It has been reported (here) that the Captain may well have been with his 'girlfriend' who was ?presumably? in First. I would have expected him to notice the unusual deck angle if nothing else - pretty much a climb deck angle, I think, which would make the trip to the cockpit considerably 'uphill', along with the rapid bank changes. I think I would have had difficulty hiding a look of concern.

Please don't contribute to the urban legends......
I'm not going to read through the about 3000 'AF447' posts to check, but to the best of my memory it started off with Bonin's (the PF) wife who was on the flight.
That has led to all kind of suppositions, like the wife being on the flight deck, the PF being too 'fatigued' after the last day(s) in Rio, and now the captain's 'girlfriend' being added to the 'probable cause'.....

- only need to go back 50 posts to #946!

Would the cvr pick up the chimes of cc trying to call in ? It would be nice to think that it was all taken as turbulence. The dynamics in the FD don't seem to have been dramatically imparting a sensation of falling..............

That was merely jcjeant helping to create another urban legend.... and obviously succeeding....

Crew rest module
 

Are you definitive sure about that?
AF447 was equipped with a crew rest module in the cargo hold behind door 3,
like that one from Lufthansa, and a piece of junk was found clearly identified top be part of this module.

And that is the way it looks inside.

If the rest bunk(s) were so close of the flight deck and the captain was inside ... it is strange that he did not hear any aural alarms (54 seconds of continuous stall aural alarm)
My opinion is that the captain was not in the rest bunk (near or far from flight deck)

If the captain had his girlfriend in 1st class, good for him. At least he didn't have a boring last flight before the event. He couldn't control who the company hired to fly during his rest period so don't see why some of you say he was responsible. It was not his responsibility to make sure they could hand fly or not.

My sim check was in an electra I had never flown, eventually down to a one engine hand flown ILS with no visual because that was the only sim they owned. The job was in a 737. It wasn't hard but now it is all different. Hand flying isn't considered important because of the automation.

Low time pilots will fly cheap, that is important. Chief pilots don't control hiring now, management bean counters do.

Cockpit crew and Cabin crew have different rest areas.

There is no "first class" on AF A 330, only "C class".

Mr Optomistic
 

Yeah that's why I asked the the question, was thinking that myself. If the crew didn't know they were falling did the PAX? Did the PAX know they were in imminent danger, was there panic in the cabin? I suppose it will be hard to find out. I presume a lot of the PAX were asleep when the incident commenced.

Would there have been any stall buffet or structural break up of the aircraft or did it just smoothy fall until impact?

You can't feel that you are falling - or rising, come to that - when the speed is constant. What you feel is acceleration (speed and/or direction changing), and a great many people are remarkably insensitive to vertical accelerations.

What is it about feelings in the ears?
When considering the vertical velocity of the drop and the alarm on cabin pression .. can be assumed that the phenomenon of pressure was felt by many passengers and crew members
Even in a lift .. some sensitive individuals experience the phenomenon of pressure

the word "girl" is not part of interim report 2 or 3.....

but on side 15 of report 2 is shown that parts of the "2crew Berths" with position direkt behind the cockpit are found swimming on the atlantic.....

From report N*2 .....

sunnyjhon
Edited for put a small image (click on) :8

• http://i.imgur.com/WcQDFs.jpg

Not wishing to fuel the girlfriend legend (not much...) does anyone know whether the cabin crew rest was scheduled to be occupied at the time of the capt's nap? I can't see it anywhere in the BEA reports.

Oversize images
 

This message is primarily for jcjeant but also for everyone else who may not realise that if you post overlarge images or overlong links within you message, it reduces the ability of some browsers to display the whole page. In other words, it makes the pages overlarge so that none of the messages on that particular thread can be viewed properly.

I have Omniweb, Safari, Firefox and Opera and it has the same deleterious effect on all of them!

Ta!

I found this today written by the Dick Rutan from California that designed some very futuristic aircraft that made history.

Two things:

1. The Airbus computer system algorithm is designed by a bunch of computer nerds who have no understanding of aviation.

2. The copilots are not even actual pilots but from the same world as computer nerds that designed the system. I'll call them "computer nerd pilots" who should not be allowed to operate a wheelbarrow.

This is worse than I thought....the pitot tube ice over was just temporary and most of the time all indications were normal. What idiot would design a plane where the right seat had no indication of what the left seat was doing with the stick. OH yes, the nerds at Airbus.

To say that this was "Pilot Error" ...... lacks understanding of the ramifications of this gargantuan **** up starting with nerds that designed this travesty and the "aircrews that operate it. (AIRBUS) And to think someone has allowed them (AIRBUS) to put into operation a plane that can carry 400 naive souls.
OMG for the sake of aviation in this century why has no one put a stop to this insanity?

Dick Rutan
an actual pilot.

Given that the crew on the Airblue A321 didn't respond to more than 20 terrain warnings, most of which were "pull up", and the crew of AF447 didn't respond to a similar alarm shouting "stall" at the top of its electronic lungs, it seems ridiculous to labour the point on sidestick feedback.

Time and time again the issue of pilots ignoring, or failing to respond to, alarms is a factor in avoidable accidents. Never mind the sidestick. Ask yourselves what part of "stall" or what part of "pull up" they don't understand.

Most aircraft in a stall usually enter a spin or at some point end up inverted. These guys seem to have ditched it wings level. Maybe this tells us they must have had some sort of scan going to not have flipped the bird.

I knew some of the people who designed the "Airbus computer system algorithm(s)" (I worked in the next office...). They were not 'computer nerds', I can assure you. They knew what they were doing.
Whether the original design specifications, thought up by 'system engineers' (not 'computer nerds' as such), with totally new 'control laws', were equally well thought out, is a question I'm still asking myself to this day.

There IS too much confusion here between system design and it's physical implementation, which can be mechanical or electro-hydraulic-mechanical (as in the very olden days), with analog computers (as in 'my' Concorde days... but there were many other similar systems, from Trident to early 747 to VC10 to the F-104... I'll leave it to the oldies among us to expand the list), or with digital computers (as in the A320 for a start, and most present-day A&B flight control systems).
The fact that the switch from analog to digital happened at the same time as the switch from 'steam gauges' to 'glass' tends to confuse the issue even further.

Given the challenge, the A320 flight control system could probably have been implemented as an analog system, but it would have been heavier, more expensive, and more difficult to flight test and optimise. "Been there, done that"....

bubbers, from your quote, I have my doubts about Dick Rutan's insight in flight control system design, even if I'm the first to admit he designed some pretty unique aeroplanes !