jcjeant

Hi,

This month .. a new book from the author J.P Otelli

Livre : Erreurs de pilotage, Tome 5. Jean-Pierre Otelli - 9791090465039

From what I read .. Otelli tell he had access (or had intelligence) of not yet public parts of the CVR .. and can affirm that the crash was the consequence of pilot error .. no more .. no less ...

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Machinbird

The crew of AF447 briefly had the Speed brakes out.
If fast, they should have been thrown forward. They obviously felt next to nothing.
Their thoughts were unable to focus on this deviation from expectations. They were clearly not in problem solving mode.

Lyman

Have you found exactly when and for how long the spoilers were up?

I repeat, from the outset, the a/c may have misbehaved, at least in the judgment of the flight crew. It appears the PF wanted NOSE UP for the duration, and didn't 'get' it. Initially the a/c did need NU, and it did not respond to ss until PITCH reached 10 degrees (and this without the THS). Were the spoilers active in auto? If their deployment did not cause decel, couldn't PF have concluded they were not working?

So with initial pull, the a/c did not trim itself to follow the pilot's stick, how do we explain that? He knew to control the roll (the roll impetus is irrelevant) and he has to have been using the FD w/o external cues. So was the Pitch cueing working? Both pilots were fixated on Roll? To the exclusion of noticing the NU? It is not sufficient to use partial data to conclude these things. Especially the "thoughts" part. That recorder has not been invented yet. A poor resource would be CVR, and that is being parsed to political ends.

I'd rather remain frustrated without sufficient data than to more or less blindly put their final four minutes in stone.

You propose to know his thoughts. I'm trying to find something that worked for them. That would be a better starting place than to join him later at spoilers with a preconceived conclusion. What we see are results of data that was unavailable to the crew, for the most part. Assuming this crew could follow along with data derived from recorders is nonsense.

DozyWannabe

I presume that barb is directed at me, which is a bit of a shame - because I try not to insult you directly, even if I do think your choice of heroes is misguided.

The question is not one of who is paying for the repairs - though it could be a factor in the decision. The problem is this - even if an AD did make Airbus pay for the repairs as opposed to the airlines, the airlines still lose money because an aircraft on the ground is not generating revenue. Airbus are, I'm sure, business-savvy enough to factor in a budget for unscheduled repairs and in the grand scheme of things it would be a cost of a few million dollars to a multi billion-dollar company - one that was in relatively rude health in 2008 and 2009.

With airlines it is less clear-cut and some have more of a margin available to them than others - however even a major flag-carrier like AF will not have the margins available to them that Airbus do. I'd like someone who knows to confirm, but at a guess I'd say that AF stood to lose more in revenue from the aircraft being on the ground in MX than the cost of the repairs to their fleet.

To my mind the issue of pitot replacement will be a factor in the findings and Airbus will have to take their share of the knocks there. What bothers me though is that AF's procedures allowed for two members of a crew who had little to no experience in manually handling the aircraft at high altitude to occupy the LH and RH seats at a time when the whole industry knew that frozen pitot tubes could lead to the aircraft being handed back to the crew at cruise level.

RR_NDB

Important issue to be discussed. Simple devices with so much (Systemic) responsibility, that failed in AF447? and triggered the sequence of events.

1) System redundancy techniques are good for random (time) element failures.
2) F-GZCP Pitot's failed? They had just a "brief thermal glitch".
3) Pratically SIMULTANEOUSLY.

"Who" failed?

IMO, this is an complete ABSURD! And ongoing?, as CJ ask.

infrequentflyer789

Oh come on. The "descent" at A/P drop was not only arrested it was turned into stupidly rapid climb at 10-15deg nose up. And if PF didn't grasp that from the instruments, PNF also told him, at least twice I think.

The later descent starts from nose up and stall warning sounding, and the nose never goes down - how could that not be a stall ? When later the nose does go suddenly down (as the control surfaces hit the stops) PF carries on pulling hard back. Had it dropped rapidly at the stall, surely he would h\ve done exactly the same as a minute later - pulled back.

Lyman

Infrequentflyer789

NO. The a/c did not respond immediately to PF's back stick, read the report. The a/c did not start upward until the PITCH UP reached ten degrees, read the report. Hence my comment that the THS seemed unavailable from a/p drop, until just prior to the STALL. It also counters the myth that he pulled the a/c up immediately, HE DID NOT. The report shows a pilot with measured pull, and interrupted, waiting for response.

The a/c was raising her nose as an artifact of the last gasp of the a/p. She did not climb, not initially. And we don't know if she had NU at that point or no.

We also rely on the pilot's words themselves; he susses overspeed, and likely did until just before impact, when all three wanted to pull. Was that a mistake? Yes, but it was not "Blindly pulling into a STALL". The recorders make fools of us all, unless they get overwritten, after a safe landing.

You are putting motives and methods into this that do not exist. They had been dealt a hand that we have analysed without restraint. They had several cues that lied, that caused on their own the circumstyances that led to the crash.

Their is NO determination of Iced Pitots. It is a guess, for all we know it may have been wind shear that bolluxed up ADRS. And that is a reason for TOGA and high Pitch, in its own right.

I appreciate your response.

infrequentflyer789

I kind of hope he's just a liar - there's been enough leaks already and there are almost certainly bits of the CVR that should never be public.

On the other hand, perhaps it would dissaude those who keep insisting the investigation is hiding things / covering up - when it can't be, because it's already been shown to leak like a sieve...

Machinbird

Lyman
As I read this, the adrenalin flowing from each of the guys sitting in the cockpit was enough to override their ability to evaluate their surroundings.
3 seconds of speed brake is enough to feel deceleration if you have speed. They felt next to nothing at the AOA and speed that they were actually at. They would have had to sense a non-event in order to realize its significance, i.e. NO deceleration-Why?

CONF iture

Never been a secret how I evaluate your behavior : Write a lot as if you have the knowledge but proved repeatedly that you don't necessarily have, IMO of course.
Who are my heroes ? You ?

I presume that if an AD had to ground a fleet, the manufacturer would have to share more that the only cost of the repair.

What bothers me is that something was wrong in that aircraft before anything happened. The crew had to deal with something bizarre ... and the BEA has not said a single word about it.



Full data for the families.

Machinbird

Confiture, your graph of V/S commanded vs V/S actual is missing time marks. Looks like the selector for V/S was misbehaving. What is the source of this graph?

Clandestino

Well done, OK465! Seems I still owe you Saint-Exupery's quote. Oh well...

Good old Dick Bach's "Steel, aluminum, nuts and bolts" is applicable too.


2:09:00 to appx 2:10:06
BEA interim 3
They haven't issued a final report yet. Hurry up and make your concerns known to them before they settle on the final version. You might just be onto something and if they ignore your wealth of expertize, you can always expand on "How come that records of spurious V/S selections have no correlation whatsoever in aeroplane's behaviour while ALT CRZ mode is engaged" thesis and get master's degree from the Institute of Conspiracy Theories, Department of Aeronautics.

I trust you on F-16. Since I have to be blunt: F-16 is unstable fighter, A330 is stable passenger aeroplane. One has wing optimized for maneuver and supersonic flight, the other for high-subsonic cruise. No points for guessing which is which.

Again, some general principles apply for both F-16 and A330 but not each and every. A330 wing starts decreasing its AoAcrit at mere 0.3 Mach - that's why graph on page 20 of interim 3 looks so crooked.

Carefully there! Captain Michel Asseline blurted-out that engine did not responded as required in shell-shocked state. Eventually he settled down and accepted the facts of his fateful flight, as put down by BEA. He does not support any of our "Airbus is soooo complicated and veeeeery dangerous" claiming friends. Also, while they try to appear they are fighting on his behalf, they go great lengths to never explicitly state so and all they offer is series of nudge-nudge-wink-wink-you-know-what-I-mean.

Great shame about Habsheim disaster is that some of us (well, IMHO it's actually most) allow that the smokescreen of technical discussion obscures the real issue: how come that Air france and Mulhouse Aeroclub came to idea that it's just fine to fly planeload of passengers during display flight! Mind you: they were not stupid but somehow they were lead to the point they considered it to be OK. To draw out that thought and decision process into the light would be fitting monument to the three victims.

Now you mention St Odille: it's another tragedy where technical talk has drowned out the HF anaylsis. Most pilot just remember it vas 3300 fpm misselection instead of 3.3 FPA and that's about it. FWIW the crew undershot the final approach track and were well left of it when they hit the mountain. Had they been more concentrated on horizontal navigation (as the report claims) and got established or overshot to the right, they would have missed the mountain. Whether they would realized something was terribly wrong when cloudbreaking above the plain south of Strasbourg or they would have hit the fields instead of forest, anyone's guess is as good as mine.

Did not. Airbus procedures were clear, simple and not adhered to. AF FCTM was out of step.

Cry me a river about it. Unless you're capable of performing just that, don't go flying, you're gonna hurt yourself and others in the process. It's a tough world outside.

See previous entry.


Prove it. Win Nobel for physics. Go down in history as "The man who disproved Bernoulli and everything we thought we knew about flying"

EASA AD 2009-195 had four months compliance period, starting on Sep07 2009. Is it conspiracy? Is it possible that by the time of issue we had 20-odd cases of freezing pitots and going ALTN, some involving Air France, one involving Goodrich pitots, all of them landing uneventfully, bar one so there was no perceived need to hurry? No use in having the right to know without the capability to understand.

Taken completely out of its context, it would be quite useful as the best evaluation of this thread in quite a long time.

Gretchenfrage

You may be right, at least that's what I have done and left the blue side as soon as I could. I never felt on top of these machines and I bet many feel the same but do not admit it.

I feel competent enough on another system now and that's what counts in professional aviation.

You can now lie back and feel safe because one of the subjects who seemingly was not good enough for the wonderbra has left the building. But that does not fix the filling, believe me.

Instead of aping the infantile slogans of the lobby-corner ("love it or leave it"), you might have read a little further and caught what I said as well: That there exists a better solution to the problem and that it might just be a better idea to copy that than shout down those who bring up the problem.

Doing the latter is what happens to a great extent actually and that in turn does not comfort me, because these machines share a great chunk of airspace with me. And my theory is that too many of their jockeys are similarly not as good as you think you are.

Turbine D

Clandestino

Quote:
See previous entry.

WRONG - Not my quote, you got your "hamsters" mixed up.

Quote:
Did not. Airbus procedures were clear, simple and not adhered to. AF FCTM was out of step.

I'll stand to be corrected when you show me evidence of AB's high altitude, high Mach cruise situations, such as UAS events, which are clear and simple.

CONF iture

Captain my Captain how do you positively know ALT CRZ mode was engaged when the trace is nowhere to be seen ?
BEA has that habit to forget to share what could be interesting.

Full data to the families.

Take that sunday off Clandestino and try to find someone ready to demonstrate you a bit of love, this could help to relieve this aggressiveness to us all around.

Zorin_75

Or would that be full data to self important internet conspiracy theorists?

ChristiaanJ

Zorin, drop it.
Neither those conspiracy theorists, nor the families, nor their 'ambulance-chasing' lawyers, have the technical competence to interpret those data correctly.

Lyman

Clandestino. BEA report the a/c did not begin to climb until the Pitch was 10 degrees+.

In descent, robust enough to keep the altitude from increasing with 9 degrees PITCH UP, a/c don't climb whilst arresting descent.

They reduce ROD instead, until the rate becomes positive, as per BEA.

WINDSHEAR event on ACARS. TCAS event on ACARS. Repeated descent commands of 5000fpm by the autopilot.

BEA have vacuumed the time period prior to the loss of Autopilot.

Odd. "Baby AUTOPILOT kills all!" ?

KBPsen

No they did not. It is a fabrication and repeating it does not make it more true. Nor does fabricating more do anything for credibility. If any remains.

There is a thing known as intellectual dishonesty and a great many things here fits the definition quite accurately.

Lyman

KBPsen

FROM BEA

"The aircraft's Angle of Attack increased progressively beyond ten degrees...AND THE AIRCRAFT STARTED TO CLIMB..."

Do you speak, read English?