Airbus technology defects

[xetroV]

Originally Posted by WAGM

Greybeard, ABX,
Thank you for a reasonable reply.
No, this is not a wind up and I don't believe I've been wound either.

This link;

Aviation Safety Investigation Report - Final Airbus A330-341, PK-GPC

or this link;

www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2001/AAIR/aair200104399.aspx

report and my own experience with radalt failure got me interested in the area and made me wonder if just perhaps at least some of that video was based on fact. I believe it would be lazy or stupid just to dismiss it as a fake because that's what was the view of someone else with no specific credentials.

Perhaps there is a PPruner who was involved if the original footage or alternatly the construction of a the fake?

I wasn't involved in the original footage and/or the Heineken version of that movie, but I have seen a TV interview on Dutch TV with the guy who made that commercial. I thought there was an article about it on Internet too, somewhere, but unfortunately I can't trace it back.

However, I remember from the interview that they used footage of a perfectly normal A320 landing at Schiphol and a model (can't remember whether it was a scale-model or CGI) of an A319. The original footage was heavily edited: the livery was changed, the A320 was morphed into an A319, and of course the fake hard landing/braking sequence and the passenger address audio were included.

In the interview, the guy who created that commercial said he had been very surprised by the reactions: he had never imagined anyone to seriously believe this landing to be real. In fact, he had even been worried at the time that the fake landing would be so obviously "over the top" that it would spoil the joke.

Well, he needn't have worried: we now know even aviation professionals can be fooled. WAGM, Zeke wasn't flaming you when he suggested you were gullible; he was just being brutally honest.

[CONF iture]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Michel Asseline (the Captain) in his own book tries to blame everyone else.

I’m afraid you didn’t read the same book than me … Asseline is the first one to take part of the blame, but when you hear that: BZ … how do you want him to react ?

Originally Posted by Zeke

The official version is the only version that had access to all the evidence.

Oh yes, and these guys who compile the official version communicate only what they choose to.
As an example, in the preliminary report (One month after the crash) they talk at large about the CVR but no transcript of DFDR. Just on this forum, you would find a dozen of guys able to read perfectly well such transcripts.
It could have been very interesting to have a look at the Altimeter reading to confirm it was of perfect match with RA call-out … but was-it ?
One month before, an OEB stipulated a dysfunction with Altimeter reading, and strangely, pilots had never been aware of that one!?
In the same time Asseline pretends his Altimeter was showing 100 ft on the appropriate QFE … So why not showing, at this specific time, the Altimeter reading from the DFDR ?

Originally Posted by Zeke

The court then ordered the DGAC to hand over the boxes to the investigation, and as far as I understand they were then basically handed back to the DGAC for the technical analysis to commence.

Crash is on the 26 of June
Judge Sengelin, who is already the second Magistrate Judge on the case because the first one left for his holidays period, realizes on the 29 that the black boxes are still under none judicial control, so naturally request them … but Administration refuses.
On the 5 of July, as nothing moved, he orders the seizure of these boxes.
He finally puts an hand on them the 6, nothing less than 10 days after the crash !
And if you pretend the technical analysis commenced only at that time, explain us how Transport Minister Mermaz was able to declare one day after the crash that the A-320 technology didn’t show any dysfunction ?

Originally Posted by Zeke

Conspiracy theory people use this line of argument because in France a police like investigation takes place for aircraft accidents, their whole judicial system is different to what many are used to. People who make this claim are either ignorant of the process in France, or playing on others being ignorant of the process in France.

True, Civil Aviation takes care of flight recorders as early as possible.
But first, legal seals need to be affixed to them.
Has it been done ?
The answer is NO.
Official document recording serial numbers must be established.
Has it been done ?
The answer is NO.
Official document certifying the transport must be established.
Has it been done ?
The answer is NO.
Then, Administration will duplicate the information from the flight recorders, and originals will be given back to the Judicial Police Officer who delivered them.
Has it been done ?
And the answer is … NO.

And regarding “conspiracy theory” please stay on track !
It looks all too convenient to put a sticker on people who dare questioning.

[CONF iture]

Originally Posted by Speevy

That close to the gnd would you honesty get involved with an A/Th problem and try to fix it by disconnecting it?

You have to put that in perspective, that brand new 320 technology was so new, and flying with computers bugs was the every flight story.
Now, as I said earlier:
"It’s easy for me, 18 years after, facing my screen, to say that maybe that early A/THR malfunction should have been the signal to CAPT Asseline not to go further in that flight …"

Originally Posted by Speevy

I don't believe the facts as Reported by the Capt. Asseline, and I think post-trauma defense mechanism are involved in what he says (I am not saying he's a liar just that he cannot be the only source of info.)

And that's the point, official version cannot be either the only source of info.
There is so much stuff available out there, and all these people in need to share, trace the same path.
Just too bad there's not that much in English.

Originally Posted by Speevy

You sy the FDR has been manipulated, the day you have some proof, ok I will believe you

I didn't say anything ... at least not yet ... !?
And I'm not in a situation to proove anything, but I've realized that too few people know more that the official "too low too slow too late" and for people ready to invest some valuable time, there is a lot to learn.
People with common sense will realize that all these procedures have been very much oriented, commencing by DAY ONE:
"Airplane is not at fault, so Pilot is at fault !"

[the shrimp]

During this time, the French authorities continue to fight this pilot, Norbert Jacquet. Why?

It seems that there is a real problem.

Norbert Jacquet probably knows disturbing things.

[Lemurian]

Originally Posted by the shrimp

During this time, the French authorities continue to fight this pilot, Norbert Jacquet. Why?

It seems that there is a real problem.

Norbert Jacquet probably knows disturbing things.

All crackpots do, I'm afraid.

[CONF iture]

Originally Posted by Lemurian

Danny,
This site is yours.It will become what you put in it.But if it lacks a modicum of tolerance,of humanism,of moral standards,it will join the cohort of hate/supremacist/...fora that abound on the net.
I am not going to be part of it as it is now.
As a hypocritical french cheese eating surrendering monkey luvvy,I really feel I've stayed my welcome to your world.
Sincerely yours
Roland,aka Pihero/Lemurian...etc...

... probably lost an opportunity to stay away a bit longer:

Originally Posted by Lemurian

All crackpots do, I'm afraid.

Hopefully you will have more to say ...

[Clandestino]

It was bleak winter day. Little bird was lying still in the middle of the road, half frozen. It seemed that even its minutes were numbered, when there appeared a cow, and dropped a dung right on the top of it. After a while, heat from dung permeated the little bird's body and it felt blood running again through its veins. It was so delightful to feel alive again that the little bird started singing with the greatest of joy. Alas, along came very hungry kitty, heard the little bird's song, dug it out of dung and ate it.

There are three morals to this story:

1) those who $h*t upon you are not necessarilly your enemies
2) those who pull you out of $h*t are not necessarilly your friends
3) when you're buried in $h*t, don't sing - kepp your mouth (or beak) firmly shut

Misfortunantly, this story was either never translated into French, or, if it was, capt. Asseline has never heard of it. Othervise he would have been familiar with moral3 and would never, ever sit down and write his book. Just take a look at the video of Habsheim flypast. A320 makes slow and dirty flypast, at around 50ft, over surface that's everything except suitable for landing and has trees on its end! It's like playing russian rulette with all chambers full and hoping for bullet to go dud! Of course, when things go wrong, it's freshly certified airplane's fault and not his. There are reasons for doing low and slow flypast with gear down, over runway suitable for your airplane, be it F-15, B737 or super-cub. First, low flypast is purely visual manuevre, you don't have time to check radalt and baroalt is too insensitive to be of any use. Runway also provides you with good height cues. Second, in case you get it wrong, you might get away with touch and go and climb away. Third, no obstacles on and around runway reduces chances of hitting anything solid if your height maintaining discipline is lacking. There is possibility that engines were slow to spool up, that A/THR was unservicable, even that baroalts were misreading but these are irellevant for the flight that was executed poorly and ended in disaster. I'll stop short of calling captain Asseline any derogatory term, I'll say that the fact that two trainning captains didn't recognise their manuever as potentially dangerous isn't stupid, it's tragic! Also it speaks volumes about systemic deficencies in both airline and DGAC. But then, PNF uttered the name of their safety pilot twice, as he was obviously uncomfortable with his PF's handling of flight but didn't stop him. I guess he thought that while what they were doing was dangerous, they would live through it. And they did, unlike 3 of their pax.

I'm not entirely convinced that there was conspiracy to cover up airplane defects. If there was one, then it might have more to do with covering capt Asseline's first part of prenom. As for cutting down trees to cover up evidence of engine stall - that's mightily streched. Could it be possible that locals cut them in anticipation of further AF flybys?

Along comes Norbert Jacques, B747 pilot, who knows disturbing things about Airbus, which he doesn't want to reveal as they'd be too much to swallow and afterwards accuses European court of human rights with conspiring with Airbus industrie. What d'ya call the person who is in possession of flight safety critical information, but refuses to share it? Crackpot doesn't cut it, provided that you hold his claims to be true.

XetroV, I hope you were vrong too, when you mentioned that even professionals can get fooled. I'd say that aerospace professionals participating in PPRuNE tend to fill out their additional info with at least some of their biographies. Posers, pretenders, flamers and other trolls tend to leave all fields except mandatory ones blank.

I don't say that this works all the time, but it did help me with better understanding of this thread.

[Gretchenfrage]

Some interesting arguments. However:
1. Every pilot WILL eventually screw up something at some time.
2. Any aircraft that does not lift it's nose when the pilots pulls, that does not deliver thrust when the pilot slams the throttles IS a screw up.
It's as simple as that

[Ignition Override]

Clandestino:

You asked, what do you call a person who refuses to share critical flight safety information?

Another answer, 'allegedly', could easily be our friends with the US FAA Aircraft Certification Branch, if that is the correct title. They 'allegedly' have access to many types of aircraft incident reports from other countries, to which US citizens have very limited access.

Some aircraft accident websites have no information listed as the primary cause of the accident/incident.

This might be a bit unrelated, but the US Department of Transportation, according to an article years ago in "Conde Naste Traveler" magazine, was under major pressure from the State Department when deciding whether a given foreign airline would be allowed to operate into a US airport.

[the shrimp]

Well, well...

"paranoia", "crackpot", "little bird and dung"...

But we haven't read any answer to the commonsense questions which have been asked:

- About false pilot licenses. Is France a banana republic? Could a banana republic build aircrafts worthy of the name? ( to recall: http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...16#post3000016 ).

- About the flight recorders of the Airbus in Habsheim ( to recall: http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...64#post3005064 ).

- Was Bernard Ziegler the right man to conceive the Airbus cockpits? (Bernard Ziegler, father of the “Airbus technology”, cut a teleferic cable with his plane in 1961 ( to recall: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...872735,00.html ).

A few documents are getting translated on the Airbus defects that caused crashes, pointed out by Norbert Jacquet, and will be presented on this forum later on. Work in progress.

[Clandestino]

Originally Posted by Gretchenfrage

Any aircraft that does not lift it's nose when the pilots pulls, that does not deliver thrust when the pilot slams the throttles IS a screw up.
It's as simple as that

Dear Gretchenfrage, for a fellow who claims to have flown Airbus, Boeing and MDD, you surely display suprisingly massive misunderstanding of 1) flying near AoAcrit 2) concept of spool up time. CFM-65s at Habsheim made it from flight idle to 84% N1 5secs after selecting TOGA and that's fast for high bypass turbofan, but as the stage was set by lack of speed and altitude (which summed give energy) it wasn't enough.

Also you forgot to include some details about yourself in your public profile.

[the shrimp]

Originally Posted by Clandestino

... CFM-65s at Habsheim made it from flight idle to 84% N1 5secs after selecting TOGA ...

Where did you find these values?

The French authorities always refused to publish the official report on Internet. We know the reason of that.

[J.O.]

Originally Posted by the shrimp

The French authorities always refused to publish the official report on Internet. We know the reason of that.

Maybe they just wanted to give you conspiracy theorists something to do!

[the shrimp]

Originally Posted by J.O.

Maybe they just wanted to give you conspiracy theorists something to do!

May be, may be...

But... If they did it for this reason, they are really idiots. Hmmm?

Is it what you want to mean?

[Max Angle]

Any aircraft that does not lift it's nose when the pilots pulls, that does not deliver thrust when the pilot slams the throttles IS a screw up.

Or was doing what it's makers intended and preventing the pilot from stalling the aircraft. Any jet aircraft at <100ft, thrust levers at idle, the airspeed low and decaying with an obstacle ahead is going to be in trouble. A conventional aircraft would almost certainly have been stalled as the pilot pulled back on the stick, as it was the aircraft mushed into the trees still flying, with the wings level and a relatively low rate of descent which is maybe why there was not a far greater loss of life.

[Lemurian]

I am glad there is some sense in this thread.
As a few of you have already started, the very first reason for this crash is reckless flying . Putting it another way :
"One pilot decided, with an airplane and joy riding passengers and a few hired on the spot qualified FAs to demonstrate a very low pass over the ield used by a local flying club. He then took that airplane, with engines at idle thrust,at an increasing AoA and a decreasing IAS to a very low height, far below what was the floor for low altitude demonstration. With that sort of very low energy situation AND the very unusual view from the cockpit, his SA, to say the least was impaired, he cocked it up end ended in the trees.
Please note that there is no mention of the airplane's brand, so far.
What is more, and now we come to the 320 : A feature that has been commonly overlooked was that the auto=thrust (and therefore the AoA protection ) had been disconnected by the pilot himself, whether consciously or not has never been established (but it requires a continuous 15 seconds of pressure of a button to achieve it).
The second evidence of that accident was the complete self-assuredness of the pilot, down to the flippancy of the ("XXX will have a H@rd-on over this...")

I briefly met Mr A in Colombo in 1989, as I was having a line-check with a retiring captain...I was busy with the flight preparation but I overheard some of his comments, which were pretty graphic, believe me. When he left the cockpit as we were about to take the passengers, the captain just made this comment that stuck in my memory :
"for someone who should have the deaths of several people on his conscience, he is bloody arrogant, that man..."

I apologise for my previous post, very provocative because I thought norbert Jacquet was hiding under some of the pseudos.
I still believe he is, as he is well-known to do that, especially on a French forum that has been completely polluted by this argument.
So, from these apologists of a conspiration, why not post EXACTLY how NJ lost his job, as it involves AF, the DGCA medical council, the police/gendarmerie,some psychiatrists ....list is by no means ended. What is missing, though is the use of polonium !

Regards to all

[FougaMagister]

Originally Posted by Lemurian

I am glad there is some sense in this thread. As a few of you have already started, the very first reason for this crash is reckless flying (...) The second evidence of that accident was the complete self-assuredness of the pilot, down to the flippancy of the ("XXX will have a H@rd-on over this...") (...) "for someone who should have the deaths of several people on his conscience, he is bloody arrogant, that man..."

My thoughts exactly. What Michel Asseline has managed to do over the years is to create a smoke screen and muddle up the issue so much that most people (even those with a decent knowledge of the accident investigation) may end up suspecting some conspiracy to protect a supposedly unsafe European (not just French) design.

For those who don't want to delve into the BEA's accident report and the judicial inquiry, watching the footage is enough of a hint; M. Asseline attempts a low-level, low-speed, low-energy flyby (with PAX - including disabled - onboard!) and screws up. Whatever happened to rule 5 (no flying below 500' except in the take-off/landing phases of flight)? His reckless showmanship is something I probably wouldn't even have tried on a PA-28. His "H@rd-on" comment on the CVR is also well documented.

Of course (as on every aircraft) there may well be some design flaws in the Airbus FBW series. But looking for them in the Mulhouse-Habsheim crash is the wrong place to start. I agree with Clandestino and Lemurian's posts.

Cheers

[Gretchenfrage]

Dear Clandestino and others.
Let me give you full credit and my admiration for your superior knowledge of the AB features. At the same time accept my apologies for preferring certain manufacturers or philosophies. I believe this forum should still be able to bear some rants, not only professorial comments.
Having said that, and in that particular contribution having NOT mentioned any specific manufacturer, I still stand by my comment:
Any aircraft that does not lift it's nose when the pilots pulls, that does not deliver thrust when the pilot slams the throttles IS a screw up.
As long as some official reports are dubious on these things, such criticism will prevail.
GF

[J.O.]

Originally Posted by Gretchenfrage

Dear Clandestino and others.
Let me give you full credit and my admiration for your superior knowledge of the AB features. At the same time accept my apologies for preferring certain manufacturers or philosophies. I believe this forum should still be able to bear some rants, not only professorial comments.
Having said that, and in that particular contribution having NOT mentioned any specific manufacturer, I still stand by my comment:
Any aircraft that does not lift it's nose when the pilots pulls, that does not deliver thrust when the pilot slams the throttles IS a screw up.
As long as some official reports are dubious on these things, such criticism will prevail.
GF

You seem awfully sure of yourself. I don't suppose you'd be willing to try to repeat the Habsheim flight in one of your preferred aircraft (such as a B737NG), now would you? If you really repeated it, you would suffer the same (or an even worse) fate. Pulling back the stick and slamming the throttles forward in a very low energy flight regime in a turbofan powered airplane will almost certainly result in a stall, or a rapidly increasing sink rate from which you can't recover when you're at 50 ft. You're entitled to an opinion, but not to your own facts.

[Clandestino]

My data is from Aviation safety network's excerpt. Their sources are listed at the end of the article. CVR transcript is interesting too. And I stand corrected; it wasn't 84%, it was mere 83% of N1 @ first tree contact.