A33Zab

Agreed! ALT2 as function of FCPCs and FD Bars as function of FMGEC.

FWIW, FD Bars can be displayed on ground (no fwd speed) by selecting a V/S.
Pitch bar is limited to a value ~ +1000 ft/s even when selected V/S is at max. +6000ft/s.
If I remember it well the Pitch bar was just above the 2.5° mark (1.5° ND on ground makes ~ 4°).

BEA IR#3:
In ALT2B no Hi and Lo speed stabilty (= VMO2/ Vc prot).

This was not due to ADR DISAGREE but due ADR2 being the voted (median) value and not returning within Δ50kts of initial airspeed at -10s.

(ADR DISAGREE was set on 02:12:xx not before, at 02:10:08 there was a disagreement between ADRs but the duration was less then 10s.
Just before the 10th second ADR1 & ADR3 became consistent, but wrong)

NO, all ADR speeds were below VLS after 02:10:08.

If 2 speeds would have been above VLS then YES,... See VH-EBA

OK465

A33Zab:

Thank you sir.

ALT2"B" is an interesting animal.

Lyman

At a time when things are happening that one has not experienced, when knowledge is life itself, this aircraft metamorphoses in complex ways. Many wonderful people here have said how simple it must be, to have recovered this aircraft. Well...

I am mystified that such complexity and crazy conditions can be designed to happen in abject chaos, when what is needed is straightforward expectation, simple and critical cues, and an aircraft that demands nothing, save an intuitive and experienced aircrew.

mm43

Tend to agree, but ... I don't believe that anyone ever expected that during the 40 seconds or so that the plumbing provided dud airspeed data, that the airspeed would be deliberately ditched in favor of altitude.

Viable means must be found to prevent a similar occurrence - probably resulting in something similar to the B787 VSYN.

Lyman

A great deal has been made of the vigorous stick inputs. As an example, it in itself is tolerated. When pumping controls is not trained out, and the possibility for sensitive controls result from a controls process, (direct), can we see the potential for disaster? I am not convinced that enhanced training would improve the situation, especially when it involves a syllabus of counter intuitive process, along with a need for memory items that are arcane, and not conducive to simplicity in the face of panic...

Vsyn... Nice, but it treats the symptoms only. Eliminating failure is impossible, and in that sense, makes the issue more dangerous, and compelling. For example, had UAS been trained as a potential problem, and solutions provided, the accident may not have occurred. Something else to fail, and in its promised safety, eliminates the need to train for its failure, and then one is truly screwed, having not trained for duff speeds.....

Machinbird

MM43 The Ironies of Automation paper gives us a reason that the crew of AF447 did such a poor job. Aircraft handling (aviate) used to be our primary job with navigation and communication as secondary jobs. With the advent of RVSM airspace, there are fewer and fewer opportunities for pilots to aviate. That task is going over to OTTO and the crew is left with the navigation-communication part as their primary duty. These are not unimportant jobs, but when OTTO can't/won't aviate why should we think that a pilot who has bagged just a few minutes flying a stabilized airliner in a dirty configuration down to the runway on a few approaches each month over several years should be able to start up his scan and reliably take over in cruise in an unfamiliar control law.
If you are going to have problems with aviating, it is more likely to be a long haul guy that has a problem rather than a short haul guy. They just have that much less opportunity to practice.
IMHO, If they just add to the sim exercises to meet this recommendation, they will miss the mark. Pilots need to become much more involved in actual aviating in between the sim sessions. All that cruise flying going to waste is a crying shame.

bubbers44

My first airline job required two captains for long haul flights. My last one two fos were required. I think if a captain was in the left seat on this flight there would be no question who was in charge. He would not have allowed the PF to do what he did.

HazelNuts39

VLS is based on Vs1g, which depends on weight, flap/slat position and alphamax. Alphamax varies with Mach, similar to the stall warning threshold. IMO it would be logical that the system uses the same logic for alpha max as it does for alphaSW, i.e. the highest of the valid Mach values is used to determine alphamax. The display of VLS on a PFD reqires that the speed displayed (ADR1, 2 or 3) is not 'invalid' (SPD flag displayed), and that VLS is within the range of displayed speeds.

Vs1g (aka Valphamax) is only displayed in normal law. In alternate law Vs1g is replaced by Vsw. IMO a logical consequence of the loss of protections: at the high speed end of the envelope, alternate law reduces Mmo to 0.82.

PJ2

Machinbird;
A long-haul transport will typically do about 4 to 6 hours per year of actual handling of the aircraft.

The takeoff phase would typically be in the neighbourhood of 4 minutes before the autoflight is engaged, (if the SID isn't complex, requiring the automation for navigational accuracy in which case its engaged above 100'), and the approach phase which typically is under two minutes in duration.

As you correctly point out, it is not legal to hand-fly in RVSM airspace, so "practise" is not possible there either.

In Canada, the CARS do not require approach-to-stall and recovery training for FBW aircraft for those transitioning from other types. Airlines may do this training by choice but sim scripts are so jammed with required items that the time available for actual hand-flying is minimal to nil.

I particularly agree with your observation that, "...If they just add to the sim exercises to meet this recommendation, they will miss the mark. Pilots need to become much more involved in actual aviating in between the sim sessions."

These concerns have been around since the mid-80s, expressed mainly by flight crews and flight safety people. AW&ST ran a series on this, first in 1989 and then in 1995.

That said, the record speaks for itself - automation has enhanced safety, (I include under the category of 'automation', the notion of "protections" as well as TCAS, EGPWS, CPDLC, GPS). But the character of accidents is changing wherein almost all accidents are not the result of mechanical failure, navigational error, serious weather encounters or mid-air collision but of LOC and CFIT which have HF elements to greater or lesser degrees.

bubber44;
Yes, but two F/O's, or one F/O and an RP (who isn't permitted to sit up front below cruise altitudes and who isn't permitted to takeoff/land), are cheaper...

Lyman

A great deal has been made of the vigorous stick inputs. As an example, it in itself is tolerated. When pumping controls is not trained out, and the possibility for sensitive controls result from a controls process, (direct), can we see the potential for disaster? I am not convinced that enhanced training would improve the situation, especially when it involves a syllabus of counter intuitive process, along with a need for memory items that are arcane, and not conducive to simplicity in the face of panic...

Training and sim sessions came to this stick pumping, disagree? Or it was isolated, and couldn't have happened with any other pilot? Here we talk about something more endemic, and potentially lethal. Ignore the deluge of data in the cockpit in the midst of upset at our collective peril. When things go pear, there is either time to do it the way Airbus designed, or there is not.

When seconds count, they cannot be squandered on panicky attempts to remember ****. Things go simple, or they go South....period. The LAW had changed prior to the pilot's awareness of it, this is without question. When he finally knew what had changed, is debatable. Fine, let's us try to rmember the salient parts of AL2. Did he immediately soften his horizontal inputs? NO. Vertical? Again, NO. That is starting behind with a vengeance. Me? I am a sissy. I fly whilst constantly looking for a place to land. I chronically review safety actions and responses on the most hohum flight.

PF was cocky? Unaware? No matter, what he did not do is what most here would have done, so we hear....

Regardless the training, regardless the platform, if one is not ahead, one is behind. And behind is inside the gate of the graveyard. Can that be trained? Can it be practiced? Awareness is common to all pilots who have had a proper ab initio, and have not gotten complacent.

On the platform that commands ennui, and less than alert pilotage, the demons are waiting...

PJ2

Lyman, I'm sorry but I am at an utter loss as to what you're talking about. It reads cryptically, with suggestive questions but no new understanding. My sense of the three IRs and what will likely form the body of the Final Report is that while interesting to ponder, none of what you have posited is relevant to finding out what happened and why. There have been recommendations from the BEA and acknowledgement that along with incorrect responses to the UAS event, some observations concerning the stall warning system.

In terms of 'demons waiting', that is the very definition of aviation: "At every moment, the machine is trying its damndest to kill you." QED.

Lyman

In terms of 'demons waiting', that is the very definition of aviation: "At every moment, the machine is trying its damndest to kill you." QED.

Now that is hyperbole. You must know I address complacency, and am making a point to wit: a platform that does all the work, deflects all the challenge, and lullabies to an awake inertia is an accident waiting to happen. My money is on that being addressed as well as sleep inertia, perhaps in conjunction with training. I could well be way off the mark, but the Airbus, as designed in 1980, and with all follow on, is not a good fit for today's young at entry pilot. There is a special and untrained format waiting to pounce, demon or no. I say it from the outset, at a time of startle, in stink, and with vital cues missing, the "sophistication" of the "degradations" is counter recovery..... In the seconds it took for PF to lose the plot of his PITCH, and hence his a/s (as a 'complement' to the ADR's desertion), he was deluged with mostly irrelevant pages of ECAM, a ROLL that had his hands baffled, and a PNF who was only half there, insofar as being helpful, rather than reticent, and calling a CAPTAIN who should have been at the helm in the first place.

There is a chasm as wide as all cattle between the Airbus and the pilot, in conditions that demand piloting rather than systems management. The euphemism "graceful degradation" is descriptive of the change in personality demanded by the aircraft from systems manager to Pilot, in emergency conditions, when one is functionally nothing at all like the other. Imho. One may as well have a third and fourth seat, with pilots, who can take over from the "systems guys".

Over-analytical, precious, and inscrutable in the worst of times...A sweetheart and mistress in the good times. As it is a machine, the difference lies in the misunderstandings of the designers, not necessarily the rarely seen and occasionally lethal shortcomings of unsuspecting aircrew.

Lonewolf_50

PJ2, I had thought that it was just helicopter pilots who thought that way!

(reference is to Harry Reasoner's piece called "Helicopter Pilots are Different." )

Lyman

Well, as I hear it, helicopters do not FLY. They beat the air into submission....

infrequentflyer789

Not off the mark, but backwards. You are saying a platform designed in 1980 is not a good fit for a training / recruitment program from thirty years later.

Rather than decrying the inadequacy of the engineers' crystal ball, shouldn't we be considering what should be being fitted to what ?

Why only "the Airbus" and not "the automated glass-cockpit" ? Which is the more important factor ?

Are non-buses falling out of the sky due to systems managers failing at being pilots when things go suddenly wrong ? Hell yes.

In one recent crash report the airline's response has been to blame the plane because otto doesn't engage when the systems managers are yanking the controls around - that's right, the airline thinks otto should jump in to dig the pilots out of the merde they have gotten themselves into and ignore their control inputs. Can't be the airbus "philosophy" at fault though - because it wasn't a bus.

Didn't pan out too well at Schiphol did it. When the three of them woke up to the mess they were in, it was the trainee PF who started with the right response. They might have been doomed anyway, but at least he was trying the right things - then the ex-mil "real pilot" captain took over and made sure of the result...

Machinbird

PJ2, Bubbers, OK465, and many other old hands who actually used to be proficient in hand flying are now retired. The newer pilots have few opportunities to hand fly their aircraft and operate mostly supervising the navigation computers of their aircraft and communicating with ATC, the second and third legs of the Aviate, Navigate, Communicate priority mandate. Why should they be comfortable stepping into the Aviate role when situation or system failures demand it? This is not an A or B thing. Pilots who are expected to save they day when everything else goes south had better be comfortable aviating, but how can they do this in a regime that demands extreme precision in altitude maintenance? That was the point I hope I made earlier with the concept of an autopilot protected training mode where the autopilot would ensure an acceptable level of altitude maintenance and the pilot would attempt to operate inside a deadband where the autopilot would not interfere. If the deadband was exceeded, the autopilot would make a brief correction toward the center of the band (and perhaps a brief disrespectful noise to let the trainee know he had been corrected.) The result of this training opportunity would be pilots with fully functional scans who were well attuned to their aircraft's handling characteristics.

The rusty pilot problem is one of the regulator's making. It is they who must fix the problem. In their haste to provide higher traffic capacity, they have ignored the long term problems they have created. They are going to have find a way for pilots to actually fly again within the route structure, and they should probably mandate hand flying minimums time requirements for pilots. AF447 is one of their chickens that came home to roost.

AlphaZuluRomeo

Machinbird

kit344

Press release, 30/05/2011

jcjeant

Hi,

In the french press :
Google Traduction

Le crash Rio-Paris bientôt élucidé, les responsabilités pénales à venir - Yahoo! Actualités France

DozyWannabe

Guess I'll see you all in July then folks.

Later!