AF447 wreckage found
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Learner 001 - I've flown round dials to full glass. Obviously FMC's and EGPWS are light years beyond the 727 for situational awareness. But nothing is as fast for a basic instrument scan as an altimeter pointing at 12 o'clock and the VSI at 9 o'clock. Instant awareness of your altitude and sink rate.
IMO the tape display, while nice with the low and high speed buffet tapes on the airspeed, cannot compare to the rapid awareness you have with round dials and moving needles.
IMO the tape display, while nice with the low and high speed buffet tapes on the airspeed, cannot compare to the rapid awareness you have with round dials and moving needles.
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CB or no CB
For the umpteenth time, there is no evidence the crew flew through a Cb. In fact, based on the last BEA report, the crew knew very well what was coming,weather-wise as they turned to avoid and briefed the cabin crew.
I concur with woody; I have seen 13000 hour veterans with only 600 hours on type happily flying in vicinity of odd shaped hooked weather radar returns simply because they had plotted a course in the clear a few miles downwind of such a return. Oh, those wonders who were produced fast track through jade cargo, air china cargo, jal express, polar etc then go around blaming everything else for the bone rattling shake they get.
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Tell me one thing :
Loss of airspeed indication happened several if not a lot of times before without a loss of aircraft. Why this time ?
The Air Caraïbe incident wasn't exactly a walk in the park, nor the Northwest one.
I doubt AF will ever bother to find this crew and ask them how they did it. After all, it's all in a very comprehensive paper they wrote that nobdy bothered reading until......It then almost turned to the New York Times best seller.
Training ? A lot has been said about this. Every aircraft I trained on I had to go through the Loss of Airspeed syllabus.
Awareness is what it's about. It's been said above by an Aussie 330 pilot who's airline had several incidents of the same kind before 447 ever happened.
1/ Keeps out of the weather
2/ Memorizes pitch and thrust
3/ Briefs F/O and S/O
4/.....could have been 1/ Stays with his bumm in his seat when bad weather forecasted because he knows this is exactly the kind of spot you are likely to lose your speed indication.
And this Ladies and Gents gives you................Qantas.
These guys get the same kind of training major airlines get and yet everything they've had to deal with in the last 3 years was totally out of the ordinary and they dealt with it superbly.
So why is that ? I would say compagny culture, personal ethic and discipline added to a long history of phenomenal track record.
Loss of airspeed indication happened several if not a lot of times before without a loss of aircraft. Why this time ?
The Air Caraïbe incident wasn't exactly a walk in the park, nor the Northwest one.
I doubt AF will ever bother to find this crew and ask them how they did it. After all, it's all in a very comprehensive paper they wrote that nobdy bothered reading until......It then almost turned to the New York Times best seller.
Training ? A lot has been said about this. Every aircraft I trained on I had to go through the Loss of Airspeed syllabus.
Awareness is what it's about. It's been said above by an Aussie 330 pilot who's airline had several incidents of the same kind before 447 ever happened.
1/ Keeps out of the weather
2/ Memorizes pitch and thrust
3/ Briefs F/O and S/O
4/.....could have been 1/ Stays with his bumm in his seat when bad weather forecasted because he knows this is exactly the kind of spot you are likely to lose your speed indication.
And this Ladies and Gents gives you................Qantas.
These guys get the same kind of training major airlines get and yet everything they've had to deal with in the last 3 years was totally out of the ordinary and they dealt with it superbly.
So why is that ? I would say compagny culture, personal ethic and discipline added to a long history of phenomenal track record.
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misd-agin: But nothing is as fast for a basic instrument scan as an altimeter pointing at 12 o'clock and the VSI at 9 o'clock. Instant awareness of your altitude and sink rate.
Kind regards, learner . . .
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Flight through CBs
Capt Bloggs
I take it you haven't seen the satellite photo with the flight path superimposed on It. It shows the extent of the storm system with the route going through the cells. Can you explain to us all just why the A330 went out of control after entering the system? Why did the F/O make a call to the F/As advising them of turbulence ? There are none so blind as those who will not see. Why would the plane go out of control if it hadn't been close to the coffin corner in turbulence? Why would all the ASIs stop working simultaneously and all those warnings begin (some of them false) if there was no supercooled water in the CBs to cause icing of the pitots? Please answer these questions for us.
I take it you haven't seen the satellite photo with the flight path superimposed on It. It shows the extent of the storm system with the route going through the cells. Can you explain to us all just why the A330 went out of control after entering the system? Why did the F/O make a call to the F/As advising them of turbulence ? There are none so blind as those who will not see. Why would the plane go out of control if it hadn't been close to the coffin corner in turbulence? Why would all the ASIs stop working simultaneously and all those warnings begin (some of them false) if there was no supercooled water in the CBs to cause icing of the pitots? Please answer these questions for us.
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I'm not a pilot but just looking logically at the known facts, when descending at 10K fpm at TOGA with the pitch and attitude data available, AND Stall warnings fed from the latter, how could they conclude other than that they were already in a stall? (If it walks like duck......)Were they trying to "Pitch and Power" through the weather with the lack of airspeed data when already in a stall?
Last edited by philipat; 30th May 2011 at 03:58.
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VSI
+/- 0-6K fpm is the typical VSI range on the steam gauges. What is max displayed on AI EFIS? Could the VSI display have flagged or just disappeared, due to out of limit input of 10K and more?
Just asking.
Just asking.
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Push up, push down
Correct me if my question makes no sense. I noticed in the BEA report that is says the PF mostly pushed up. But it did show that he also tried pushing down. The plane was responsive, apparently, so shouldn't that have improved the situation.
It would appear that the PF thought pushing down wasn't improving the situation. Or he wouldn't have gone back to pushing up. Shouldn't pushing down have improved the situation? And shouldn't something have told the PF that it was improving the situation?
It would appear that the PF thought pushing down wasn't improving the situation. Or he wouldn't have gone back to pushing up. Shouldn't pushing down have improved the situation? And shouldn't something have told the PF that it was improving the situation?
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Stall warnings
I've noticed different explanations about stall warnings here. So I wonder --- I don't know --- if that's a serious cause of confusion.
One place said the stall warning sounds once and then stops even though the plane is still stalled.
One place I saw it said when the stall ends, the stall warning repeats unchanged. (NOT saying "Stall ended".)
If all that is so, what if some part of the flight computer detects a new/second stall before the first stall ends?
If the warnings are the same, the pilot has to keep count of whether the number of warnings is odd or even.
Another post referred to stall warnings becoming continuous. But that's not how the other posts describe it.
One place said the stall warning sounds once and then stops even though the plane is still stalled.
One place I saw it said when the stall ends, the stall warning repeats unchanged. (NOT saying "Stall ended".)
If all that is so, what if some part of the flight computer detects a new/second stall before the first stall ends?
If the warnings are the same, the pilot has to keep count of whether the number of warnings is odd or even.
Another post referred to stall warnings becoming continuous. But that's not how the other posts describe it.
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Weeks back, someone posted a website which showed the tracks of the many flights headed across the South Atlantic that night and every one of them deviated as they came through heavy weather EXCEPT for AF447. It shot straight through into the brightest red weather without so much as the slightest turn.
I can't get the link I have top work but the plot was from a bea.com trajectory plot sometime around April 6th.
I can't get the link I have top work but the plot was from a bea.com trajectory plot sometime around April 6th.
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"Why the .... did the stupid automation silence the stall horn ? "A great question. The systems silenced it because the IAS fell below 60 kts for a time. This caused the FWC (Flight Warning Computer) to silence the STALL warning."
From reading all the various posts, I conclude this is the ultimate cause of the crash because it misled the pilots.
Wouldn't a quick check by the flight computer have shown the plane was not on the runway but in the air? That should have been done.
From reading all the various posts, I conclude this is the ultimate cause of the crash because it misled the pilots.
Wouldn't a quick check by the flight computer have shown the plane was not on the runway but in the air? That should have been done.
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Originally Posted by thermostat
I take it you haven't seen the satellite photo with the flight path superimposed on It. It shows the extent of the storm system with the route going through the cells. Can you explain to us all just why the A330 went out of control after entering the system? Why did the F/O make a call to the F/As advising them of turbulence ? There are none so blind as those who will not see. Why would the plane go out of control if it hadn't been close to the coffin corner in turbulence? Why would all the ASIs stop working simultaneously and all those warnings begin (some of them false) if there was no supercooled water in the CBs to cause icing of the pitots? Please answer these questions for us.
In the meantime it is good airmanship to advise the back crew that we may well still encounter some turbulence.
AF447 was nowhere close to the coffin corner. According to the QRH table it was actually around 1500ft below the optimum.
The issue is not supercooled water but more probably ice crystals.
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Dart your eyes rapidly in a random fashion through the following list and call out the COLOUR of the word:
GREEN
BLUE
RED
ORANGE
YELLOW
I think this is a good example of cognitive dissonance, and illustrates that the human brain is not always that great at resolving conflicting information. Try the same exercise at night in turbulence when you are tired and jetlagged with a plethora of warnings and aurals going off - there but for the grace....
GREEN
BLUE
RED
ORANGE
YELLOW
I think this is a good example of cognitive dissonance, and illustrates that the human brain is not always that great at resolving conflicting information. Try the same exercise at night in turbulence when you are tired and jetlagged with a plethora of warnings and aurals going off - there but for the grace....
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Maintaining the previous configuration, should maintain the airspeed.
Seems to me if you're at cruise altitude and speed on both AP and AT, then suddenly you loose IAS and both the AP and AT disconnect, you might realize that you're already in the correct configuration at that point. The AT disconnect will leave the engines at the correct power setting they were at, so just maintain wings level, maintain the same altitude, and maintain heading. This would probably work even with moderate ice accumulation (since the AP and AT would have already made this configuration flyable). If the AP disconnect causes an airframe movement, correct it back to the same altitude, heading, and wings level. Once the AP disconnect and hand flying is stabilized, then smoothly transition to the pitch/power settings. Even if turbulence causes you to continually focus on maintaining altitude, heading and wings level, thus preventing you from transitioning to the memorized pitch/power settings, you should still be in pretty good shape while you sort it out, by maintaining the previous configuration.
All of the above assumes of course that you can hand fly the airplane at high altitude. Perhaps the PF did not have a good feel for hand flying the A330 at altitude (maybe why he gave the controls up later?), especially with moderate turbulence taking place.
The sad thing is, if the PF had just stayed put after the AP and AT disconnected, he would have gotten IAS back in about a minute, and this would have been an incident report rather than an accident. However, then there would have been steps and procedures for systems recovery after IAS return, which would have been a whole other set of problems.
Seems to me if you're at cruise altitude and speed on both AP and AT, then suddenly you loose IAS and both the AP and AT disconnect, you might realize that you're already in the correct configuration at that point. The AT disconnect will leave the engines at the correct power setting they were at, so just maintain wings level, maintain the same altitude, and maintain heading. This would probably work even with moderate ice accumulation (since the AP and AT would have already made this configuration flyable). If the AP disconnect causes an airframe movement, correct it back to the same altitude, heading, and wings level. Once the AP disconnect and hand flying is stabilized, then smoothly transition to the pitch/power settings. Even if turbulence causes you to continually focus on maintaining altitude, heading and wings level, thus preventing you from transitioning to the memorized pitch/power settings, you should still be in pretty good shape while you sort it out, by maintaining the previous configuration.
All of the above assumes of course that you can hand fly the airplane at high altitude. Perhaps the PF did not have a good feel for hand flying the A330 at altitude (maybe why he gave the controls up later?), especially with moderate turbulence taking place.
The sad thing is, if the PF had just stayed put after the AP and AT disconnected, he would have gotten IAS back in about a minute, and this would have been an incident report rather than an accident. However, then there would have been steps and procedures for systems recovery after IAS return, which would have been a whole other set of problems.
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stall warning deactivated at below 60 kts?
I fail to understand why the stall warning had to deactivate at below 60kts. Wasn't there a ground mode/air mode logic on this wonder bus?
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Captain
I saw a reference in one post to a "panicked Captain shouting commands".
Maybe I missed it, but the transcript I read didn't mention the Captain saying anything. From which I assumed he thought he didn't have any good instructions to give the PF or PNF coopilots.
Maybe I missed it, but the transcript I read didn't mention the Captain saying anything. From which I assumed he thought he didn't have any good instructions to give the PF or PNF coopilots.