Two pilots couldn't hand fly. The Pitot system failed. They did not use the loss of airspeed checklist but pulled up 11 degrees into a full stall. Everybody knows you can not pull up to an 11 degree attitude at FL350 but they did. Now they hold this full nose up attitude for over three minutes until impact with the ocean. The captain that can hand fly comes up in the last minute and sees something he has seen before. Full stall, full back side stick and it is too late. Why do airlines hire these computer operator button pushers? Botom line always says hire the low time guys because they will fly cheap. It ain't cheap when you dump an airbus in the ocean with about 250 souls on board. This crash was so avoidable with a competent crew.

@ CONF iture:
 

No speed gains for DIRECT law.

In (FCPC) DIRECT law the maximum elevator deflection depends on CG position and (in both FCPC as FCSC DIRECT law) on slat and flap position so that the load factor is limited at high speed and a minimum maneuverability is obtained at low speed.

So beside the fact that the THS would not have gone to such wild setting, any ND command would have had much more effect.
I'd really like to see 2 simulations done side by side with the same inputs, one in the AF447 Law and the other in Direct Law ...

Who cares what law it is in. Hire pilots that can fly in any law. That is what us old timers had to do. Why make it easy to be an airline pilot just because they fly cheap? Go back to when we got hired and make them show they can actually fly an aircraft without a computer pad. Cost???

CONFiture

So too would any NU command? Instead of a chronic and persistent ~1G loss of energy to Stall, the wings in DIRECT LAW, given similar pilotage, would STALL at a lower altitude, sooner, (higher airspeed), and with some actual departure, not the "Mush" that gums says, (I agree). A definite rumble, break, and drop of the NOSE.

Perhaps a spin as well? With Roll DIRECT, who could say?

But the aircraft would be in a position to regain flying speed, (Nose Down), with an alerted pilot, via the break, and three pilots aware of the STALL..... And no OVERSPEED protection to muck things up...

I'm getting that sense of recursive déjà vu again. We've been over this so many times in the previous threads, so what do we say to a little realpolitik?

CONF, Lyman - I'm sure you and others would find such an experiment interesting, and truth be told you could probably derive any conclusion you wanted from the results.

But looking at it from a practical standpoint, the only reason to make a fundamental change in the behaviour of autotrim in Alternate Law (outside of better feedback on what it's doing) would be if the crew input was a reasonable course of action and in keeping with basic aircraft handling principles and the system responded in a way that had a detrimental effect on the outcome.

Now I'm sorry, but no matter which way you slice it - based on the evidence available the reactions of the crew of AF447 were neither reasonable nor in keeping with basic aircraft handling principles (NB : This is a purely factual statement, not an attempt to apportion blame or responsibility).

@bubbers44:
The devil's in the details. In fact the PF (F/O Bonin) was a sailplane pilot with advanced qualifications, so he'd likely have been better versed in stick-and-rudder than many of his peers. The key detail is that they had no experience or training in high-altitude manual handling.

Yeah right. But wasn't Bonin flying with his feet flat on the floor? That leaves only stick skills and those were clearly not up to the task.

I don't know - I don't even know if it was established. The point I was getting at is that saying "the pilot(s) couldn't hand-fly" is inaccurate and prone to be repeated in that distorted fashion.

What is not in question is that on this particular occasion they *didn't* hand-fly correctly, and that they were never given training in high-altitude manual handling. A sorry state of affairs regardless, but it's a lot different than saying they were simply unable to hand-fly, period.

Dozy
Don't want to belabor the point, but you don't have enough experience in a cockpit to really understand the fundamental way that proper flying methods were violated. You do a pretty good job, but sometimes you draw some strange conclusions----and I attribute that to lack of hands on experience.

Generations of pilots learned to fly smoothly by a proper use of the trim controls. The Airbus architecture minimizes the value of this skill and modern flight management systems instead place a lot of importance on typing skills and staying ahead of the computers. The job is changing, but occasionally the old skills are all that stand between success and abject failure.

So .. the company that employed the pilots felt that A330 does not require knowledge of manual flight at high altitude
What knowledge and tests has proved to be able to hold an airline transport pilot certificate such as that held by the AF447 pilots?
Is that these tests contain manual flight (real ..not simulation) of widebody at high altitude ?So all time for those planes (AF) that are at high altitude ( great percentage of the flying time) .. this is a potential catastrophe in the waiting .. if a pilot touch the joystick and pedals ?
What a beautiful battlefield for lawyers :)

@ CONF iture:
 

There was a simulation done without any SS input, that would have been their best option.

Since the majority of inputs was NU, I don't think the outcome would be much different.

Well yes, but that doesn't make the Airbus FBW system bad, dangerous or worse than anything else - it's just an iterative example of how technology has changed. I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but isn't there a hint of "why can't they just do it the old-fashioned way" about that point?

That's a different issue - modern FMS is not related to how Airbus set up their FBW flight deck - indeed it's not even an Airbus-only issue!

In this case, the old "fly by trim" skill would not have helped. All they needed to do was leave the stick alone and see how the aircraft behaved after AP disconnect. Of course, they should know enough to check the trim wheel setting if things are doubtful, and correct if necessary, but you can train that in the sim.

If the majority of inputs had been NU in DIRECT? Would they? Leaving in load for pitch command whilst roll is direct sounds like a mistake a human would make. And not a pilot.

Tens of millions of people are aware that PITCH/AoA did these gents in. The pilots ignored 'assiette'?

No discussion of AoA on deck of 447? None. The single most important data in the accident, and no evidence of awareness of it in the published record?

As if Pitch and AoA are unknown in aeronautics? Not a word?

The only hint is when we hear, "Try Climb"? Three certificated pilots ignore completely the mechanism that will kill them all? I may be the only one, but it is not possible that with all the upset and LOC, assiette was not mentioned, not once.....

And their lasting legacy is the broken record from bubbers44?\

Correct, but no pilot would accept to remain steady 3 or 400 ft below in RVSM airspace ... and again, why a proper information/training was not naturally put in place as Airbus had all the data ?

That has to be seen - NU inputs are effective no doubt but the THS does not collaborate ... Maybe they still go to the stall ... but that's not that easy ... and that's not that easy to maintain ...

Some experiment has to be done.

Lyman, as has been discussed before, there isn't an AoA gauge available for reference on the instrument panel. Pages of discussion on that, as I am sure you recall, over the course of the BEA "reveal" process and on the competing philosophy of what to do with the precious square feet of display area available to the crew.

Someone posted this further, up, IIRC bubbers.
I don't know if it was too late at that point or not.
What the crucial moment was that would have allowed a nose down, restore airspeed, unstall, recover via pullout at an altitude of > 1.0 feet has been calculated by some sharper folks than me. A best guess. It may have been past that point that Captain Dubois arrived, or it may have been X seconds previous.

I question whether or not he'd "seen that before" in an A330.

My rejoinder to you is due to the general point that A330 full stall practice isn't in the training regime (based on 2-3 years of discussions on this). Thus, "stall it to get various data points" was not done during development since it is not a cert requirement. (Probably).
Until the AF 447 crew became test pilots unwillingly, some of the stall and post stall characteristics of an A330 were unknown.

How do you train someone (Captain Dubois) when the info to train him with doesn't exist? Further that lack of data points, the flight sims can't be soundly programmed to give "what it does when stalled" training.

This leaves any pilot, not just Captain Dubois, lacking a chance to be in a full stall situation in a training scenario. Granted, stall prevention is the general training focus, for good and valid reasons.

To sum up: I don't think he'd "seen that before" and thus was playing catch up from the moment he entered the cockpit. Had what he saw, as you suggest, been something he recognized as a stalled A330 -- something "he'd seen before" -- my estimate is that he'd have directed Bonin to make stall recovery control inputs rather than the directions he did give him.

It is also my estimate that CVR transcripts would have included some rather forceful language, to include such bon mots as "merde, we're stalled, get the &$^# nose down!" or words to that effect.

That's an estimate, and we can't ever know.

AoA can be derived, that too was discussed, ad nauseum. But if only PITCH (assiette), in all its extreme iterations, NOT ONE WORD?

Upon the first reading of the CVR, some Press released a comment from DuBois, as he entered the cockpit, (He had heard the STALLWARN, briefly).

"This is STALL, get the NOSE DOWN"....It disappeared from the public domain, and I cannot find it here in the earliest threads.

No word from BEA, only an abbreviated and "approved" version.

"We have lost all control"....PITCH too? No discussion of controls that continue to function.

I do not know if my conclusions make my sanity suspect, but from the very first, I have not trusted the way the discussion "evolved" to competely blame the pilots.

As a pilot, I will always doubt the slam dunk nature of the comdemnation that clouds the professionalism of this flghtcrew.

Does that mean BEA have published lies? Perhaps, but for now, it is not necessary to believe they lie.

Only that they are quiet, and sit on the only possibility of exoneration.

That's unacceptable....

thanks for your response, LW

I repeat the question; Even if such an experiment were done and your supposition were correct - which it may well be - what practical difference does it make?

It certainly would not constitute a case for changing the design and operation of autotrim in Alternate Law for the reasons I stated above.

Why not correcting something that is stupid : auto trimming to the point of stall and further into it - Let a pilot take such deadly initiative, don't do it for him.

It won't do anything unless the pilot asks it to though!

Lyman:

I see what you were pointing to a bit more clearly. Just a few extracts from the CVR from some verbal exchanges early on:
(Note: relevant CVR inputs are from after the event began, which was about 2:10:06) (PL & PR = seat position)

PL : Watch your speed Watch your speed
PR: ok ok ok I'm going back down
PL: According to the three you're going up, so you go back down
PL: You're at ... go back down

As you point out, identifying a problem with pitch is not recorded. Just for interest, added time tags to some subsequent references .... many left out ...

PR 2:10:49
We're in yeah we're in climb
PR 2 h 11 32
I no longer have control of the plane; I no longer have any control at all of the plane
CAP 2 h 11 min 43
what are you doing?

in the next half a minute, various points comments, actions ... then ...

CAP 2:12:15-19
I don't know we're going down
My read on this was there is a pause between "I don't know" and "we're going down"

The Captain sees descent on the instruments and verbally notifies his crew of that condition.

In the next minute, for whatever discussion and control input went on, and as we've discussed numerous times before, a correction to the person at the controls (PR) to do something with pitch is not recorded.

PR 2:13:25
What is... how come we're continuing to descend so fast?

Reference to pitch is made late in the event, though the point seems to be well after a successful recovery (unstall, pull out, climb ..) could have been initiated and achieved

2:13:40
CAP: No no no don't climb back up
PL: Go down, then
2:13:45
PL: Go give the me controls. The controls to me.
PR: Go on, you have the controls. We're still in TOGA, ok
2:14:05
CAP: Watch it, you're pitching up <-----------------
PL: I'm pitching up? <-----------------
PR: Well, we should, we're at 4,000 feet
2:14:18
CAP: Go on, pull

It ends shortly after that. (In tears :( )