CONF iture

Not that much - It takes effort to maintain it at the full aft position - More noticeable when practicing the PULL UP TOGA scenario.
But it is invisible to the other pilots in the flight deck ... When the PF was full back stick for a thirty seconds period after the aircraft was stalled, neither of the 2 other guys would know that important piece of information. That's what Sullenberger is talking about.

DozyWannabe

Once and once only on this issue:

DFDR matches CVR. If you are referring to Ray Davis's independent reading of the FDR, he was not experienced in dealing with the new digital models, and got it wrong.

From the document posted by Franzl months ago : http://www.crashdehabsheim.net/Rapport%20Airbus.pdf

I realise anecdote is not the plural of data but this supposition is a hell of a stretch. I doubt very much that a human being confidently in charge of a machine will immediately stop what they are doing on the basis of a distraction. For example, if applying the brakes when driving and you see an accident in the opposite lane, you may turn to look, but that does not mean you will stop applying the brakes.

The disable trigger is at 15 seconds though (FCOM DSC-22 30-90 P 5/12).

Not fluently, but my wife does - and I have a dictionary.

Anyway - pointless distraction, this is about AF447, not AF296 (which I'm sure would be more than welcome on the AH&N forum if you've been having trouble starting a thread on the subject, CONF...)

CONF iture

Dozy, you don't know the Habsheim report but cannot stop commenting on it.
What is true today was not necessarily at that time.
Next time, ask your wife first, she will tell ...

HazelNuts39

I wonder, did Cpt. Sullenberger really think this through?
The airplane stalled at 02:10:58. Until 02:11:31 the PF's stick is moving so rapidly back and forth that it is hardly possible to interpret what it is doing to the airplane, except by looking at the attitude display. At 02:11:38 the PNF briefly takes the controls. The attitude is then 15 degrees NU, IAS 133 kt, STALL STALL STALL. Does he push the sidestick forward?

The PF's sidestick reached the aft stop at 02:11:41, that is 43 seconds after the airplane stalled. The AoA was then increasing through 35 degrees. The captain returned at 02:11:42.5. The AoA exceeded 41.5 degrees, became NCD and the stall warning stopped at 02:11:45.

If, at that point, the 2 other guys had known "that important piece of information", what would have been their reaction to it?

Would they have been that "extremely purposeful crew with a good comprehension of the situation (that) could have carried out a manoeuvre that would have made it possible to perhaps recover control of the aeroplane."?

BOAC

I think that nothing short of my 'boxing glove' firing out of the panel (see aged post) would have helped either pilot. Whether the CPT would have twigged that both yokes back in the stomachs and 10,000fpm down with TOGA was significant is an unknown factor in Air France, it seems. We can only surmise.

Lyman

Howdy HazelNuts39

You post: "The PNF's sidestick reached the aft stop at 02:11:41, that is 43 seconds after the airplane stalled. The AoA was then increasing through 35 degrees. The captain returned at 02:11:42.5. The AoA exceeded 41.5 degrees, became NCD and the stall warning stopped at 02:11:45.

If, at that point, the 2 other guys had known "that important piece of information", what would have been their reaction to it?"...Unquote

"that important piece of information"

You are referring to AoA? Or stick placement? They could not have known AoA; and PNF was engaging in full aft stick post STALL, so he was in the weeds with Bonin?

If the PNF held full aft stick post STALL, as you say, then "the two other guys" are in fact just one other guy, the Captain. The Captain has a particularly poor view of the SS. We know the Captain cannot see PF SS, from the CVR. Or if he can see it, he cannot suss its position......"But I have been climbing...."

If what you say is fact, then each of the three have attempted a climb to recover from STALL, the two pilots by stick, and the Captain by command to Bonin: "Climb, then..." "The PNF's sidestick reached the aft stop at 02:11:41, that is 43 seconds after the airplane stalled. The AoA was then increasing through 35 degrees. The captain returned at 02:11:42.5. The AoA exceeded 41.5 degrees, became NCD and the stall warning stopped at 02:11:45.

If, at that point, the 2 other guys had known "that important piece of information", what would have been their reaction to it? "But I have been climbing..."

And they supposedly had instruments?

HazelNuts39

Lyman,

thanks for picking up a typographical error. The PF's stick was held at back stop, which was the "important piece of information" missing for the 2 other guys that CONFiture refers to, the PNF and a few seconds later the captain.

Lyman

OK dokey....

But we are left with Captain's command to Bonin... "Climb, then...." to which PF replies, "But I have been climbing..."

So even Captain thinks a climb is a good thing to try, knowing they are Nose Up, and descending at 120 knots?

It simply does not compute. Think of it, Captain believes Bonin is inputting ND, and it is not working to lower the Nose? So he commands Nose Up?

Captain, for one, believes there is a control problem? After all, Nose Up quiets the Stall Warn each time. Do two of three pilots believe the controls are broken?

HazelNuts39

Lyman,

the exchange you're referring to is about two minutes later, as the airplane passes through FL100. It's Robert who says "climb, climb". The captain replies "no, no, don't climb".

Lyman

Sorry, my bad. Robert has seen the instruments, he knows the score, does he mean 'climb' rhetorically? As in, 'we need altitude' ? If Captain takes him as saying: "NOSEUP!", but knows that is not the thing to do, why has Captain not said "NOSEDOWN!" long ago? It is obvious attitude is a disaster, and will kill them, I continue to maintain there is far more discussion than what is releaseed by BEA.

"no, no, don't climb..." fair enough, but not "nose down" ? Essentially.... "maintain" ?

HazelNuts39

Lyman,

The pilots express their observations and commands in somewhat imprecise language. For example: One of the three is the ISIS which doesn't display vertical speed. So the PNF probably means nose-up attitude, not vertical speed.

Lyman

Thanks HN, as ever.

Isn't that exchange earlier, pre Stall? In the initial climb? "You climb, so go down..." ?

At 10k, the PNF wants Nose Up? The Captain wants to maintain? and PF has the stick at full back? What do each believe as to assiete?

The aircraft has been stabilised in Stall for two minutes, and the pilots are what, " thinking " ?

Thanks for your responses, HN.....

camel

DW

As you rightly say this thread is about AF 447.

Could you let us all know your opinion on Sully's thoughts and comments in the video posted by Bubbers44...seems to be a deadly silence so far...?

Thank you.

jcjeant

I think this accident will never be fully explained
Too many things have happened unlikely (pilots behavior .. mysterious dialogues or difficult to interconnect them or difficult to explain when compared with FDR data)
So far .. pilot error are the end words ...
I hope that such accident never happens in the future (with same or other aircraft) but unfortunately if this should happen again .. maybe some gray areas will be illuminated in a future investigation if new data are available .....

Lonewolf_50

I appreciate Sully's points. Particularly his last.

But I find the narrator to be full of crap.

If he had known what Bonin was doing (about 2:48 in)

Of course he knew, or could have known, without any reference to stick position. The Left Seat pilot has an attitude indicator. It is a primary reference instrument for instrument flight. Robert's attitude indicator would show him the nose was up.

DFDR evidence is that the nose was up, and that the attitude indicator for left seat was functioning.

Regardless of the position of side stick, the aircraft's attitude was wrong, and needed to be corrected.

Based on what I have read of the CVR excerpts, he did a few times suggest/direct to Bonin to "go down" or descend based upon the altitude obviously being wrong.

I never understood him to say was "lower your nose, that is why you are climbing when you should not be."

Can't say why that is how it went down, but I am puzzled at why a pilot would not do what I understand to be standard methods to assist the flying pilot with detecting and making corrections to errors or deviations.

How to Fly 101 was sadly missed by a professional pilot, in his role as co-pilot for that leg of the mission. Why that took place is a critical issue, as Sully notes at the very end of the video.
It sems to me to have to do with matters other than cockpit design, even though my preference as a pilot would be a set up like Boeing's. Or BOAC's boxing glove.

But there are some core issues here that cannot be solved by addressing that, such as

Basic instrument scan.
Basic error detection and correction.
Basic warnings to other pilot when outside of briefed/target performance goals (maintain heading, speed, altitude when in cruise flight).

The narrator cherry picks a bit of the entire sequence of events to present a skewed version of what the issue are. Note: I agree that stick position is most certainly an aid to the non flying pilot of what the pilot is doing.

I find his presentation dishonest and fundamentally flawed, even though he consulted with Sully and got some valid insight from an experienced airline pilot.

BOAC

LW - thank you for the support for the glove. (We can, no doubt, expect reams of code now to decide when it springs forth).

The thing that none of us can fathom is how PNF completely ignored the climb to a level well above the safe level for the weight. It still puzzles and worries me. Surely it is a fairly basic lesson instilled in crews (and indeed voiced earlier by this same crew) that you CANNOT climb above xxx and continue a safe flight.

This gaping hole in monitoring has not been addressed. This is all before we stalled. Let's (please) forget sidestick, AB control laws etc etc and ask why? We understand the altimeter and v/s were working on PNF's panel. Was he so totally head down in ECAM such that he did NOT watch the shop? Add to the query how could he NOT notice the extreme pitch attitude? It does not gel in my mind. Two experienced and 'competent' trained pilots. I have said before, 'Command' (LHS in this case) calls for one short sharp instruction here, probably as they passed 36000'?? - " Put the nose down" or "I have control". Why was this inhibited?

Lyman

BOAC

For what it is worth...."This gaping hole in monitoring has not been addressed. This is all before we stalled. Let's (please) forget sidestick, AB control laws etc etc and ask why?"

I addressed it early on, along with a similar request to focus on the thirty seconds on either side of the cavalry charge. To no avail; it is evidently more interesting to speculate on how to recover from STALL, than how to prevent its entry.

I thought maybe hellish updraft, uncommanded climb (patent), or BEA fraud.

Without the records, in entirety, this accident will always smell of days old fish...

RetiredF4

I mentioned that before, the answer lies in day to day flying where only minimal load changes are used for pitch changes otherwise the coffee will leave the small little tables. Once the excessive pitch was established there was not enough time left to get the nose down with a gentle maneuver before the airframe ran out of flying speed. This gentle maneuver was present, look at the FDR and there to the normal load factor graph. And the concentration in this early phase was on the roll problem. Selecting TOGA in answer to the second stall warning rendered this gentle nose down / ease off maneuver useless.

The culprit was to get in such a high pitch firsthand after AP disconnect. Only a drastic maneuver would have corrected this pitch timely, and neither PF nor PNF saw the necessity for it and therefore were not prepared to execute it.

HazelNuts39

Could you please elaborate, because I don't understand what you are saying. Are you referring to the first, rather gentle pull-up (1 deg/sec) immediately after A/P disconnect, that was partially corrected before 02:10:49, or to the second that pulled the airplane in the stall warning 2 and then stall?

RetiredF4

@ HN
The first initial pullup from AP disconnect until 02:10:31
- max g 1.6, pitch 12°, climb rate increase up to 7.000 fpm
-
The try to reduce the pitch from 02:10:32 until 02:10:56
-g overall below +1 g, minimum around + .5g, pitch reduction lowest + 6° , climbrate reduction to 1.100 fpm

TOGA at 02:10:56 after SW2:
-pitch increase to +17,9° within 11 sec, climbrate only slight increase to 1500 fpm. Stick initially still slightly nose down increasing to tendency up.

The initial pullup chewed up the energy, brought the airframe in a nose high attitude, started the climb to altitude not sustainable and was not corrected agrssively enough, although the normal load factor shows up tp +.55 g´s, which is quite a heavy felt unload.

Hope that answers your question.