AF447
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Stall warning calculation
RE: vapilot2004 #3782
That is rather vague. Can you be more specific? How would the SW AoA be affected by erroneous airspeed?
Added in reedit: Quote from ACA memo:
regards,
HN39
In alternate law, the speed becomes part of the threshold calculation along with AOA information.
Added in reedit: Quote from ACA memo:
En effet, dans sa partie développée en 3.02.34 page 17, celle-ci stipule «RELY ON THE STALL WARNING THAT COULD BE TRIGGERED IN ALTERNATE OR DIRECT LAW. IT IS NOT AFFECTED BY UNRELIABLE SPEEDS, BECAUSE IT IS BASED ON ANGLE OF ATTACK ».
HN39
Last edited by HazelNuts39; 23rd Jul 2009 at 09:49. Reason: Quotation from ACA added
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Reality check for civil simulators
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French pilots call for more safety with Air France
Four french pilot unions wrote a letter to AF CEO Gourgeon, relate to AF447, and call for more safety.
Frankreich: Piloten-Gewerkschaften kritisieren Air France | tagesschau.de
Nach Flugzeugabsturz: Air-France-Führung gerät zunehmend unter Druck | ZEIT ONLINE
Frankreich: Piloten-Gewerkschaften kritisieren Air France | tagesschau.de
Nach Flugzeugabsturz: Air-France-Führung gerät zunehmend unter Druck | ZEIT ONLINE
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Newspaper article in the french press today:
"AF 447 : The pilots demand safety measures"
"A letter addressed to the boss of Air France by four pilot unions demands an improvement in the safety of the company."
I haven't the time to translate it all, but their key damands are:
- Re-organisation to create a new job of "Head of Flight Safety" reporting directly to the boss of AF;
- Pitot tube maintenance regime to be increased to every 6 months rather than every 18 months as is currently the case;
- Specific simulator sessions for pilots covering actions to take in the event of IAS failure.
Pretty clear what they think happened.....
Le Figaro - France : AF 447*: les pilotes exigent des mesures pour la sécurité
"AF 447 : The pilots demand safety measures"
"A letter addressed to the boss of Air France by four pilot unions demands an improvement in the safety of the company."
I haven't the time to translate it all, but their key damands are:
- Re-organisation to create a new job of "Head of Flight Safety" reporting directly to the boss of AF;
- Pitot tube maintenance regime to be increased to every 6 months rather than every 18 months as is currently the case;
- Specific simulator sessions for pilots covering actions to take in the event of IAS failure.
Pretty clear what they think happened.....
Le Figaro - France : AF 447*: les pilotes exigent des mesures pour la sécurité
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Pitot tube maintenance
Porker1 wrote:
Pitot tube maintenance regime to be increased to every 6 months rather than every 18 months as is currently the case;
I'm somewhat baffled by this whole pitot tube maintenance issue. I'm sure one of you professionals will set me straight though.
If the pitot probes are that critical of a component, with several other systems relying
on the pitot system input/output, it would seem to me that even 6 months is pushing it.
I don't know where I read it but allegedly the pitot probes on some aircraft were discovered with a bee's nest in it. And I don't think it takes that much time for a bunch of bees to construct a nest.
Is it that difficult or time-consuming to, say, check the pitot system before each flight? Or is it just not that simple?
Thanks in advance
Pitot tube maintenance regime to be increased to every 6 months rather than every 18 months as is currently the case;
I'm somewhat baffled by this whole pitot tube maintenance issue. I'm sure one of you professionals will set me straight though.
If the pitot probes are that critical of a component, with several other systems relying
on the pitot system input/output, it would seem to me that even 6 months is pushing it.
I don't know where I read it but allegedly the pitot probes on some aircraft were discovered with a bee's nest in it. And I don't think it takes that much time for a bunch of bees to construct a nest.
Is it that difficult or time-consuming to, say, check the pitot system before each flight? Or is it just not that simple?
Thanks in advance
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Wouldn't it be possible to build in a system that continuously checks for blockages? Perhaps by applying pulses of compressed air to each one in turn and looking at the way the pressure spikes up.
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I haven't the time to translate it all, but their key damands are:
- Re-organisation to create a new job of "Head of Flight Safety" reporting directly to the boss of AF;
- Pitot tube maintenance regime to be increased to every 6 months rather than every 18 months as is currently the case;
- Specific simulator sessions for pilots covering actions to take in the event of IAS failure.
Pretty clear what they think happened.....
- Re-organisation to create a new job of "Head of Flight Safety" reporting directly to the boss of AF;
- Pitot tube maintenance regime to be increased to every 6 months rather than every 18 months as is currently the case;
- Specific simulator sessions for pilots covering actions to take in the event of IAS failure.
Pretty clear what they think happened.....
Jeff
Last edited by Hyperveloce; 23rd Jul 2009 at 16:55.
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Slight thread drift... A French Oceanographic Research Vessel has 'mapped' the Yemeni Airbus crash site, and 'pinpointed' (their words) the recorders. They were at a depth unreachable by divers. Another French Research Vessel with an ROV was enroute to retrieve the boxes.
OK, so I do know that there is a 'search' for the boxes in the Atlantic, there were no details about the depths in the Indian Ocean that were 'mapped', but this gives some small hope, despite the enormity of the search area scale differences.
OK, so I do know that there is a 'search' for the boxes in the Atlantic, there were no details about the depths in the Indian Ocean that were 'mapped', but this gives some small hope, despite the enormity of the search area scale differences.
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Underwater searches
File:AF447SeaBottom.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
from its deepest areas (~ -5200m) to the underwater relief peaks (~ -800m), this seabed can be seen as the Alps moutain chain (underwater): it would probably be an easier search if this seabed were an underwater Altiplano. so they have to do with this very difficult bathymetry.
Jeff
PS) Flight SA295's black boxes recovered at a 16 000 ft depth:
Blank Design page
Extract Watts Book Re CVRs
from its deepest areas (~ -5200m) to the underwater relief peaks (~ -800m), this seabed can be seen as the Alps moutain chain (underwater): it would probably be an easier search if this seabed were an underwater Altiplano. so they have to do with this very difficult bathymetry.
Jeff
PS) Flight SA295's black boxes recovered at a 16 000 ft depth:
Blank Design page
Extract Watts Book Re CVRs
Last edited by Hyperveloce; 23rd Jul 2009 at 20:18. Reason: Post-Scriptum - references for high depth recovery of BB
Porker1;
This is a very revealing and important "demand".
Very often, and certainly in organizations which exhibit a high degree of structural and communications dysfunction, the Chief of Flight Safety, (generic title, indicating the boss of flight safety) of an airline reports only to the Chief of Flight Operations, (generic title, pointing to the boss of flight operations).
While it would seem logical for those not in the industry to have the safety guy reporting to the operations guy so he or she knows whats going on, the operations leaders' primary goal is cost control and running the business, not safety. Because of the conflict of interest between the safety guy and the operations guy's positions, the CEO or whoever is in charge then gets filtered safety information because safety costs and isn't a profit center for the corporation while controlling costs always gets atta-boys and banana-pellets from the CEO or whatever. So the guy in charge of the whole organization doesn't really know what's going on because "bad news" never travels up to the top in such an arrangement. Unless the leader is a safety guy him/herself and actually understands how to do safety and what it takes to do it right, ignorance, or, rather, plausible deniability, is bliss and it works, because most of the time "nothing" happens the operations people can rest on their "success", and point to the notion of "accident" (which mean "an occurrence that was not preventable and that happens once in a while") to excuse the organization.
This is very simplified I know but many of us have lived inside this kind of organizational dysfunction (which I would term "intentional" because these are not, by and large, stupid people who run the show), long enough to smell it when it's there. So the French pilots aren't off the mark in this.
Originally Posted by From the article
- Re-organisation to create a new job of "Head of Flight Safety" reporting directly to the boss of AF;
Very often, and certainly in organizations which exhibit a high degree of structural and communications dysfunction, the Chief of Flight Safety, (generic title, indicating the boss of flight safety) of an airline reports only to the Chief of Flight Operations, (generic title, pointing to the boss of flight operations).
While it would seem logical for those not in the industry to have the safety guy reporting to the operations guy so he or she knows whats going on, the operations leaders' primary goal is cost control and running the business, not safety. Because of the conflict of interest between the safety guy and the operations guy's positions, the CEO or whoever is in charge then gets filtered safety information because safety costs and isn't a profit center for the corporation while controlling costs always gets atta-boys and banana-pellets from the CEO or whatever. So the guy in charge of the whole organization doesn't really know what's going on because "bad news" never travels up to the top in such an arrangement. Unless the leader is a safety guy him/herself and actually understands how to do safety and what it takes to do it right, ignorance, or, rather, plausible deniability, is bliss and it works, because most of the time "nothing" happens the operations people can rest on their "success", and point to the notion of "accident" (which mean "an occurrence that was not preventable and that happens once in a while") to excuse the organization.
This is very simplified I know but many of us have lived inside this kind of organizational dysfunction (which I would term "intentional" because these are not, by and large, stupid people who run the show), long enough to smell it when it's there. So the French pilots aren't off the mark in this.
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PJ2. Interesting. As an outsider - SLF - I would never think that someone in charge of Safety would report to anyone having anything to do with Operations. I am appalled that this is not seemingly the case.
You say the two positions are mutually exclusive due, mainly, to the fact that Operations also has to control costs. But if safety takes a hit doesn't that eventually affect the "bottom line", costs and , indirectly, Operations?
It would seem to me anyway that all divisions of Safety within an airline organization should report directly to the CEO. Makes sense to me anyway. And eliminates the possibility of any filters being applied to safety reports.
You say the two positions are mutually exclusive due, mainly, to the fact that Operations also has to control costs. But if safety takes a hit doesn't that eventually affect the "bottom line", costs and , indirectly, Operations?
It would seem to me anyway that all divisions of Safety within an airline organization should report directly to the CEO. Makes sense to me anyway. And eliminates the possibility of any filters being applied to safety reports.
Last edited by rgbrock1; 23rd Jul 2009 at 19:02.
Newspaper article in the french press today:
"AF 447 : The pilots demand safety measures"
"A letter addressed to the boss of Air France by four pilot unions demands an improvement in the safety of the company."
I haven't the time to translate it all, but their key damands are:
- Re-organisation to create a new job of "Head of Flight Safety" reporting directly to the boss of AF;
- Pitot tube maintenance regime to be increased to every 6 months rather than every 18 months as is currently the case;
- Specific simulator sessions for pilots covering actions to take in the event of IAS failure.
Pretty clear what they think happened.....
Le Figaro - France : AF 447*: les pilotes exigent des mesures pour la sécurité
"AF 447 : The pilots demand safety measures"
"A letter addressed to the boss of Air France by four pilot unions demands an improvement in the safety of the company."
I haven't the time to translate it all, but their key damands are:
- Re-organisation to create a new job of "Head of Flight Safety" reporting directly to the boss of AF;
- Pitot tube maintenance regime to be increased to every 6 months rather than every 18 months as is currently the case;
- Specific simulator sessions for pilots covering actions to take in the event of IAS failure.
Pretty clear what they think happened.....
Le Figaro - France : AF 447*: les pilotes exigent des mesures pour la sécurité
Wow. This means that currently, there are no specific training session involving IAS failures ? Is it specific to Air France ? Haven't we had Pitots problems, corrupted IAS and confusing behaviours of the automated systems for several decenies now ? and several incidents/accidents due to these corrupted airspeeds ?
Jeff
Jeff
http://www.eurocockpit.com/docs/ACA.pdf
Here's an extract of the final section, on pp 12 and 13. Although it's talking about checklist contradictions and difficulties, I guess it would, by extension, apply to sim. training.
AGB
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AGBagb, During this meeting in Toulouse, it was agreed that Airbus would modify the check-lists/procedures about unreliable airspeeds situations, but nothing is said about the regular training sessions in simulators. By "by extension", you mean that these inconsistencies in the procedures of interest would never have been discovered in flight by the Air Caraïbe crew if these procedures had been simulated before on ground in any air transportation company ? Jeff
Jeff,
Never say never! You're right that there's no mention of relevant sim training (at all, in the whole doc.) and therefore one way of reading the report is that the crew were, to say the least, surprised at both the actual events in the cockpit, and the contradiction in the checklists: ie, sim training had never produced this particular sequence and alerted folks to the puzzle. On the other hand, earlier in the report (and alluded to in the last bit of the extract) is that the crew pretty much instantly knew that the STALL warning was wrong - which might suggest that the circumstance had been encountered in some form previously... Difficult to guess.
But I'm in danger of expressing views beyong my knowledge here (I'm no pilot.....). I do think that the Air Caraibe report makes for very interesting reading though, for something that came rapidly close to getting away from the flight crew (ie, if they had not rejected the STALL warnings...).
AGB
Never say never! You're right that there's no mention of relevant sim training (at all, in the whole doc.) and therefore one way of reading the report is that the crew were, to say the least, surprised at both the actual events in the cockpit, and the contradiction in the checklists: ie, sim training had never produced this particular sequence and alerted folks to the puzzle. On the other hand, earlier in the report (and alluded to in the last bit of the extract) is that the crew pretty much instantly knew that the STALL warning was wrong - which might suggest that the circumstance had been encountered in some form previously... Difficult to guess.
But I'm in danger of expressing views beyong my knowledge here (I'm no pilot.....). I do think that the Air Caraibe report makes for very interesting reading though, for something that came rapidly close to getting away from the flight crew (ie, if they had not rejected the STALL warnings...).
AGB
rgbrock1;
Ops is concerned with daily costs and the longer-term operational priorities are driven by the bottom line, with an eye to safety but not a wholesale focus. The reporting structure described is the way many major carriers work and data and information "filtration" is a real factor in the knowledge base of the airline's executive leadership. I have seen this first-hand and know it to be true, even today, right now. Corporations are run on "good news" to keep the share price bolstered among many reasons, and bad news tends to contaminate the messenger who, after all, may have his/her own ambitions to rise in the bureaucracy.
These are largely latent factors in any organization and can be readily found and are as repeatable today as they were when the Challenger accident occurred in 1986. This is one area where organizational learning does not occur, simply because safety costs money and, but for rare instances, does not protect profit or shareprice.
The reliance is on the robustness of present systems which is not altogether a bad thing; such things as hiring policies, fuel and dispatch policies, enforcement of SOPs, dispatch flight watch/communications, an industry-standard safety reporting policy, (no discipline except in cases of negligence or egregious/intentional acts) and the use of collected safety information all contribute to a level of safety but two factors have been at work for some time now: the introduction of SMS, and the tremendous financial pressure all airlines are under, ostensibly since 2001 and certainly since October, 2008.
These factors will tend to compromise some systemic responses, will tend to atrophe communications on safety matters, will tend to cause "the safety message" to be suppressed because it is expensive and cannot in and of itself be "proven" to make an immediate, material difference, (so deferal is often the solution) and the CEO who is likely a non-aviation person from the outside or if from the industry will be a marketing specialist, etc is almost always fundamentally ignorant of flight safety work, what makes an airline safe or what programs can be of best long-term value and are worth supporting even if they point out the shortcomings of an operation.
There is a lot of ego involved in this and no one likes to show up at corporate safety board meetings and get his/her department pointed at with blunt data...so the "message" is suppressed, denied or ignored as "new fires" arise each day which need the time, attention and energy of a very thin management staff.
These are the principles in a nutshell. They are standard fare for anyone doing safety work and are the source of frustration to same because we can see where an accident is going to occur but we can't be specific as to when/how/why/what and that is the basis upon which safety work is dismissed.
The other reason is complexity - very, very few managers today are capable of dealing in complex understandings or systems outside of a narrow, highly-specialized area of knowledge or skill. Thus, the best attempts to communicate safety information must necessarily be dumbed down so much that the information is essentially useless for decision-making. The two curves (comprehension and data complexity) therefore never cross.
Enough drift. These are factors observable in many carriers. I do not say it applies to any specific one.
You say the two positions are mutually exclusive due, mainly, to the fact that Operations also has to control costs. But if safety takes a hit doesn't that eventually affect the "bottom line", costs and , indirectly, Operations?
It would seem to me anyway that all divisions of Safety within an airline organization should report directly to the CEO. Makes sense to me anyway. And eliminates the possibility of any filters being applied to safety reports.
It would seem to me anyway that all divisions of Safety within an airline organization should report directly to the CEO. Makes sense to me anyway. And eliminates the possibility of any filters being applied to safety reports.
These are largely latent factors in any organization and can be readily found and are as repeatable today as they were when the Challenger accident occurred in 1986. This is one area where organizational learning does not occur, simply because safety costs money and, but for rare instances, does not protect profit or shareprice.
The reliance is on the robustness of present systems which is not altogether a bad thing; such things as hiring policies, fuel and dispatch policies, enforcement of SOPs, dispatch flight watch/communications, an industry-standard safety reporting policy, (no discipline except in cases of negligence or egregious/intentional acts) and the use of collected safety information all contribute to a level of safety but two factors have been at work for some time now: the introduction of SMS, and the tremendous financial pressure all airlines are under, ostensibly since 2001 and certainly since October, 2008.
These factors will tend to compromise some systemic responses, will tend to atrophe communications on safety matters, will tend to cause "the safety message" to be suppressed because it is expensive and cannot in and of itself be "proven" to make an immediate, material difference, (so deferal is often the solution) and the CEO who is likely a non-aviation person from the outside or if from the industry will be a marketing specialist, etc is almost always fundamentally ignorant of flight safety work, what makes an airline safe or what programs can be of best long-term value and are worth supporting even if they point out the shortcomings of an operation.
There is a lot of ego involved in this and no one likes to show up at corporate safety board meetings and get his/her department pointed at with blunt data...so the "message" is suppressed, denied or ignored as "new fires" arise each day which need the time, attention and energy of a very thin management staff.
These are the principles in a nutshell. They are standard fare for anyone doing safety work and are the source of frustration to same because we can see where an accident is going to occur but we can't be specific as to when/how/why/what and that is the basis upon which safety work is dismissed.
The other reason is complexity - very, very few managers today are capable of dealing in complex understandings or systems outside of a narrow, highly-specialized area of knowledge or skill. Thus, the best attempts to communicate safety information must necessarily be dumbed down so much that the information is essentially useless for decision-making. The two curves (comprehension and data complexity) therefore never cross.
Enough drift. These are factors observable in many carriers. I do not say it applies to any specific one.
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Wow. This means that currently, there are no specific training session involving IAS failures ? Is it specific to Air France ? Haven't we had Pitots problems, corrupted IAS and confusing behaviours of the automated systems for several decenies now ? and several incidents/accidents due to these corrupted airspeeds ?
UNRELIABLE AIRSPEED
in SIM.
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Jeff
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Do these unreliable airspeeds sims sound different stall (false) alarms at one point ? Do these sims implement "surprises" (different sequences of failures of the Pitots, static ports, whatever) or are they scenarii known in advance and prepared beforehand ?
2. More or less the scenario is based on "surprises".