in restraining the frozen rabbit.
Similar to ASF seems to be that the stall was broken by control input and then re-entered also by control input. Worrying times. In the past 15 years there have been an astounding number of flyable a/c stalled into CFIT. In various cultures and XAA regimes and on various types. OK, they might have had a tech problem = 1st hole in the cheese, but no reason to keep chewing and make more. And what has been the worldwide XAA reaction to this astonishing phenomenon? Not too much. What has been the operators reaction to this risk? Rigid SOP's so you stay even further away from the boundaries. And the reaction of the manufacturers? more warnings, back ups and automatics. Oh Dear.
There was a thread on AI speeding up the pilotless aeroplane. Some advocated it and might even use this scenario as supporting evidence. I wonder, in the case being discussed under "Captain fired from Allegiance Air for an EVAC." what an AI a/c would have done. And there are other scenarios which mitigate in favour of pilots. Hopefully this sad case will not lead to further clamouring for more automatic a/c. I think the solution lies else where.

We don't have any procedure for resetting facs other than the push button on the overhead ,there is no procedure in QRH in resets section,i have 5022 hrs on airbus and have been flying it since 2007,we only did our first high level stall training last week in the sim ( fl350) ,so for 8 years i have done only a basic stall at 5000 ft and only last week we did first high stall recovery in bank & with wings level we took 3 to 4000 feet to recover ,as we take a little time to ensure the aircraft is unstalled before adding thrust,whereas before airbus taught us to add toga thrust and lower the wings .

These guys prob have not had the chance to practice high level stall recovery ,the startle factor, the design of the side sticks is not really helpful when one guy is frozen on the stick ,even though the take over push button is supposed to allow the other pilot to take over.i studied the af 447 accident in detail and there are many many similarities here ,it seems we must do more high level stall training in the sim ,the companies have to spend more time and more money in the sim for their crews.As other pilots have discussed the f/o was totally absorbed in leveling the wings at the expense of not paying enough attention to lowering the nose and the ease at which he pulls back on the stick instead of pushing forward is a serious problem .

The airbus test pilots need to speak to the airline pilots at training briefings and give them more understanding and more insight into stall recovery of airbus aircraft at high levels above fl200.There is too much confidence that the a/c is in normal law and u cant stall it when the aircraft is actually in alternate law and u can stall it.:bored::bored::confused:

Part of me is thinking perhaps we need a 'different' warning for a "deep stall" - it shouldn't be hard to detect (stall=true, AOA>X, vertical speed negative and >Y).
OTOH, any competent pilot should know that the correct action to any stall warning is to push the stick/yoke forward (unless ground contact is imminent - certainly not a concern at high altitude). So if they are ignoring the current stall warning, would a deep stall warning be any different?
Perhaps a different method of stall warning is in order - during high stress/workload, the human mind tends to shut out aural 'distractions' - perhaps the "STALL, STALL, STALL" isn't getting through?

Interesting, mac76, apparently operators are very different about that. Since AF447 we had high and low altitude stall recovery in virtually every simulator event on my previous aircraft (737) with the new stall recovery procedures once they were available. Well, to be honest we did them every six months for the last 15 years, but before AF447 mainly low level with a renewed focus after the THY accident.

I'm only on the bus for a bit over a year, however during typerating we had to do the high level stall recovery a couple times in several sessions and since then in the two simulator events since i had to demonstrate it as well. However, there is still some focus on manual flying raw data in my company. We just realised that it will be easiest to fly raw data on every approach once we start the airbus SOPs in mid december, there's no FMA callout once everything is off.

Unless something has changed in the last four years, tdracer is correct, I too was surprised to find that while avionics equipment is exempt from the requirement to use lead-free solder, the use of leaded is not mandated.

The main concern always quoted was 'tin whisker' growth but brittle joints are, in my experience anyway, a much bigger issue, especially in a relatively high vibration environment.

If this was one of the causal factors in this event, you would like to think the powers that be will look at the subject again.

The report leaves a huge gap in events for some reason.
Nothing on the CVR "apparently" & the 9 secs before recognition of the roll.

Wonder why no mention of the fact that pilots can not reach the CB for no2 FAC without getting out of the seat..

So did the Capt. just get up and pull the breakers without telling the F/O what he was up to. So F/O was looking at him wondering what he was doing ?
Or did the F/O unstrap & pull the breaker "on Capt Req" again no one monitoring the PFD.

So if you were not monitoring the PFD & suddenly saw it "all over the place" you may request Capt to 3 to have a look at the PFD indication from that source.

I've only read through the report once so please correct me if I am wrong but seems odd that no mention of how the CB's were Pulled/Re-set.

As for practising high level stall recovery: On what? No sim I ever used had the relevant algorythems for high level characteristics. The sim handled the same at low level or high level, whereas the A/C certainly does NOT.:ugh:

The reason for this is simply that avionics are such a small market (compared to the general electronics industry) that whilst we're *allowed* to use leaded solder there are very few assembly plants that maintain the equipment to use it. They're not about to switch over to leaded solder (with the attendant clean-down, changing of fluxes and solvents, changes to speeds & temperatures) for the very limited run of avionic equipment that may be demanded.

£0.03 supplied,

PDR

@tdracer
At some point, a stick pusher might even be considered. Heresy, I know.

@IcePack
That is mentioned, in the Findings section, item #29 on page 119.

The Indonesians were somewhat conservative in writing this Final Report -- leaving out aspects which they could not prove or defend.

E.g., there probably was a short exchange between the Captain and the FO prior to the circuit breakers being pulled. But the conversation recorded on the CVR was unintelligible, so it was left out from the CVR transcript.

Solder joint.
 

I'm sorry, have not read the report.


Was the defective solder joint on the rack side of the connector or on the FAC side of the connector or not on the connector at all?

The report is well crafted and reflects a thorough investigation; furthermore the authors consider some speculative aspects from which we might learn. Obviously it can be read and interpreted in different ways, but there are aspects that could be applied to future activities.

I was surprised that there was not greater focus on the pitch trim which could have resulted in a nose-up moment complicating stall recovery. There may be similarities here with AF447; the condition is not a deep stall but one of a trimmed-in stall. If a separate warning is required it should be for an adverse trim condition at the stall.
Differences with FBW aircraft may be the lack of stick shake when approaching the stall, and stick push at the stall; a conventional tactile interface is more attention-getting than aural alerting during surprising and high workload situations.

Stall training in conventional aircraft use (should use) fixed trim whereby the speed of null-control-force feel represents stable, unstalled flight. Stall recovery involves a combination of pitch control force, attitude, and speed indications, forward control movement would be aided by stick push.
In unprotected FBW aircraft there is greater need to focus on attitude to reduce pitch - vice the absence of force feel. Further, if the aircraft is ‘out of trim’ then an off-centre control positon is required to reduce AOA and subsequent speed increase (pitch and yaw off centre in this instance, where the lack of yaw trim also contributed a roll control offset).
I doubt that any of these failures are trained / demonstrated in FBW aircraft or conventional aircraft.

The induced ‘upset’ is puzzling; following the inappropriate system interruption resulting in autopilot disconnect and roll attitude, the control inputs were not as expected (with hindsight). However, if crews normally use a relaxed rearward seat position during cruise with autoflight, then a sudden need for large or rapid manual control could result in unwanted inputs. Reaching for a side stick from an unusual positon would not involve the normal relationship for muscle-arm movement (learned skill), thus a roll input could have a significant pitch component. There could be similar problems with over-control in roll and with the required nose down movement (cf AF447).

The report's discussion of human factors is particularly well presented, but without factual confirmation human activity has to be speculative and carefully considered in context - surprise, knowledge base, and resultant awareness. Just because aspects are ‘easy to see’ after the event does not mean that the crew were in ‘error’, more likely as discussed in the report that the specifics of this particular rare situation and circumstances were at or beyond human ability.

Check trim, check seat position, review the assumptions made in training scenarios.

A second instance where pilots were pulling back on the stick in what appears to be an obvious pitch up/stall situation.

You do have to wonder whether the stick or ac systems have a failure mode where the inputs are reversed!?

I can't imagine a scenario where a pilot would pull back in a pitch up stall. It seems bizarre, no? Isn't this beyond basic? Even basic instinct would surely have you trying to pitch the nose down?

Jack11111.

re solder joint.

It would be inside the FAC. Aircraft wiring pins and sockets in the vast majority of cases are crimped.

As always, a well-written, well-considered contribution to the discussion, alf5071h.

Holes in the swiss cheese that lined up
 

If 1 or 2 of these issues had been addressed would it have been just another day at the office:

Lack of training.
Regulatory/airline policy
Solder joint fail
Poor error logging and pattern recognition
Pull both RTL CBs against SOP.
Fail to reset overhead ON/OFF as well as pull CB's.
Lack of CRM/cross cockpit communication/call outs.
CAPT "Pull down" verbal response to stall
Startle response
PF lack of situation awareness
ALT LAW vs NORMAL LAW confusion
CAPT side stick override fail
Lack of dual input 'feel'
Dual input warn suppressed by stall
Stall ignored/poor response

I have worked for a number of small companies who design and sell equipment for both ground and air use, manufacturing is usually subcontract and the problem is finding a subby who will use leaded solder using only non leaded removes the risk of an error by them.

BTW most component appear to have legs/leads which are Rosh (lead free)

Perhaps this is why it does have to be lead free but doesn't stipulate it has to be leaded.

Airbus will clearly be deeply unhappy about another event which ended in tragedy. Another non normal event which went horribly wrong.
Bottom line ~ training etc.
Certain aspects similar to AF447.

Question: would this be likely to have happened had it been a Boeing?

Airbus far better flight deck, and easier to fly with everything functioning normally.
However, when things start to go wrong, want would you rather be flying?

It's not a question of Airbus vs. Boeing, it's a question of training and the degradation of piloting skills. Have a look at this study. A couple of years old but unfortunate nothing changed so far.

@Parkfell

It boils down to knowing your a/c and not getting behind its situation.
In both this incident and AF447 the central issue appears to be PF failing to adapt/recognize the a/c changing from Normal Law to Alternate Law.

• In Normal Law with protections a full stick back input is safe/helpful.
• In Alternate Law a full stick back input is potentially fatal/detrimental.

The biggest strength of airbus being unstallable is turning out to be its biggest weakness i.e. are pilots affected by a denial or state of disbelief when confronted with a stall.
This issue was addressed in AF447 BAE final report. Clearly there is much more to be done to prevent future recurrence of highly experienced bus pilots entering stall and failing to recover.
Airbus is amazingly safe equipment so long as it is not flown into the ground when the protections are turned off.

The bottom line is that unless you continue to practice your basic skills, your ability to cope will deminish.
Exceed 28 days without a "top up" then the slippery slope begins.
Even those who flew raw data for years before glass cockpit will not maintain their skills. It how the brain works.
Training is critical ~ agreed
Problem is to convince the beancounters that it is a sound investment.

xcitation

With due respect, the problem in this incident was not a failure to recognize a change in law - pulling back on the stick was inappropriate with normal law protections in place or not. The main issue in this accident, as was the case with AF447, is the failure of the PF to recognize that if the aircraft is descending at >10000 ft/min and is not in a dive then it is stalled, and to respond to this appropriately.

Lead free solder
 

I have read that lead free solder has 5% the shock resistance of conventional leaded solder. Leaded solder works fine on the tin plated leads of ROSH integrated circuit packages(better than unleaded). Tin whiskers are a problem with pure tin plating or unleaded solder.
The lead free solder debacle was brought to you by the Commissars in the EU even after it was obvious there were good alternatives to leaded solder. Another case of lunatic "green" policies causing harm.
The EU was worried about disposal of electronic assemblies containing lead. I'd have thought this was a disposal/re-cycling problem but they turned it into an enormous manufacturing/operational problem.
The funny thing is that of all the lead mined, 80% goes in to lead acid batteries, 5% into ammunition, around 5 to 10% in various industrial uses and a whole 1% in electronics. This was figures from 10 to 15 years ago that went around the electronics industry.
Certainly nowadays there is no more lead used in cathode ray tube leaded glass shielding (remember CRT's?) and surface mount components use vastly less solder than do through hole plated components with wires on each end.
I doubt the authorities will mandate leaded solder in aviation as it would contradict the narrative about lead being bad.

Sorry, that should read " NO good alternatives".

PPRuNe back to its usual
 

Report is quite lacking in explanation of technical matters, it's HF side is even worse, there are pages upon pages of copypasted material with limited connection to the issues investigated, graphs are hard to read and compare, whole enterprise looks like (feeble, I admit) attempt to protect image of well respected aviator who made string of errors that eventually proved to be fatal, recommendations are quite weak. However, I am very pleasantly surprised by the report.

I expected it to be even worse.

At least, now we know what happened, even if we are left wondering why.

Whaddaya think, would former F-5E driver be exposed to comprehensive UPRT and stall training anytime in his career? Yea or nay?

It certainly would not as ECAM actions were done 3 times before resorting to pulling the breakers and I suspect that alert was triggered when both RTLU channels lost power simultaneously. Still, question is valid: "There is problem with RTLU, so what?" Good answer to it requires excellent system knowledge, something mere ECAM operator might be tragically lacking.

CVR transcript is utter disgrace but if the DFDR traces are anything to go by, well, feeble and intermittent nudges forward on the stick are just not appropriate action when faced with horrendous pitchup and stall warning.

Captain was lost too.

Not so limited. Issue was identified by certain W. Langewiesche in 1944, when the only sidestick around was one on B-17s and that wasn't used at all. It killed people in yoked aeroplanes. It killed in western in eastern aeroplanes. It killed after stickpusher override.

1. No
2. to support point no 1: rent A320 sim for 10 minutes, disable FACs, pull stick to aft stop, observe the amount of blue on PFD and force needed to hold stick full back

Not the first time a PPRuNer claims he knows better than FAA. Stay tuned to see if it's really so.

Either you did not do stall recovery or your sim is even bigger PoS than usual.

There is no low alt stall recovery for 737. If you really stall her down low, best course of action is to put your head between your legs and kiss your ar$€ goodbye.

What workload?

Not heresy, just ignorance. If I were to give one advice to aspiring & current airline pilots, it would be:

RTFHTBJ!

Stickpushers are not completely harmless, their malfunction can be lethal so they are used only when necessary and have to be overridable. They were overriden with fatal results a couple of times.

What stall recovery? The one following stall recognition that never happened?

You don't need to imagine; just read reports: Colgan, Birgenair, Pinnacle, I am too lazy to Google who wrecked 727 at Stony Point...

There have been airbus cases where spurious rates of descent and false stall warnings were correctly ignored. However to your point I think it helpful to add a dedicated AoA guage to avoid any question of what is betty doing now. I believe this is an option on the bus.

From p114 of the report:

"The Upset Recovery training was included in the aircraft operators training manual. The aircraft operator advised the KNKT that the flight crew had not been trained for the upset recovery training on Airbus A320, and this referred to FCTM Operational Philosophy: “The effectiveness of fly-by-wire architecture, and the existence of control laws, eliminates the need for upset recovery maneuvers to be trained on protected Airbus” "

Do these guages work in all situations (including during a stall)? One of the (I think) significant problems on the flight deck of AF447 was that the aural stall warning was inhibited when the airspeed became too low for the aircraft to reliably calculate AOA. This lead to the confusing situation whereby the stall warning would sound every time the crew started to take appropriate corrective action and the airspeed came back up into the range where AOA could be calculated. The rest is history.

At least it used to be. I flew a few busses equipped with that, fairly simple and speak by itself. A huge asset in an unreliable airspeed situation as well, if you can store 4 simple figures in your memory...