Airbus crash/training flight

[The Ancient Geek]

Goldfish

Thanks for your expert comments.

How does an airline pilot become competant to conduct tests such as these ? I know that there are a few excellent schools such as ETPS Empire Test Pilots' School but they cannot produce enough qualified test pilots for all of the routine airline test work.

Is it just a case of senior captains being given the task and surviving or is there some formal best practice that should have been followed. These poor guys were thrown into the deep end of the pond and clearly did not have the experience or knowledge to cope when it went wrong.

Surely there should be rules somewhere to prevent good pilots being suckered into this kind of mess. Did you just drift into the job and learn by experience or were your formally trained before going into your testing career ?

[NigelOnDraft]

How does an airline pilot become competant to conduct tests such as these ?

See the AAIB comments on the EJ indidents: CAA Link

Surely there should be rules somewhere to prevent good pilots being suckered into this kind of mess. Did you just drift into the job and learn by experience or were your formally trained before going into your testing career ?

As above. You also need to just what you are doing, why, and as ever, say no if the answers are not clear.

NoD

[CONF iture]

HN39,
An engineer will correct me if I'm wrong but this is what I think :

As soon as the aircraft is back on the ground, the PFR (Post Flight Report) will tell that one ADR has been rejected and the report should mention the reason why that ADR has been rejected : In this case one AoA sensor was disagreeing with the 2 others. (A normal operation flight would have also triggered the rejection of one ADR) Now, it depends how far the engineer wants to investigate : He can test the system, see no fault and sign the aircraft ready for flight, or it must be possible (?) for him to extract the data of AoA sensors 1 and 2 (3 not being recorded) and analyze those data in more details ...

[heavy.airbourne]

That's how the engineers put it all those years: It's the pilots' fault if they don't recover an airplane malfunctioning. Easy!

[HazelNuts39]

CONFiture;
I deleted my post after noticing that the matter had been discussed by NoD one page back. Thanks for replying.

heavy.airbourne;
Just another bit of info from the CAA site that speaks for itself:
Check Flight Schedule 246 for A319/A320/A321 - High Incidence Protection
- Recommended FL130; Limits 10000ft AGL to FL140.
- Clearance should be obtained to operate in an altitude block of about 5000ft.

regards,
HN39

[TyroPicard]

FMA Calls?

The CVR transcript does not contain any FMA calls - presumably this was SOP in GXL.
When they put the a/c into Alternate Law there was no formal reading of ECAM message.
When USE MANUAL PITCH TRIM appeared on the PFD's, nobody read it out. And nobody read ECAM, which would have displayed a DIRECT LAW caution.

Do you see a connection between non-use of FMA and ECAM discipline as recommended by Airbus, and their failure to recover ?

[SKS777FLYER]

The read to me indicated a dire lack of professionalism, and I presume an ego driven can-do attitude on the part of the Captain. After all, he was a conveyor of type ratings on the aircraft to presumably lesser skilled (on this aircraft type) aviators than he. His apparent qualifications of flight simulator instruction and thus far, far superior system knowledge than your average lowly line pilot would certainly imbue him with astounding flying skills and decision making ability.

[overthewing]

How much of a factor would fatigue play in this? I was struck by the fact that the German pilot and co-pilot left Frankfurt at 4am. Even if the flight had taken place at 12.30 as intended, that would still have been over eight hours since making an early start. By the time of the flight, they must surely have been more than a little tired. I'm surprised they weren't put up overnight in Perpignan before the flight. Might a bit of get-home-itis have set in?

[PEI_3721]

CAA Flight Check Handbook, Section 3 page 29 onwards covers most if not all that should have been considered before and during the flight. Particularly para 4 Flight Safety; and Tech 2, para 7 Stalling and Slow Speed Checks.

A sad epitaph after the fact.

[bizdev]

Bearfoil #1380

"Legally required" was a poor choice of words on my part - what I am getting at is that I doubt whether many, if indeed any, of the tests performed on this flight were required/mandated by the maintenance manual (following maintenance) or any National Airworthiness Authority (NAA) legislation/rules when transferring the aircraft to another operator.

[Reinhardt]

One might be easily impressed by the thousands of hours of both pilots, and easily believe that they should be amongst the most quailified to perfom those "test flights" (well, I would prefer the word "acceptance flights") Such an assertion would forget too easily that a significant percentage of that flight time (!) has been spent on autopilot, or reading magazines in the cockpit, or even sleeping, not mentioning going to the toilet or chatting with the flight attendants in the galley... and there is also the time spent on the ground.
So all those impressive flight hours dont't really mean a lot, as far as acceptance flights are concerned.
Now as rightly said by Goldfish85 and Ancient Geek, there are specialised crew for those duties - even if acceptance flights are more than ususally called "test flights" - and even the recognised test pilot schools like ETPS or EPNER have dedicated courses for acceptance pilots. They usually require 6 months, against 12 months for the full course. Also the big manufacturers (Airbus at least) have in-course programs, to allow selected pilots with recognised experience, to fulfill some of those flight duties after being issued with an appropriate qualification.
In any case, there will be a test card, with points, and for each of them relevant safety parameters, altitude being of paramount importance.

And for stall approaches, there is a big idea : incremental, incremental....

[esa-aardvark]

NZ opinion....

From the NZ Dominion post, the NZ ALPA opinion on this.

Letter: The pilots weren't to blame - union | Stuff.co.nz

[mm43]

From the NZALPA letter in the above post ...

This failure was beyond the pilots' control and knowledge; additionally, it's not clear whether the accident wouldn't still have occurred had the flight manoeuvre been carried out at 14,000 feet instead of 3000ft.

The writer has only confirmed what has been discussed thoroughly in this thread, i.e. the pilots had been inadequately prepared for the "what ifs?" should something not proceed as anticipated during the demonstration of the Alpha(prot) functions. To apportion blame absolutely, or otherwise, is rather naive.

mm43

[The Ancient Geek]

But the specification that the the alpha protection test should be carried out at FL140 and not less than 10000 feet AGL should have been a big clue that failure was possible and recovery would take a lot of altitude.

Ignore the instructions at your peril.

It is entirely possible to argue that the crew were suckered into conducting a test that they were not qualified to conduct but at the end of the day the buck stops at the left seat.

The pilot error in this case was accepting the task.
Hubris - maybe. Management pressure - maybe. The buck still stops at the left seat.

[HazelNuts39]

Originally Posted by The Ancient Geek

The pilot error in this case was accepting the task.
Hubris - maybe. Management pressure - maybe. The buck still stops at the left seat.

The transfer of aircraft from one operator to another happens all the time. In the absence of a proper regulatory framework for these flights, I wonder how many of the pilots doing the acceptance flights are 'adequately prepared' for that task. Perhaps the regulators are the real culprits, not the individuals that died in this accident.

regards,
HN39

[infrequentflyer789]

Originally Posted by HazelNuts39

The transfer of aircraft from one operator to another happens all the time. In the absence of a proper regulatory framework for these flights, I wonder how many of the pilots doing the acceptance flights are 'adequately prepared' for that task. Perhaps the regulators are the real culprits, not the individuals that died in this accident.

The CAA reference (http://www.skybrary.aero/bookshelf/books/876.pdf) kindly provided previously by PEI_3721 is very informative in this regard, the stall test section on page 41 in particular. Looks to me like the conduct of this flight would have breached those regulations many times over.

But even if those regulations or similar had covered this flight, would it have made a difference ?

I am not sure - the flight was conducted based on a document obtained from the manufacturer unofficially / illicitly, and specifically not approved by them for this purpose. The crew then proceeded to completely ignore that document as regards the alpha-protection test. Would they not have just ignored regulations too in order to squeeze the test in ?

[CONF iture]

I think it is well accepted by all that the test was largely unprepared and also performed at an absolute inappropriate altitude.

Now, can we look further and analyze how the system did react to the erroneous AoA information ?
The BEA report is very poor in that perspective, it is evasive not to say secretive.
It seems the load factor played a crucial role in the different phases after the initial stall warning … Where is the load factor graph ?

The ELAC (Elevator Aileron Computer) needs AoA information in order to ensure the control of the elevator, the horizontal stabilizer and the ailerons, but, as we know it, that AoA information was erroneous, but considered as valid by the system ... What has been the consequence on the ELAC response to the pilot inputs ?

After the initial stall warning, the Capt side stick has been mainly forward for the first 10 seconds but the elevators barely reached the neutral position due to (according to the BEA) the load factor. Where is that load factor graph ???

[guiones]

The real question is what was this flight for? Transfer from one airline to another after mayor maintenance, in other words to make sure everything was working.

They must be ready for something NOT working or a failure. They were not prepared, qualified or ready for it; that is the bottom line.

Yes they had a failure, but that is exactly what they were looking for. They were not able to identify it.

During this test (and yes, it is a test); the Flight Test Engineer calculates a minimum speed that properly trained and qualified Pilots would NEVER go below because the aircraft will be outside the protection envelope and it will stall.

They put themselves in that situation, should not do that flight without proper training. Learning experience for the rest of us.

Harsh, but true.

They paid the ultimate price for their mistake, God bless them and their families.

G

[SKS777FLYER]

"They paid the ultimate price for their mistake, God bless them and their families."

Yes, the pilots paid the ultimate price for a perilous situation the Captain placed himself and the aircraft into. The poor trusting souls in the cabin, their lives snatched away from them.

[jcjeant]

Hi,

Ok .. the test was performed at a low altitude and this is a error of the pilot(s)

But .. you can't discard this from the scenario:

First, a critical failure occurred and this failure was not enunciated to the pilots.
Second, the aircraft automation safety system failed because of that critical failure.

This can happen again .. it's not belong of pilots decision or missjudgement.
This is a black point and must be fixed