Zorin_75

Linktrained,

I fully agree that some respect is called for. Though I suppose with regards to test pilot territory you're talking about unstalling a widebody going down 10000fpm at 60 deg AoA, not about keeping their plane reasonably straight and level for a minute or so? After all the former only resulted from failing at the latter...

ChristiaanJ

There are various ways to tell 'non-test-pilots' that they are entering 'test pilot territory', and test pilots lost their lives to get those boundaries established.

"Stall Stall Stall" is one, and unlike what some people here still seem to think, it's a warning about 'approach to stall', it doesn't mean (yet) the aircraft is stalled.

The same applies to stick shakers and stick pushers.....

Once those warnings are not heeded (either because of the perceived or known or 'advertised' unreliabilty of the warnings itself, or the incapacity of the pilot of how to deal with them) disaster in 'test pilot territory' iis often only just around the corner.

"Those who can't learn from history, are bound to repeat it", and another test pilot, and other pilots and passengers, will have died in vain.

Linktrained

PA and PNF did not appear to KNOW that they were stalled OR descending at 10,000 fpm, until they were at 10,000ft. ( AoA is on the FDR, I believe.)

Perhaps Approach to Stall Training should be called 447, just to keep that lesson well learned by future generations.

VGCM66

More and more I keep on thinking this crew had been probably well prepared and rehearsed for take-offs and landings but cruising had been always left to the automatic system. As time went by and comfortable routines became the norm, they unknowingly became less proficient high altitude PILOTS. It didn't take much for life to prove them deadly wrong. All three of them in their minds avoided looking and addressing the fast decrease of Altitude because they were simply blank about what to do about it. They never thought that one day they might have to fly manually the airplane without the help of the FBW during the cruising phase. Alternate law or even Direct Law, impossible. Those situations could never happen because is simply too extreme and it would mean that we'll all be dead by then. But the remotely impossible and improbable extreme came to be and the tragic outcome did happened as anticipated. That final outcome could have had a different and happier ending but good old human complacency was already hard at work and too deeply rooted .

ChrisJ800

Yet there have been plenty of survivable UAS events including in Airbus's. For example see Incident: Jetstar A332 near Guam on Oct 28th 2009, series of ECAM messages
where the aircraft stays within 100 feet of its assigned FL during the UAS event.

Ian W

This is not an equivalent incident. The other "holes in the cheese" were not there - in moderate turbulence at night and automatics handing over not in straight-and-level

whenrealityhurts

I am curious...are there any mechanical attitude instruments in the Airbus or is it all tube displays.

I ponder a cockpit where all the tv screens go out, lighting strike...what would the pilot have for attitude reference?

jcjeant

Hi,

Indeed .. you right
In the other cases .. it was good pilots in the cockpit
It was not the case for AF447 and that's was a big supplementary hole in the cheese (read BEA reports and the BEA press meetings)
That's the sad reality .. and this is a real problem for Air France

ChristiaanJ

That's a question I've asked myself a few times, too.
The present-day standby instruments use small LCD screens too, which still rely on some kind of separate secure electrical supply, and presumably so does the attitude reference (gyro of some type).

I 'grew up' in the days of the "SFENA", a small 3" standby horizon with its own hi-speed hi-inertia gyro, that would run for several minutes after a total loss of power. The display was purely mechanical, so the attitude information was still displayed.
At some point it equipped about 70% of the world's airliners, including Concorde and 747.
And it's credited with being the ultimate aid in a few OMG situations, and bringing the plane home (a Caravelle with a total electrical failure - or lightning strike, I'm not sure - comes to mind).


I worked for SFENA, but not in that division. I saw the first LCD display standby horizons arrive, but never got the answers to their reliabilty compared to the old "spinning top" version in extreme situations.

xcitation

A few misguided comments about test pilot territory.
From what I have heard liner test pilots say when they test the edge of the envelope it is in a highly controlled and low energy way. The goal is to keep control and have the ability to return to the envelope quickly.
These guys pushed aggressively through the envelope to the point of invalidating (breaking) the stall warning. The pilots took AF447 it beyond normal test conditions.
AF need to address why all 3 pilots with their training would not mention "stall" or "décrochage". All 3 pilots could hear it. I don't think Airbus and BEA would have that answer.

VGCM66

Now we'll get somewhere:

Airplanes are so automatic, pilots are forgetting how to fly them, says federal panel - NYPOST.com

bubbers44

This won't fix anything because once or twice a year having upset recovery does not a pilot make. They will check one more square for the ten minutes they did that training but it won't fix anything because ten minutes is not even close to enough time and the airlines don't want to invest any more sim time in a meaninful two hr session. There are times during flight you can handfly legally per FAA usually now in the lower altitudes below RVSM but so many airlines don't want their pilots to do it at all. On our major airline almost everybody did a lot of hand flying so we didn't have a big problem with automation dependency. Also all had been on board at least 12 years so no new guys.

DozyWannabe

So, as I've been saying from the outset, pilots' unions and airline safety campaign groups need to band together and, as FDR told the progressive groups that helped him into power, "make [them] do it".

As I said earlier, you're probably not going to get a better time than this for the next decade, or at least until the next LOC accident claims more lives. Ask the right questions and tell your stories to the right people and you could have airline management on the ropes.

ChrisJ800

The Jetstar incident was nighttime, around midnight local time, in cloud and with lightning around. But this is just one example. I believe there is a list somewhere of over 30 UAS incidents that were successfully recovered from.

galaxy flyer

Bubbers44

I went thru the "old" school USAF UPT, lots of acro, lots of under the hood acro, and lots of recoveries; then fighter RTU same torture by ex-Vietnam types who loved handing the plane back, under the "tent", out of speed, straight up to see how you would handle it. Now, even in the AF, the T-1 program has none of that. Funny, when I last went to NTPS and did upset training, I all came back like riding a bicycle despite years of not doing it.

The lesson: this training needs o be "imprinted" early on and reinforced to the point of reaction not deep thinking.

Machinbird

In other words: Has some phase of the training de-sensitized the crews from hearing and responding to the stall alarm? Do Sim instructors debrief items while the stall alarm is sounding? Have crews somehow learned to ignore or 'listen through' the stall alarm?

The rudder pedal shaker in the F-4 was excellent for gaining my attention promptly. Several threads before, I mentioned a seat shaker as probably the most viable tactile stall warning technique on a stick flown FBW transport aircraft where the crew may fly with feet off pedals and even hands off stick. With the AF447 crew demonstrating that they did not respect/respond to the stall warning annunciation and crickets, there must be a need for a better way to get a pilot's attention. (Yes, PF did appy TOGA at the second set of stall alarms together with aft stick to keep the nose from falling )

Mad (Flt) Scientist

Agree. Tactile cues used to be thought essential in such a role. No need to introduce seat shakers though. Stick shakers are a tried and tested way of attracting a crews attention. But they aren't part of the AB FBW philosophy and it might be quite a wrench to introduce them now.

bubbers44

With all of their stall warnings going off and not responding, I don't think a baseball bat hitting them on the head would have helped. The captain by the time he got up there in his groggy condition and as confusing as the situation was by then probably couldn't help in the limited time he had to respond. Maybe Air France should hire qualified pilots in the future. Maybe everybody should. I know, that costs more money.

bubbers44

If I ever need heart surgery or brain surgery, I hope the airline industry isn't hiring my doctor.

Denti

As far as i know both Boeing and Airbus use a Thales system as standby instrument. In the 737 the ISFD (integrated standby flight display) has its own internal battery pack that provides power for 150 minutes completely independent of the rest of the aircraft, its own internal inertial sensors which even act as the third inertial platform during fail operational auto land operation. The only inputs it receives is heading information from the left IRS and ILS information from NAV 1.

According to our maintenance those units have a much lower failure rate than their old mechanical counterparts, not surprising as they have no moving parts. Additionally those old units were powered by the general aircraft batteries which only provide enough power for 60 minutes. Inertia keeps them running for a bit after power is off, however the attitude reference becomes unreliable very soon after power is removed, unlike the ISFD which runs happily on its own even after the rest of the instruments fail because the aircrafts battery is depleted. In that case you need a flashlight to read the magnetic compass for heading reference though. Additionally it uses the same presentation as the PFDs, has no parallax error and is therefore easy to use from both seats, and has its own light-source of course which keeps it usable for those 150 minutes in darkness as well.