DozyWannabe

As I said, I don't think the crack - if indeed there is one - falls between the designer/maufacturer and pilots (after all, pilots were involved in the design of the Airbus FBW systems). I think the disconnect is between airline management and the pilots that work for them, because the breed of management that started to proliferate towards the end of the '80s were pure MBA material, and the old-school management who saw aviation as a specialty all began to retire.

Lonewolf_50

John T: good points!

As seems to have happened pre AF447, and probably still happens, sim "training," or more importantly sim sessions with "x" on the line, may not be designed nor used to do a "training" function but instead confirm adherence to standard policies and practices, or to highlight subtle changes or revisions to same. "Gents, as you know, there is a new SOP on CAT III approaches. You've read the bulletin, let's see that you know how to put it into place during this sim session!" (And other tasks, of course ... )

There is value for any organization in doing that. There is solid argument to be made against conducting training on revenue flights, since the pax didn't sign up for other than "get me from point a to point b."
Respectfully, I contend that any Airline company that does NOT invest in its human capital -- pilots-- as I had previoulsy suggested, in which actual Training, refresher, and currency are deliberate and well defined aims of their precious and expensive simulator time, are wasting time that they pay for. Not seeing the forest for the trees, perhaps.
Indeed.

I suggest that it is in the self interest of any airline to keep its crews sharp, and deeply systems knowledgeable. The better you know your systems, inside and out, the better you can do your job and complete your mission.

Adopting that attitude reduces their (company) risks and increases their (company) success rates of "malfunction/emergency sorted" when things do go wrong.

I do not believe that I am the only person who holds that position.

Problem is, I don't run an airline and thus am in no position to make an impact. That a clear and careful implementation of this philosophy, as you describe it, has to go hand in hand with how to fund it presents any airline management -- or leadership if there is any -- with a critical problem to solve.

Well, that's why those folks in suits are paid.

I have a few ed thoughts on what I think of MBA's who aren't pilots running airlines ... but that does not belong in this thread.

AF447 has to me shown that Air France (and perhaps a good portion of the industry?) does not make the points I allude to above a priority. (I may be overstating this, or may simply be wrong.) Maybe the idea I have would be that they have a system in place that doesn't achieve that end even if that were its intention.

Result: a crew unable to fly and CRM its way through a malfunction, with fatal results. From the CVR excerpts released, I get the impression of a crew that were trying and trying to get the situation under control, but they were trying the wrong things to resolve their malfunction. (And one could argue that the "how" of their trying, as a crew, was not what we have come to expect).

An analogy to some of my own experience would be something like this: in a helicopter while flying above the high seas, experiencing a loss of tail rotor control during IMC conditions, but treating it as loss of tail rotor thrust or an AFCS malfunction. Could have ended in tears, were I and my H2P to respond to such a malfunction, as a crew, incorrectly.

PJ2

BOAC, re post #284, "What I am trying to establish is whether the UAS QRH action PROMULGATED BY AF at the time of 447 was as described."

If I may leap in on your question to Dozy, the QRH drill and checklist did not reflect the EASA AD Procedure, which is:

The QRH drill has essentially remained the same from November 2002:

IMMEDIATE ACTIONS
- AP/FD........................................OFF
- A/THR........................................OFF
- FLAPS........................................MAINTAIN CURRENT CONFIG
- SPEEDBRAKES............................CHECK RETRACTED
- L/G............................................UP WHEN AIRBORNE

IMMEDIATE PITCH ATTITUDE AND THRUST GUIDANCE
If the failure occurs before thrust reduction:
- THRUST LEVER...........................TOGA
- PITCH ATTITUDE.........................12.5°

If the failure occurs after thrust reduction:
- THRUST LEVER............................CLB
- PITCH ATTITUDE below FL 100.......10°
- PITCH ATTITUDE above FL 100.......5°

RESPECT THE STALL WARNING

WHEN FLIGHT PATH STABILIZED
- PROBE WINDOW HEAT...................ON
- ATTITUDE/THRUST........................ADJUST

The AD was to be incorporated into the applicable AFM 15 days after the effective date of the AD, (Jan 05, 2011).

Of interest is a note regarding the AOM, "the Aircraft Operating Manual is not intended to provide basic piloting skills, basic jet aircraft piloting techniques, or information that is considered as basic airmanship for trained flight crews familiar with that type of aircraft and with its general handling characteristics."

J.T., Re post #303, "Perhaps we should have a beer or ten to debate the pros and cons ?"
Re training vice checking, and jeopardy vice non-jeopardy, you should have seen the debates when we introduced LOFT!

The politics of failure and the underlying struggle for who controls who...regulator, airline, union, individual pilots - what a time.

Agree with all your comments on the sim. That said, I think there is reason to accept that "extrapolated" sim behaviour at and in the stall may not be that far from the airplane even though the regime is unflown, untested and has no data from such events. Because even a Level D isn't certified for here-be-dragons territory, it could only be used informally during any training. The primary difficulty has been the methods by which the AF447 circumstances are repeated, because the loss of pitots was not a separately-programmed scenario so the results had to be simulated using other methods and that can produce system behaviours that may not obtain in a loss of pitot(s) data.

HazelNuts39

The rules haven't changed, so an airplane that doesn't meet the stall characteristics requirements without a stick pusher will still need one. What you have written applies to FBW airplanes. The FBW system permits modification of the natural characteristics of the airplane so that it meets the requirements. The Final Report describes the type certification in section 1.18.1.

While the airplane flight control system is designed so that, in normal law, the pilot or the A/P cannot command an AoA greater than alphamax, and therefore cannot stall the airplane in the 'usual' way, the system apparently can provide a powerful nose-down pitch very similar to a stick pusher if alphamax is exceeded in any other way.

jcjeant

Hazelnut39
Indeed .. in normal law
What about the other laws (no more AOA protection) isn'it the return to a "normal plane" ? and so need stick pusher ? ...

DozyWannabe

@HN39

Agreed, but what Lyman was referring to was a physical stick push that actually moved the column/sidestick.

@jcj:

I'm pretty sure that the A330 meets the stall requirements such that a stick pusher is unnecessary. As I said, stick pushers were a technical solution to the T-tail "deep stall" issue, and while they were installed in some non-T-tail designs some decades ago, that was to satisfy a UK CAA mandate.

Lonewolf_50

PJ2: as I understand your post, the procedure you cite in the blue box is based on lessons learned from AF447, while the other procedural steps were in place at the time (per your observation "... essentially remained the same from November 2002") of the mishap. What I don't have clear is which symptoms were considered sufficient trigger to enter that series of procedures. (Airspeed unreliable, or A/P kicked off due to Airspeed Unrealiable?)

To ensure that I am speaking the same language:

Does "immediate actions" mean "memory items" or is that "break out the checklist/procedure and do these first" in a challenge/response style of ordered operations by the crew?

IMMEDIATE ACTIONS
- AP/FD........................................OFF
- A/THR........................................OFF
- FLAPS........................................MAINTAIN CURRENT CONFIG
- SPEEDBRAKES............................CHECK RETRACTED
- L/G............................................UP WHEN AIRBORNE

IMMEDIATE PITCH ATTITUDE AND THRUST GUIDANCE
If the failure occurs before thrust reduction:
- THRUST LEVER...........................TOGA
- PITCH ATTITUDE.........................12.5°

If the failure occurs after thrust reduction:
- THRUST LEVER............................CLB
- PITCH ATTITUDE below FL 100.......10°
- PITCH ATTITUDE above FL 100.......5°

RESPECT THE STALL WARNING

WHEN FLIGHT PATH STABILIZED
- PROBE WINDOW HEAT...................ON
- ATTITUDE/THRUST........................ADJUST

I presume that "adjust" in that last means "adjust to desired speed and power combination for continued flight."

jcjeant

DW
The "approach to stall" requirements .. certainly (regulators requirement fulfilled .. or this plane can't fly commercially)
"The stall" requirements (if any) .. we don't know ... the A330 in stall situation was not tested ... AFAIK
BTW AF447 can't be considered like a valid test ..

infrequentflyer789

Where do you have this information from ?

I would be very very surprised if the A330 wasn't stall tested. I know that other models have been (see eg. about the A380 testing - see the comments on stall in the full description on youtube) and as far as I know it is required for certification.

The A330 (and in fact any airliner) will not have been tested to the AOAs that 447 went to (this may be what you are confused on?). Nor will it ever. As I think someone else already posted recently, no one would be suicidal enough to try the 447 stall in the real a/c (and therefore there is no real data for recovery profile in the Sim either - it's all extrapolated).

HazelNuts39

Conditions other than normal law are associated with system failures. Section 1.18.1 of the final report describes how these are addressed in the certification requirements.

jcjeant

infrequentflyer789
I see at 18 sec (and more) in the video people with a parachute on their back ..
So .. if this is possible (apparently) to evacuate the A380 in case of danger .. I see nothing suicidal to test stall like the of AF447 (the most risk is to end with a smoking hole in the ground)

Lyman

My original challenge to Doze was re: the Shaker. The recommendations of BEA re: STALLWARN gave me the impetus to explore the elements in the region of Approach to STALL.

The STALL is interesting, but to me, I still believe the LOC was made possible by actions and mechanical insufficencies prior to the second STALL WARN. In Alternate LAW, why should the A330 be allowed to avoid installation of the shaker? Can we not see that an additional and different sensate device would have saved the day here?

What pisses me off is the sacred cow nonsense I see in the Certification side. Is it impossible to equip a SS with an annoying vibration that would startle the pilot into focusing on the impending death of his passengers and loss of his aircraft?

Without protections the 330 is no different in controls theory than non airbus vehicles. Besides, the Bus seems to know well enough not to remain in NORMAL LAW if it is in danger of STALLING. Very convenient as a sales tool. Impossible to STALL? Read the gd fine print, eh?

DozyWannabe

Well no, as shakers have been ignored several times in aircraft equipped with them, sometimes fatally.

Lyman

Look, Sir, it is getting tiresome that you expect to make a glib comment about a failure of some piece of equipment and expect others to accept your pronouncement as 'end of discussion'.

Nothing works perfectly, consider the STALLWARN in this accident, ok? Sometimes engines quit, shall we give up flying?

Why don't you take an objective guess at whether the Shaker may have helped here?

PJ2

Lonewolf_50;, Re, The term "Immediate actions" refers to the memory items only.

As we know, this drill has changed over the years. Until sometime in 2008, the drill began with "Immediate Actions", with no qualifying condition. There's info on this on the web or in the IR/Final Rpt as to when it changed but I don't have the time at the moment to source it.

Sometime in 2008, the qualifying condition, "If the safe conduct of the flight is impacted:" was added to the same drill items.

The way the drill was then written effectively split the drill into two parts: "Impacted/Not impacted". If "impacted", one does the boxed items. If not, the next "dot point" is "To level off for troubleshooting", etc. I don't think this was ever really clear prior to AF447. This is partly because within the memorized items under the qualifying phrase, was a qualifying condition that catered to low altitude failures but would not be done if the safety of the flight wasn't impacted: "When at, or above MSA or Circuit Altitude: Level Off for Troubleshooting". So the guidance was confusing, in my opinion and I thought the immediate actions should be qualified by flight-phase, not the very subjective, "If the safe conduct...", etc.

So there is no real, obvious guidance for cruise ADR or UAS/pitot failures because the drill was originally conceived after the Birgenair and Aeroperu accidents.

Trouble is, UAS events on the A330/A340 in cruise first occurred prior to April, 1996 and many listed in the BEA reports had occurred by 2008 yet the drill remained unchanged. I think appropriate training would sort this drill and checklist out such that it could be done correctly but sorting it out for oneself leaves the drill open, as we see, for interpretation as to what to do and when.

The addition of this qualifying condition placed the notion of "Immediate Actions" in limbo...What was one to do first?

At takeoff, it is clear - the safe conduct of the flight is impacted and one does the memorized items.

In stable cruise, even with mild turbulence, what does one do? "Above FL100, set pitch to 5deg, (about 2.5deg higher than normal cruise) and get out the books, but was this ever trained?

I'm won't re-argue the case but in response to your and BOAC's comments, aside from the addition of the qualifying condition, the drill hasn't changed, and still (to my knowledge) has not incorporated the AD admonition to not engage the AP or FDs, and not to follow the FDs until at least two airspeeds are considered valid.

Lots to chew on yet.

Here's the 2008 QRH UAS drill:

Organfreak

Lyman, Dozy is against anything that "might have helped."

I can only be relieved that he's not in charge of any airline.

Turbine D

Hi PJ2,

Relative to the QRH drill, I have some questions. As in the case of AF447, you are cruising at 350, M .82, 2.5º pitch and an N1 setting of 95% (as referenced on page 183 BEA's final report for level flight). Due to expected turbulence, a reduction in M is dialed in to .80 resulting in a reduction of N1 to 84% by AT. Suddenly the AP disengages, the AT disengages and AT lock occurs. At this point, according to the QRH drill, the pitch should be set at 5º and the thrust levers must be moved to climb detent at which point one needs to know from the tables to reset pitch and power based on the aircraft wight and altitude. My first questions would be aren't the thrust levers already in the climb detent? Does the thrust lock latch a 84% N1? if so, does this give much time to figure the right pitch and power setting before a real stall warning occurs?

But when I see the tables, the reset for pitch is 3.5º and 90% N1 for a M of .82 based on altitude and weight. This seems a little low on N1% with a 3.5º pitch setting based on what is referenced in the BEA report for level flight at the altitude being experienced. I recognize at the upper end of the power settings at 350 there isn't much power left to be had, but the differences seem confusing to me more than anything, perhaps I am missing some finer points. Any thoughts? Is my logic off?

P.S. The source of pitch and power table I used came from the BEA final report, Page 104. Additionally, the BEA Interim Report #3 gave the following N1% power settings from each engine as follows:
At M .82 - True N1% 100.4/99.8
At M .80 - True N1% 98/98

DozyWannabe

No, I'm against blanket assertions that something *would* have helped when there is no evidence to support said assertions.

Adding complex mechanical devices would add more potential points of failure to the flight control system for no proven gain.

Yet again I can't help but suspect a slight bias towards "the Boeing Way".

Lyman

Organfreak Lyman, Dozy is against anything that "might have helped."

I can only be relieved that he's not in charge of any airline.

Unfortunately, the rhetoric that is being parroted is that of people who build and certificate the AIRBUS.

Lyman

The shaker is experienced thousands of times a day in training, and typing.

"No evidence there would be any gain?" What a wild statement.