As a matter of topical interest we conducted a go-around at runway level in the 737 simulator today and made no correction to the pitch up that occured at GA thrust. The aircraft pitched up quickly and reached 45 degrees nose up and still going up and speed falling back through 90 knots when we "froze" the sim. This is a standard exercise to demonstrate to new crews the importance of containing the pitch up when hand flying and to monitor the pitch up rate if an auto-GA. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Don't shoot me too soon but in Tech Log right now we have the following thread:

1. Are visual approaches in airliners appropiate?

And on here:

2. TOM Stall (Alluding to an aircraft stalling due to nobody minding the shop) my italics

Anybody other than me seeing the pattern emerging?? Same routes, same "lowest common denominator SOP's" for all skill levels, reliance on automatics.

Anybody remember the "Children of the Magenta - American Airlines Video"
Who's flying the aircraft?

I agree. The sim may be a great tool for researching things like how a pilot will recognize and respond to an unusual attitude but using it to predict what the plane will actually do at unusual attitudes and airspeeds is a bit of a stretch. Still, sim results are often included in accident reports with little caveat.

Rainboe,

Your comments regarding reliance on Auto-throttle is all too true.:D

I spent 16 years on an 'old' tech jet and have recently converted to the high tech type. Having spent over 10 years in the left seat of the old girl with no Auto-throttle and visual approaches everywhere, I now find after just 6 months on the new jet I'm so used to letting the A/C do it that when I do take out the A/P and A/T I'm working very hard indeed.:(

I guess I'm going to have to bite the bullet and do more manual approaches.

As a non pilot and merely an as observer, my understanding is that before an aeroplane ever takes to the skies that most of the predicted flight envelope calculations are proven by computers and simulators and post certification are used to demonstrate and practice unusual attitudes and situations. Was the Washington 737 accident not proven with substantial input from the simulator. So why having input all the parameters into the sim would it not be beneficial?

best analogy I can give a non-pilot is painting by numbers.

All the colours end up in the right place, but the picture isn't nearly the same as the original.

The actual response and feel of the sim is quite a bit different compared to the aircraft.
Real manoeuvers in the plane are easier (and dare I say it, more stable) than in the sim.

Correct Rainboe. We tried to do the DHL Baghdad thing in the SIM (complete loss of HYD, A300).

No way Jose`.

This is why engineering simulators exist and are used to analyse safety events; they replicate the aircraft much more faithfully, at massively greater cost.

I understand the sim exercises were looking at how the situation developed and not in the handling / performance of the aircraft.
Use of automation is all about using an appropriate level of automation to suit the situation. This can vary from full manual to Cat 3B autoland. Gone are the days when you heard "I've got a Base Check next week so I'm going to do a bit of manual flying". It had got to the stage where we were using the aircraft to practice for the sim, ie, often using an inappropriate level of automation. Has skill fade resulted? Among 200 pilots you will get 400 answers on that one!

Oh, and one of the guys is a mate so when we're all done we could wait for the report and probably even learn something. Well most of us, the experts out there have it all taped right?

We too tried, as did Hetfield, the Baghdad scenario. We initially got control of the basic aircraft parameters, but very soon lost them; a shallow dive, speed building, and the need to apply power to raise the nose, no way possible in the sim, and three of us had a go that day and failed, as the terrifying fugoids developed.
Our sim was one of the better ones regarding similarity to real-time handling, and I guess we will never know whether it was down to us or the sim on the day.
.
Major respect to that Baghdad crew for achieving the theoretically impossible.

...for another year. Bye bye!- hear from you next November!

Dont knock him so quickly. a very valid point i think.

Do you mean the US Air 427 crash out of PIT?

I think you mean the Iowa crash, UAL 232 at SUX - Sioux City (http://www.flysux.com/).

Regardless of the geography, those crashes are a couple of the first that come to my mind on this topic. Sims were used to test theories about handling with catastrophic system failures.

Those days aren't gone everywhere. I do have mixed feelings when the other pilot hand flies to FL330. It's great that they are maintaining stick and rudder skills but it puts a higher workload on the monitoring pilot and narrows situational awareness. Of course, if we are flying a European SID with noise abatement and a low transition altitude, I'm a little firmer about getting the autopilot on so we can run the store. Also, stick time helps some when you get to the sim, but most of us spend the first hour relearning how to fly the box.

Sorry- you are correct. Knew it was I-something. Idaho is where the lovely baked potatoes come from. The Sioux City accident it was. Wonderful interview with the crew shown in Recurrent training. Respec'!

FOK,
Whether in the sim the event is controllable or not is irrelevant, what is more important is whether it is representative of the aircraft. As most posters have suggested the simulator will not have the data to replicate this scenario. You may as well have a test run on MS Flightsim.

That would be the same CAA who allegedly stopped the old VS classic sim from being certified because of a supposed "errant" instrument flag, until they were told that the aircraft did the same.

Back to the original point, the sim will not represent the aircraft in such extreme attitudes, because the sim will not have the data available to it.

A training simulator is qualified by comparison of its behaviour against a defined range of manoeuvres which are intended to validate that it is sufficiently representative to undertake the training role for which it is intended.

It is not validated for use for manoeuvres outside that envelope, and use of a training device for engineering purposes - whether for investigations such as that suggested, or for certification purposes (such as, say, windshear escape guidance certification) is subject to substantial additional validation testing, often of the same magnitude again as that used for the training validation. All of the certification agencies are well aware of the technical limitations of a basic flight training simulator; they are the ones requiring the additional validation (though I would not propose its use without that validation, even if they did not).

.......which is why you can fly inverted under Sydney Harbour bridge in a 737-400 sim:). Go on - ask me how I know...................

BOAC,
Come on now stop exaggerating. Everyone knows the bridge being in Oz is upside down, so in fact you were the right way up! ;)

Well, jigger my kangaroo, Bruce - you are right!:)

I just hope that the crew involved get a bit of a slap on wrists,

bit more training and then get back in the aircraft.

The slap is for letting the aircraft getting into the state in the first place, the training because we all can do with more of it, I know I can sometimes.

The best end result for all.

We can only wait and see.

259.

It would seem that. if the speed of 90kts was true, they must have been very close to a full stall, certainly past stick shaker I would have thought. If this speed was caused by a sevree pull up then I expect there was quite some g-loading. The more learned bretheren amongst us could elaborate. I'm curious as to whether the elevator would have enough influence to affect a nose over recovery. If so, there must have been 'lots of stuff' floating around the cabin ceiling. If not, would some roll habe been required to recover this beast. I would have expected the elevator to have been as useful as wet fish at this speed.
Were there any eye -witnesses, or were they IMC? I've not read all earlier posts to note the Wx or time of day. If not, the subsequent aeros must have been entertaining to the locals who have their fair share of summer inverted antics along the beach front.

Nose high speed decreasing unusual attitude/upset.

You can use roll to aid lowering the nose if you have a very high nose attitude but only if you have sufficient speed in hand in the first place. Interestingly Boeing advocate up to full nose down elevator and a REDUCTION in thrust to aid recovery. The order is elevator, trim, thrust, roll and the roll has a caution attached as does the use of trim. By using the elevator aggresively your decreasing your angle of attack and making a stall due to roll much less likely (you can't stall at 0G) and reducing power will aid the pitch down initialy.

If your 40 nose up in the stick shaker then I'd reckon you don't have that speed in hand and by rolling your going to increase your angle of attack on one wing so could easily induce the stall you wish to avoid and make your subsequent recovery harder as the stall on one wing could induce even more roll. If you want to see that in action then look at the video of the Nimrod crash during an airshow in Toronto, I imagine its on U tube. Not exactly the same as they were in an established turn with G on but it gets the point of Mvr stall accross in a very tragic and poignent way.

With 40 nose up and stick shake you'd be doing the approach to stall checklist I would imagine. That and praying to whichever God you happen to believe in.

Out of interest in the air force with nose v high, speed low and rapidly reducing we were always taught to go to idle and centralise everything, wait for the aircraft to fall out and once speed was on the way back up effect a recovery using nose low techniques. Not as a technique in the QRH or the FCTM though.

Ashling:

I agree with your assessment that a roll might cause the a wing to come closer to stall. The idea of reducing power on a low wing a/c was with me, but it would not be intuative to the average airline crew, especially not close to the ground. Your military recovery technique will work (I've done it when flicking off the top of a roll and screwing up), but you need lots of height. As the elevator might be 'like a wet fish in a gale' increasing stab trim might work, but you'd have to be very quick to remove that trim during the nose over recovery. Combinations of many things might be needed, but I'd enjoy seeing the FDR put onto an instrument display and learning what happened, why and then learn again from the crew's subsequent actions.

There have been some interesting reconstructions done e.g. about the China Airlines B747 that went into a nose down corkscrew due to engine out and a stall at CRZ level. I didn't yet see one about the Airbus in Paris that went high nose up at the OM. I saw only a still photo. There was the one in the far East that went from Approach mode into G/A and they stalled and did not recover. There must be lots to learn and I hope we have the chance.

"Out of interest in the air force with nose v high, speed low and rapidly reducing we were always taught to go to idle and centralise everything, wait for the aircraft to fall out and once speed was on the way back up effect a recovery using nose low techniques. Not as a technique in the QRH or the FCTM though"

That depends on the particular aircraft. I know of some that would NOT recover using that technique. Also you need lots of altitude if you just let it fall. Not a good technique after or during a go-around.

A lot to be said for Alpha Floor ! :ok:

Sleeper

Your quite right I haven't flown everything in the airforces inventory just a mix of whizz jet and multi.

The nose high speed rapidly blah blah thing was purely out of interest rather than an attempt at a recommended technique for a Boeing. Both you and RAT 5 are quite correct it will take quite some height to recover and quite probably more than this crew had available although it is equally possable it would work depending on trajectory, attitude etc.

In the real case all you can do is follow Boeings recommended stall recovery.

Agree with you RAT 5 it would be very interesting to see the FDR.

Regarding the fidelity of sims to real life, recall the B767 sim in regard to the Lauda Air 767 crash in Thailand. Initially the pilots were criticised for not acting more quickly after the deployment of the thrust reverser, as the re-enactment in the Boeing sim indicated they had plenty of time to act and recover the situation. NTSB suspected all was not right, and did a lot of number-crunching and, to cut a long story short, it turned out in the end that the pilots actually only had five seconds after being thrown this totally unexpected and untrained for situation.

Think that after that B got an certification exemption on having to prove that accidental in-flight thrust-reverser deployment on the 777 was recoverable.

If the above descriptions are accurate, then everyone was very lucky to get back on the deck safely.

No time to be terrified initially but I am sure that the crew concerned have been through the mill so far.

As I have said in the Virgin thread a while ago, the amount of rubbish talk from some posters is embarassing and I'm sure the crew of the above flight really appreciate your comments.

There has been heated debate about a separate forum where professionals can discuss stuff like this without having to deal with the drivvle that some of you have come out with over the past few pages.

Will I have access to this separate forum?
At this stage in my career, definitely not.

From an industry PR point of view, some of the comments made on incidents here in the past put all of us in a really bad light.
In fact, I think that if the powers that be made a separate area and just emailed the professionals the link, none of the others would even notice it was there, and all would trundle on as usual.

Thomsonfly unstable approach at Bournemouth
 

Heard of a similar incident in a previous life: mis-handled G/Around on a 737-200 where the crew recovered from a nose-high attitude by keeping G/A thrust and almost full down elevator. Resulting in a "parabolic" recovery with the minimum speed somewhere approx 10kts below stick-shaker for the config.
At zero "G" the a/c WILL fly without stalling as long as it can be maintained. But there has to come a point where elevator effectiveness and the aircraft energy will be insufficient to continue the recovery manoeuvre. Then only lots of altitude will help..................
Interesting that it still can happen.............

Until the full facts are reported by the AAIB, it is only speculation that the aircraft was 40 degrees nose up and at 90 kts airspeed simultaneously during a go around.

The quote from flight states:

"sources say that incident on 23 September involved a go-around following an uncommanded power reduction that left the aircraft at stalling speed during the approach".
It doesn't say "during the go around"

Flight continues:

"The crew disconnected the autopilot and autothrottle to recover the aircraft successfully to safe flight, but witnesses report that the nose-up attitude during recovery exceeded 40° and the airspeed reduced to approximately 90kt (166km/h) at its lowest point."

This 90 kts may well have been during the initial approach, not during the go around.

"The crew then carried out a safe landing at the airport, the AAIB confirms."


FB

Who could be a witness?

Person or persons observing?? :rolleyes:

How's the investigation going?
Are the crew still employed?

:ok: Yeah, no kidding! Airmanship 101, ladies...

Just checked AIBB site
 

and still nothing, has this plane and its crew just vanished into a hole?

Yep, but someone else's hole.

Alpha Floor etc, has not prevented serious jet upset. The Pilots need to be designed into the flight envelope not OUT of it. Monitor the shop boys, it will take your head off if neglected!

Ever so briefly (I hope) off topic - does anyone have a link to "Children of the Magenta" mentioned earlier in the thread please? PM is fine.

Non - pilots
 

Rainboe & co,

I appreciate your point re. non pilots posting; I don't make much attempt to hide my identity, trust anyone sadly interested knows me.

In fact I ( and a lot of others ) learn a lot from reading such threads - including this one - and I have done a lot of unofficial 'hands-on' with light aircraft - including the true Hollywood scenario of my trusty hungover / maybe drugged pilot passing out on me, it really does happen !

Leaving me to circle until he came round...

He did, so I didn't have to knobble any future career of his with an emergency - always wondered if I should have, but the interviwers seemed to have him sized up anyway. NOT anything to do with Dunsfold BTW.

So while a little learning is a dangerous thing, it seems better than nothing !

BTW I knew a Flight Engineer on Concorde; he reckoned he & his colleagues tried to recreate the Sioux City recovery in a Sim, and anyone who got within 40 miles was doing very well ! Respect indeed ! You may be able to corroborate that.

On reflection I am qualified to 'pilot' anything up to 200 tons, but that's at sea level ( or less if I really screw up ) with an IAS unlikely to exceed 30 knots !

Yours, slightly trained in aeronautics, trials / aerial photographer...