Thanks for that unsolicited praise G! Very kind of you, but I'm not 100% sure I am worthy of it...

While I agree with you, we should understand for it to work training would be key. The Airbus philosophy invites those that may have never even seen a stick and rudder aeroplane nor those who came up through the ranks as a Cessna/Piper trainee. (As well as those folks with whom English is not their native language). According to some unofficial stats, between 1/4 and 1/3 of Airbus-rated pilots come directly into the sidestick programme with no prior commercial flying experience and very little basic flight time. The ingenuity of the Airbus philosophy is what makes these groups viable as transport category pilots - at least until things digital go wobbly.

In order for our button to work, basic stick and rudder skills, or at the very least, a solid to-their-bones understanding of power and pitch would need to be second nature.

You may be right GFrange, but as others above and myself have offered, it is a matter of the airplane coming second to the survival of the crew, their fellow fliers in formation, and the success of the mission with the ultimate control over the mission and the aircraft, no matter the weather, situation, or aircraft condition, belonging to the pilot in command.

And how many advocates of this "switch" have reward and considered the Voyager (~A330) upset report?

Specifically (cannot cut'n'paste so para phrased):Summary stated:I think we need to keep the AoA probes incident in context. 1 occurrence (others allude to a few more?) in thousands of A320 type FBW aircraft over decades of service. Any "voting" system of 3 sensors with 2 faulty will be difficult to incorporate, and an element of "lessons learned" will apply. There is no need, IMO, for the "big yellow switch", and the likely outcome for this (and other) sensor problems will be software validating their inputs e.g. in this case, a constant AoA value over a period of time, and altering pitch / IAS / 'g' loading becomes "unlikely". That will again be difficult to code without creating further hazards, but possible.

The "big yellow switch", I suspect for the very few occasions it is required, would be overused, and sometimes inappropriately and accidents as a result. Think how many GPWS warnings ignored with impact shortly after? Regrettably, whilst technology is not infallible, humans are more so :{

NoD, this is surely a key area that training should focus upon, if and when such a switch is offered to civilian pilots of Airbus aircraft. Without such focus, a willy-nilly loss of built-in protections could possibly lead to more Airbus accidents, not less - particularly if the willing protection throw-offs were not entirely situationally aware or worse, and more basically, unable to hand fly a transport category aircraft without the wondrous, yet molly-coddling digital assistance offered by the Airbus design.

I should add that this shortcoming of recent pilots, the lack of both basic flying skills and instinctual situational awareness is partly attributable to automation across all types and not the Airbus flight envelope protections philosophy per se.

A control column???

No thanks it would mess up my fine dining table! :p

In any event that is what the sidestick order indicator on the PFD is for! Actively monitor that to your hearts content.....

Good retort NoD!

mockingjay

Stop pointing at other manufacturers, it's puerile and does not make the Airbus flaw go away! They have to fix it physically and not through print-band-aids.

By that let me point out a decisive difference between your mentioned Asiana/Boeing accident:
It makes a huge difference if an incident originates with a wrong choice of perfectly normal modes and legal techniques that was not picked up by an absent additional protection, or if it originates by a malfunctioning protection itself that was not induced by the pilot.
The first can and should be avoided by pilots and training is to blame, thus in the responsibility of the airline and regulator. The second is induced by design and the manufacturer is to blame, thus in his responsibility (and the regulators').

We end up at my basic criticism: CHANGE SOMETHING. Do not simply write additional procedures shoving down additional workload to pilots at awkward moments and by that absolve yourself of responsibility. That is despicable.

As to vapilot's statement:

You are confirming a second one of my long standing criticisms. Lack of training and putting inadequate candidates into modern cockpits.
While i understand that the huge need for adequate airline jockeys is almost impossible to satisfy, the trend to want to mitigate this with automatics and protections is to the least dubious. What i mean is that the recent accidents show a trend that this might not work to the extent that the big manufacturers and the regulators intended. Airline management will always hide behind the latter by pretending to do the minimum required and cynically accept the losses. It is therefore up to us professionals to raise the issue and ask for fast and more adequate remedies.

Defending one manufacturer in stating that the other has similar flaws is so beneath any decent professional conscience that it hurts. The pressure has to rise to an unbearable level for the regulator to force him to act. Neither airline management nor manufacturers will move a tad if not forced.

This thread is about Airbus, so forget Boeing for a moment and join us in applying pressure, for the sake of safety.

(You are free to the Boeing flaw thread, i am already there .....)

As the Airbus 'we're smarter than any pilot' design contributes to one incident / accident after another and they continue to 'patch the flight control software' in a futile attempt to finally make it 'pilot proof' you might wonder when they will finally admit they got it very badly wrong.


Of course they won't.



While I thank my lucky stars I fly a Boeing that if it ever second guesses me I just disconnect (really disconnect) the autopilot and I tell it exactly what I want to do and it complies, simple as that.

The print-band-aids solution as you point out is a short term fix whilst the problem is resolved. Its a little rich for you to tell me to stop pointing out flaws of other manufacturers. Fair point. Perhaps. But may I suggest you stick to this issue/OEB48 and not make wild generalisations about the Airbus/FBW as a whole.

Admitting there's a fault and producing a robust workaround is highly commendable of Airbus. They didn't wait for smoking holes to appear.

I agree GFrange with you on the problem of the lack of properly trained pilots entering the cadre and would add - without need as your comment here is mostly non-partisan - that this is a problem across all types.

If only pilot unions were less focused on pay scales, time limits, and liability fights, not to mention membership numbers, and instead, more focused on protecting and advancing our group as a whole...

This begs the question and opens up an altruistic opportunity for a new group in this new millennium to emerge - an international union of pilots with a shared central purpose: the perpetuation and preservation of classic pilotage skills and the safety of air transport travel in the face of tight airline budgets, newfangled and skill-sucking gadgetry, and too little/too late/too over-encompassing regulation that is often steamrollered into the docket before those with the most to lose and benefit can have their earned and learned say.

Well. You know people could just hand fly a bit more. My airline encourages it and it is done a lot in the sim. Perhaps a list of airlines forbidding pilots from manually flying an approach should be named and shamed? After all automation complacency and lack of flying skills is an industry wide issue. I don't proclaim to fly every single approach manually but I do to keep up the flying skills. As do many of my colleagues.

I agree, MJ, this is central to solving our skill-numbing automation conundrum. The problem is with the airlines - with them it is a numbers game. For maybe 50 or 100 out of 999 times, a hand-flown aircraft might give the folks in the back more bumping around and "discomfort" than the alternative. The problem with playing the statistics is on that 1000th time, you need the gents in front to have an idea of how to fly the aircraft as part of their muscle memory. The only way that can happen is with more hands-on time, regularly.

Increased (and paid) simulator sessions would be a partial solution and should be regulated into a trial program of volunteer pilots and airlines. Without government subsidy or tax breaks, it would raise costs in the short term, but as we as a group become more man-machine conversant, the rate of the very costly 'incidents' and accidents would decrease dramatically if our original lack of skills theory holds true - I'm betting there's little disagreement on that last bit... It would be a small price to pay for such a dramatic increase in our shared pool of solid, basic flying skills, to be applied as needed.

Ahh!!
 

Incredible.

Alot of people are missing the argument here, i think its in agreement the automation has saved lives and has made flying safer, its about when it goes wrong(not necessarily software but hardware), and what is in place when this occurs.

What i find utterly incredible is there hasn't been more protest from pilots who from day to day fly these machines, i've read on here for years about people believing a 'red button' or such should exist on AB to revert back to 'an airplane' or safe default AS/trim.

Would such a button potentially give the crew valuable time for 'panic fog' to clear and the ability to gain control then assess the issues thus saving pax and crew? If yes then why hasn't this been demanded? Fear of losing ones job for suggesting such a profit wasting feature?

If i had my way tomorrow, i would introduce such a switch along with training to fly in direct law (along with familiarity of manual operation of THS). An enforced training drill which must me executed x times a year along with stall recovery procedures (which has also been evidently lacking in some fatal incidents).
As someone here has pointed out it (manual overide button) is utilised in the military AB spec already, so there must be some requirement, although i have no idea in what mode/law it operates and the benefits.

I feel a button/training mentioned above would be far more beneficial than additional training and bulletins to decipher various ACARS messages etc in a panic situation in bad weather working out what needs disabling first, whilst grappling with an A/C behaving in a strange and unpredictable way. Whilst the self righteous people on the ground are tut'ing 'should of known that from your training'.

Now, why hasn't this been addressed, contested, protested with the powers that be. You have the power! I can barely fly a quadcopter and it seems obvious to me.

I personally don't worry about this issue. I'm well aware of what to do should the worst happen. I say I don't worry as I am pretty confident that fix will work. I don't worry however I am well aware of it and always highly vigilant of what's happening.

Stator Vane - you are very right. One CP pointed out to me as FO after a few months on line that I (like many many others) have a tendency to over control. Since then I conciously thoight 'make the plane do what you want, but achieve it by using HALF as many side stick inputs as you feel that you need' and that works, for me anyway, particularly in blustery conditions. There's one place we fly to that is hot, thermal and has lots of factories below the final app. I used to find myself working hard flying over this area, now it's a lot smoother and a lot easier too! Another place we fly to has a pretty short runway with a hump in the TDZ. Again it's a lot easier using less inputs.

I'm just a mere FO but any TRI/TRE/TCs got any thoughts on sidestick use?

If the Airbus FBW concept was immature, and the incident/accident rate high with few aircraft, I might agree.

It now very roughly covers 50% of the civil airliner flying. I would therefore suggest the technology is proven safe. Not 100% safe, nothing is. Therefore the only changes I think we will see will be incremental tweaks, not the fundamental redesign in either hardware or software you seem to seek?

Only my guess, I have say 8k hrs on FBW Airbus. Yes, for handling I'd rather the 757 I've also flown, but I have no safety concerns about the Airbus. Although of course today's events might alter things :ooh:

I agree with Nigel even though all my Civvy hours are on the Seattle jets. Worrying though, that we have another part of the jigsaw today...............:confused:

Apart from the technical challenge, is there any reason why these side sticks could not be arranged to move together?

I know that plenty of aircraft with conventionally linked controls have had accidents, but an aircraft that can have one set of controls set in opposition to the other, seems less than optimal.

The new Gulfstream G600, which has full FBW, has made a selling point of linked sidesticks with feedback.

Remember the current flight control interface in the airbii is basically a 70ies design. The technology for backdriven cross controlled sidesticks was available, but deemed too complicated. It was feared that they introduce too many other failure modes which had to have been dealt with. In that light, the software dealing with the force feedback on the 777 consisted supposedly of more lines of codes than the whole airbus FBW system.

It might be "less than optimal", to what degree is subjective?

In day to day ops, it is pretty much a non-event. The "Dual Input" audio has been added as a mitigation. In training, or when 1 pilot does something completely off the wall (AF447), it is not ideal.

However, given the large numbers of ab-initio cadets that transfer successfully to the 320 series, I would say that the requirement to link (or force drive?) the sidesticks is not compelling enough to:

1. Redesign the whole cockpit hardware
2. Redesign and certify the software
3. Retrain all crews to the new design and SOPs
4. Take aircraft out of service, modufy them at great expense
5. Run training and operations for a considerable time with both the "new" and "current" systems

NoD.

So apart from the cost, it would be good?

But because of the cost, better not to bother?

Is that it?

I should imagine so, yes. The task of redesigning and re-certifying the worldwide A320 series fleet, A330 fleet, A340 fleet, A350 fleet and A380 fleet defies imagination. Better to make sure the next generation of FBW airliners have interlinked controls. Or only one pilot. :eek:

At the extreme, maybe so. But it would be safer than this process, and with cost no object to:

1. Make pilots do 3 Sim Checks each month
2. Have 4 pilots on every flight
3. Only do 1 flight per day (for pilots), and practice the profile first in the sim
4. Carry 5T extra fuel
5. Not fly if CBs were forecast, or winds were over 20K

I could go on ;)

Ahhhh, Nigel. Sounds lovely!

Fair enough, there's a lot of these a/c around, and a retrofit of linked controls would be huge.......

But there's really no excuse for continuing to turn them out this way apart from commonality. If Grumman can link the things on the latest Gulfstream, why can't it be done on an A380?

Really, it's doable these days, and it ought to be done.

Yes Nigel, Groundhog day! I am sad, but much more extremely mad at someone!

But then commonality is the big issue with airbus. All their aircraft are pretty similar set up and mixed fleet flying is possible between pretty much every combination of aircraft. Even stronger is the connection between the newest aircraft and the second oldest FBW airbus, both share the same typerating (A330/A350) and can and are flown in a MFF operation with the A320 series.

And yes, it might sound glib, but the numbers seem to prove airbus right. All in all they are not less safe than their boeing counterparts.

Control linkage in all probability would have to be done electronically via force feedback, which includes a lot of stuff, like redundant electronic signaling, servos and so on, it is of course possible, but would change the very fundament of the airbus flightdeck philosophy. So i guess it won't be done.

If it were done mechanically, then you could leave the rest of the system alone.

Still, not exactly a minor thing, but....

Not so. C-17, 777, 787, 747-8 all have mechanically interlinked controls with FBW. But none have side sticks.

Instead of redesigning and re-certifying the aircraft with linked controls - what about a software update to provide an audible warning or alert when there are conflicting inputs? Wouldn't that be a relatively easy software fix?

"Warning - the guy in the other seat is doing something different - one of you needs to stop . . . "

Like the "DUAL INPUT" warning that it already has, you mean? :confused:

Apparently, yes. Now where did I put the Lagavulin?

Indeed. Sidesticks on the outer side of the flightdeck with all usable space in between already used up by other installations. Not really a realistic assumption that mechanic linkage is possible as a retrofit. Especially if one wants to contain the very light control forces currently used on the airbus sidestick. That leaves only electronic linking.

Would be interesting to know if the C17 sticks are mechanically linked or electrically.

Mechanical, Denti. The C-17 has full manual reversion as well - cables, pulleys and torque tubes. Center stick control by the way, not side in case anybody was wondering. Recall that the aircraft was originally designed by McD, the kings of cable control!

expert says investigators link A320 to A321
 

When asked what are the potential causes of the A320 accident an aviation expert on Australian TV tonight said investigators will "focus" on the sensors.
He then went on to talk about the A321 accident

He did not talk of any other potential causes.

But surely the A320 pilots, with 8 minutes up their sleeve, could see they were descending and do something to override the computer?



Mickjoebill

That belongs in the other thread, but yes. Especially as OEB 48 raised the awareness quite a lot about sensor/computer pitfalls.

@vapilot thanks for the information.

Ref the c-17, individuals need to remember that the jet was designed for a non permissive environment, the jet has 14 hydraulic pumps for example! You can maintain some very basic control with just one of those pumps.

The wires don't physically connect to controls, they simply control a shuttle valve in the hydraulic control units.

Great jet to fly though. Went back to non fbw and it's worse than the c-17 reversionary mode!

' i would introduce such a switch along with training to fly in direct law '


So this is what we have come to !


Amazing a Pilot would need to be 'trained' for this :ugh:

Give us some credit mate. We do practice it in the sim and a vast majority can fly it just fine in direct law. Remember most failures we practice wil often result in direct law once the gear is down! Pitch power and trim. Just because we fly Airbus doesn't mean we don't know the basics.

A better question is how many more lives have to be lost before airbus and its deadly 'protections' are forcibly removed from the entire FBW fleets so that pilots have a chance in hell of surviving the 'les fvkups'?

Check out that OEB on how one can protect oneself from the Low AoA 'Protection', and then tell me BOEING have issued a similar directive and I'll never knock the L'Airbus company again.

Airbus 'protections'? Ha. They will try their best to kill you given the chance. :*

The problem
 

The problem is not with Airbus. If there is a market then someone will make money supplying the market. There is a shortage of highly trained pilots with experience. The bean counters know it it way too expensive to hire them so they move toward a cadet who gets 200 hours in a single with checklist use and CRM thrown in. Sometimes with verbiage geared to a specific airline then thrown into a right seat of a 330. Taught to use autopilot and FMS extensively there he sits for ten years. Moves to left seat and never really mastering the visual aproach from a downwind. He is not below standard. However the standards have lowered and automation enables this to happen. The odds of this pilot EVER getting into a situation that he has never seen in a sim is rather remote. The insurance companies know this, so do the bean counters. He may never really need to fly the thing. Ever. Personally I would not want to pull back on the stick to arrest a nose down attitude and have no affect but hey, the machine is smarter than me.....right?
No sir, the problem is not with Airbus...

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing:

The Habsheim A320 protected the aircraft too. The system knew better than the pilots then.l So it (the system) landed the aircraft against the pilots wishes !!! Protections ??? Yeh sure.

The aircraft was below 100ft so the A-FLOOR protection was not active and the engines in any case would probably still have taken too long to spool-up and provide the thrust to avoid the trees. The pilot was flying at 30ft instead of the briefed 100ft

What about the A320 that crashed into the Mediterranean with 3 airbus test pilots on board?

They omitted an item on the Air Test Schedule, as I recall, and didn't want to climb back up to the recommended safe altitude to carry it out so they checked the low-speed protections at an unsafe altitude (3000ft) with tragic consequences when they AoA probes froze due to water ingress. Had they been at 14,000ft which is, I believe, the recommended altitude for the check they would probably have recovered from the stall.

Conjoint controls
 

If as suggested, the current situation where the joysticks are not linked is not considered to be the safest technical solution, then how was an ALARP argument arrived at?