jcjeant

BEA has explained how the accident happened
Justice will seek to explain why the accident happened
Doing .. they will find out who is responsible ( if any ) .. that BEA can not
BEA's investigation and the trial court are therefore complementary and two inseparable things to know all the truth about the accident
Actually we know only the half truth ....

Lyman

roulishollandais, jcjeant.

If at Court it is requested, can BEA be required to disclose data that is not published?

If so, who would argue for no further data, someone who is fearful? Who could object, who has the right to do so, eg standing

roulishollandais

@Lyman
Yes.
The Court is free to make a search at BEA, AIRBUS, AIR FRANCE, Thales, DGAC, etc.. ("perquisition"). It is the "Juge d'Instruction" (the most powerful person in France) who comes himself whith Police, and take everything they want. Nobody knows before they are on the door.(Soulez-Larivière, during the Rainbow Warrior case himself could not avoid perquisition in DGSE ! from Policeman of New-Zealand)...

There was a time where the victims/families did not appeal the Criminal after an airliner crash, only Civil action. It really started with Habsheim and the magic aircraft who "cannot stall".

DozyWannabe

The aircraft at Habsheim never did stall - it's the reason almost all the occupants walked away. The main reason it crashed was because the pilot in command (described on one occasion as the most arrogant man the interviewee had ever met) thought he was good enough to disable the A/THR safety features and fudge a flypast rather than swallow his pride and attempt another approach.

His legal team was responsible for almost all the inaccurate statements made about the design to this day. The irony is that the BEA report considered Air France's actions more responsible for the accident than those of the Captain, but you wouldn't know that because of all the rubbish talked over the years.

jcjeant

Year 1988
Habsheim crash
Year 1996
First trial
Year 2008
End of the justice procedures .. case closed
In my opinion the case of AF447 may last even longer and the result will be
Airbus will continue to sell and construct aircrafts
Air France will continue to transport passengers
DGAC and EASA will continue to regulate
BEA will continue the investigations jobs
The losers are the victims and their families
Moral suffering .. financial losses ... etc. .. whatever the outcome of the trial

roulishollandais

I was living in Alsace and could follow the first trial !

Really nobody during the trial thougt or said A320 could not stall, with one exception : the copilot MAZIERES. He said to the Court "Je croyais que l'avion ne pouvait pas décrocher" ("I thougt that the plane could not stall").
Nobody said something at that moment, other that Pierre BAUD saying it is a problem of "energy" (nothing about AoA...). MAZIERES seemed to still be convicted of what he said, and his face seemed to say he could imagine no shematic of another way to fly A320. That is what I have seen and listened.

From ASSELINE I never listened during the trial that the aircraft would have stalled, nor that the aircraft would have been stalling. His book "Le pilote est-il coupable ?" reflects the same things he said during the Trial.

About ASSELINE, I first want to say about his legal team, the Laywer died quickly after the Trial. Me Michel AGRON was an helicopter pilot, and seemed not to be an impulsive or an unprudent man. He wanted to understand how that aircraft was flying.

I was really estonished to hear that A320 pilots knew so little about that aircraft : ASSELINE who was the first A320 pilot from Air France, explained that he had to teach the other pilots, as he was the A320 Sector Chief. He needed a simulator, and THOMSON (today... THALES !!!) decided with him and AIR FRANCE to provide it. So they asked to Airbus the description of the flight laws. Airbus refused but said they could provide a closed box whith a computer. THOMSON and ASSELINE accepted (no other deal possible). And ASSELINE trained himself on that blind computer !

He tried to do the anavoidable "tours de piste basse altitude". And finally he discovered he was able to do them at 100 Ft, not with the height sensor, but only with the altimeter. To do that he needed to cut the protection alphafloor, what he did at HABSHEIM. Pierre BAUD who was present at that moment said (smiling) to the Court he was right, he needed. And nobody said anything, assuming ASSELINE was able to fly without stalling without that protection and without A/THR. The Court asked nothing about that. The trial report or notes would show it.

That is what I have seen and listened that day.

ASSELINE said also - during the Trial , I say it again - that after that, he explained to AIR FRANCE he was able to fly with the (baro)-altimeter at 100 Ft. And AIR FRANCE who had NO MEAN to evaluate if it was feasible or not and trusted Captains, accepted to allow him what ASSELINE said to be able. (Well readed regulations surely did not allow to do that, but remember it was the time where CONCORDE was doing a go-around over the most known French meeting of the FERTE-ALLAIS at 50 Ft, and other AIR FRANCE planes over the town (parc de VINCENNES) whithout any crash zone other than houses, and all national meetings like PARIS LE BOURGET airshow, or military meetings were used to show aircrafts flying very low over the people, with pilots from many countries... ".Que celui qui n'a jamais péché lui jette la première pierre"/(Let he who is without sin throw the first stone). Despite that regulation problem, I am not sure the Court took these "details" in consideration.

You say ASSELINE was arrogant : after the accident at that public Trial, I have to say I have seen a man who still searched how that aircraft was working with his blind sealed computer box.

Some mistake has been made between Air France and the Habsheim airport, but I am not sure that the Court evaluated that : People were placed along the grass runway, and not along the concrete runway and ASSELINE has been surprised to change the approach. Here, Dozy, you are right, ASSELINE would have to go-around and come back for a second approach toward the grass runway. Both runways were too short to land.
Not sure the Court took that in consideration... that has not been discussed as far I know, I have seen, I heard. I discovered also that the grass runway (who was used daily by the airclubs and flight schools) was not legal too, trees too high at the extremities... for the lightest aircrafts... That has not been discussed at the Trial, despite the President of the airclub, chief of the airfield was possible culprit.

Would ASSELINE have done a second approach, he would have been too low over the trees to respect the 100 FT ASSELINE was able to fly on the THOMSON "simulator" with its blind sealed box and he could not know it...

Something was really strange, many newspapers and rumours said since years that the aircraft COMPUTERS would have been the cause of the lack of ASSELINE to be able to go-around and specially the limitation of 2.5g start the climb quickly (not engine problems) : loss of height decreases if load increases. But the Court has never questioned about a computer or automation failure : the reason is that NOBODY from the experts and the Court was able to do that analysis at that moment ! The trial has been conducted as a very conventional aircraft crash. Only BAUD and BENOIST gave a video about system, but initiation level 000, max that people there were able to understand... Victims had a witness who had to ask some about computer certification, but another DGAC certifyer was there as a Prosecutor expert, who had done thousands certifications (he said in private) for aircrafts without such computers. So the automation of A320 has not been examined by the Court.

To forget nothing important from that trial, mention must be done to NORBERT JACQUET : himself who doubted of the Airbus safety in AIR FRANCE, has not been able to critisize the systems, and did not try to do it. He was focused on DFDR possible change, and he himself tried a trial he failed. Despite that, at the ASSELINE trial, a last test has been done about his theory : The end of the magnetic tape would have been folded in case his theory of DFDR change would finaly by proved. And I can remember this strange... (and funny !) scene where two mens were left and right before the Court, 6-7 meters from one another along the opposite walls, enrolling the entire tape to the last meters, in a hitchcok suspense : there was no folders. (I could never understand from where these folders would have came). But that was not the reason that put NORBERT JACQUET out of our world ! Since the very first day of the accident, he refered to a phone message he had lost to a good friend of him (witness of NORBERT JACQUET 's marriage) working very close of the Ministre des Transports, to remember him his accident prevision, in AIR FRANCE, on AIRBUS, he did BEFORE THE CRASH. And IMMEDIATELY SOMEONE IN AIR FRANCE, tried to discredite him... This part of the HABSHEIM story is particulary SAD !

I do not know what happened to you Dozy, I feel something we do not know was very sad for you two, and I respect that, you surely have good reasons.

Iself, as pilot AND computer guy, my position is since more than 40 years that scientists and experts have a great responsibility they are not allowed to go under.

Pilots, Passengers, Public and members of automation and computing team, are allowed to can trust in safety, and only scientific transparency allows that.

AlphaZuluRomeo

jcjeant, take care, your last post coud be read as if you thought "abnormal"/"unsatisfying" that the organizations/companies you quote do not simply ceased to exist, due to some justice decision.
That would be vengeance (?), not justice.

roulishollandais, I can't see how an AoA protection (alpha prot / alpha max) would prevent to fly at 100ft? Are you sure you didn't mean the automatic TOGA engagement (i.e. alpha floor) instead?
With alpha floor disengaged/forbidden, but normal law still in force (Habsheim's configuration), alpha prot/max protection still applies and the aircraft will do its best to avoid stalling...

Regarding your: "Would Asseline have done a second approach, he would have been too low over the trees to respect the 100 FT Asseline was able to fly on the THOMSON "simulator" with its blind box and he could not know it..."
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean, here... Would you be so kind as to elaborate?

And finally, about the g protection hypothesis (i.e. the limitation to +2.5g which would have prevented Asseling to start the climb quickly):
This hypothesis is null & void as per the BEA report (which, by the way, does examine what you call "the automation of A320").

roulishollandais

Hi AZR,

You are right AZR : it is not "alphamax" but "ALPHAFLOOR". I discovered my mistakes when I was far from internet connection, and thought Dozy would not miss the target ! You were the first ! Thank you for immediate correction to avoid some wrong idea development.

"tout calcul non vérifié est à-peu-près certainement faux" (Kaufman)... it is the same with the posts...

RetiredF4

Ineresting presentation from Royal Aeronautical Society Heathrow Branch
The Sir Richard Fairey Lecture
Training to avoid Loss of Control 12. Oct. 2012

DozyWannabe

@roulishollandais:

I only pop in from time to time at the moment, as I'm very busy with work.

The flight control computers, far from a "black box", were probably one of the most strictly-specified designs of their day. Given that the flight laws, the consequences of those flight laws and what triggers them are part of every conversion and training course on the A320 and her sisters, I think it unlikely that Airbus refused access to a "description" of the flight laws. The underlying logic maybe - but to a non-computer scientist this information would be meaningless.

As I recall, as part of the investigation, AF provided the BEA with documents still in force that prohibited display flights below (if I recall correctly) 600ft. If they gave Asseline the go-ahead to do so then the people responsible were negligent in not being aware of that rule.

Another poor judgement call by AF was in providing Asseline and his crew with charts of the Mulhouse airfield that were *photocopies* of the only one they had on file. This becomes important when it comes to the decision-making behind trying to fudge the flypast rather than turn around and try again. The photocopier they used was black and white rather than greyscale, and the graphic indicating trees at the end of the grass runway was of a grey too light for the photocopier to pick up - so if the crew checked their photocopied charts as they approached then they would have determined that the end of the runway was clear of obstruction because the copies were missing that information. This is the reason why the crew stated that they weren't expecting the trees at the end of the runway to be so high.

In the event, as AZR states, by disabling (rather than disengaging) autothrust - and as a consequence alpha floor, Asseline painted his aircraft into a corner that left no margin for error and there is no excuse for that - even less so with passengers in the back.

As for aircraft behaviour, the BEA's lead investigator on the case put together a test which set up one of the longest runways in Toulouse to mimic the approach made by Asseline based on the DFDR data, and what they found was that it was alpha protection that prevented the aircraft from pitching further up than it did. As Asseline asserted, it prevented a pitch up beyond a certain point, but what it was doing was preventing a stall because the airspeed was not sufficient to climb. If the aircraft had followed his pitch-up order, it is likely that the aircraft would have stalled short of the trees, likely resulting in an unstable crash and many more deaths than actually occurred.

There were no secret software errors and no significant technical failures - simply a pilot who took a gamble, in part because of erroneous information supplied by his employer, and lost with tragic results. The irony is that if Asseline's legal team had focused on AF's negligence rather than trying to cause controversy over the aircraft, he'd likely have had a much better case when he went to trial. Why he did not take this option is a question only he can answer.

Unfortunately because of the way aircraft accidents are essentially handled by the judicial process in France, a lot of rumour and counter-rumour was generated by the legal teams of those involved, which have obscured the facts under a mountain of legalese. The press were simply repeating the press releases from each legal team as they came - there was no attempt to check the veracity of what they were saying.

CONF iture

A/THR was disconnected, nothing more.
Where is that BEA quote that states otherwise ?
And what does it change as the radar altitude was already around 30 feet ...

Will you ever stop repeating the same nonsense over and over ?
For a given AoA corresponds a specific airspeed and that is not the airspeed that was not sufficient for the aircraft to climb, that was the thrust.
The system prevented the aircraft to reach and maintain alpha max so correct now once for all those misconceptions of stall and more deaths.

DozyWannabe

I don't know, but it's common knowledge that the disconnect button was held down, thus not only disconnecting, but also disabling A/THR.

Alpha max is unlikely to have helped. Sure alpha prot holds the pitch just shy of alpha max, but not by a significant degree. With neither sufficient thrust nor airspeed to climb the result would have been the same.

jcjeant

All is there (in french of course)
Histoire du crash de habsheim

AvMed.IN

Besides everything else, tragedy of flight AF 447 was that the temporary inconsistency of measured airspeed and autopilot disconnection, was compounded by “inappropriate control inputs". This brings to focus an overdependence on automation at the cost of basic piloting skills!

jcjeant

Interesting study

Lemurian

He was not the sector chief pilot, merely the "senior training captain" ans as such he was responsible for the training of all pilots joining the 320 fleet.
You've either misunderstood the mission given by AF to A., which was to define a requirement for in-house simulators and for which he performed some 150 hours sim time with AeroFormation and Thjomson or you're quite a bit disingenuous. Contrarily to what you are saying about Airbus "hiding" the flight laws, these were well known by all airlines and included in the syllabus of the typre-rating at AeroFormation. I personally saw these original programs in a few airlines' VAC Bi .
And I met him in Colombo in June '90 as I was being line checked on the 743 ; didn't know him but he came to the flight deck after getting some french newspapers from the girls at the back. when my check captain came back, they had a rather heated conversation, the guy being a bit graphic about how he was about to "stick it dry to AF and all"...
When he left, the checker had just these words to say : "For someone who shoud be bearing the death of three innocent people on his conscience, this man is in my opinion a bit too imbued with himself "...
That's a load of bull if I ever saw one : There was no preparation at all about this fly-by, something that was his responsibility to have done.He eventually lined up his trajectory with the grass strip
As for the rest of your post, it just smacks of total un-understanding of aviation subjects, including av laws. If you're a pilot, I'm not surprised any more with the level of safety achieved by french pilots... of course, conspiracy theories are somehow more important than technical knowledge.

CONF iture

DozyWannabe don't know but keeps pushing theories based on common knowledge.

Very interesting from someone who pretends to fight such attitude :
Waiting for the facts not common knowledge ...

Lemurian

Confiture :Easy. Just the BEA official report :
§1-11-3 :... at the beginning of the taxi to takeoff, FO asks Capt to confirm his intentions for the fly-pasts... Capt says he will perform the first presentation with config 3, gear down at 100 ft and max AoA, the alpha floor function disabled... FO wil manually adjust thrust in order to maintain level flight...
and on the dfdr reading at 12.41.58 : "Je déco... braye l'automation ( "I discon...disable the automatics...")In >french, déconnecté -disconnected - is not débrayé - disabled, taken off-line. Capt's reverting on the correct term is quite telling.
As it ghappens, the disabling of the Alpha floor function didn't have any influence onj this accident, as they went quickly below 100 ft, when they wenht first into C* - i.e N demand around 1G- and then into pitch ref function.
Apparently, Dozy has a very good memory... unlike some here.

CONF iture

Too bad your references are based on cvr, just not fdr.

His intention was to disable A/THR but did he do it ?
NO

When he was going to do it at time 12 41 58 he was distracted or interrupted by a landing gear issue. Thirty seconds on a disconnect switch is a long period. What he did at that time was disconnecting the A/THR, nothing more.

And if he had done it at that time, why does he mention it again at time 12 45 26 when the aircraft is already at 40 feet RA :
Bon, j’vais bien là, débrayer l’auto-manette.

Dozy does not read French, you do, so come up with the BEA quote which would state that the crew in Habsheim had permanently disabled the A/THR.
If they had, I assume it must be clearly stated somewhere in the BEA report …

Memory is not always enough ...

Owain Glyndwr

The final BEA report on Habsheim says:


In section 1.1 Déroulment du vol,



And again in section 1.11.3. Restitution des conversation et des alarmes sonores (CVR)


That seems clear enough to me