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As an aside, I wondered how a modern airline pilot travelling as a passenger would fair in the "both actual pilots become incapacitated" scenario.
I have always assumed that in the past a Stratocruiser pilot could have safely landed a DC-7 or L1049. And vice versa. Perhaps DC-8s, B707s and Comets too. But does my assumption work for B747, B777, A330 etc? |
I think your question is based on a popular cultural myth, but wouldn't the transition be getting easier? Hopefully, since only two pilots are required these days. "People, I don't wish to alarm you, but can anyone do Windows?"
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Power could translate into "puissance ou poussée". "puissance" = "power" and "poussée" = "thrust". The press would probably use "power" in both cases, "thrust" being too technical for the general public. In technical language, French and English make much the same distinctions between the two terms.. |
Shadow has summed up the most likely sequence of events IMO.
But long ago at the start of these debates I asked a question that has not yet been answered: Do AF regularly flight plan Airbus ops at FLs where coffin corner conditions occur, and where safe flight with degraded automatics would be highly problematic? If the answer is yes, then presumably other Airbus operators do the same. That being the case I will no longer travel anywhere on an Airbus and will advise my friends and family to do the same. |
vee-tail-1
Not so fast, Airbus is safe, as is flying. Coffin Corner was calced by Hazelnuts39 to be at 46,000 feet, or something, well above 447's flightpath. |
vee-tail-1,
Do a bit more research.....; You'll find the average long-haul does fly quite close to "coffin corner". Nothing to do with AF or Airbus. Yes, stop traveling on airplanes..... and in cars, too. |
FDR (and CVR?) data to be released by end of next week
I haven't seen it mentioned here so far, so here it is: French media are reporting that the BEA will release the "raw data" (probably not that raw) from the data recorders (both of them?) by the end of next week. It is said that this upcoming release will not include a statement on the causes of the crash, because the investigation is far from being complete at this point in time.
According to the BEA, this is done to stop more so-called "leaks" from appearing in the press and propagating inaccurate or plain wrong information on the supposed causes of the crash. I find it a bit difficult to understand how they plan to release data from the fight recorders without doing some interpretation and therefore providing hints at the most likely causes, but that's what's being said anyway. |
Yes, stop traveling on airplanes..... and in cars, too. |
Air Trans Pilot Benton West was subsequently killed in a car crash "hauling corn"
Airtran Hero Killed In Crash — Civil Aviation Forum | !!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
alainthailande
It's not so difficult to understand. The BEA will say what happened. Not why it happened.
I'll go have another Singha. |
Reuters reports that Friday is the day the BEA will release a 'sequence of events'. I wonder if they will release a CVR transcript?
Investigators to give details on 2009 Rio-Paris Air France crash | Reuters |
Hi,
if they will release a CVR transcript? |
Christiaanj bearfoil
From your replies I see rampant complacency, and would suggest Airbus is only safe if restricted to day VMC. The Airbus design philosophy is flawed, and unsafe. Plus the new breed of 'pilots' / IT monitors inhabiting the flight deck are inexperienced in hand flying, which the design of the aircraft prevents them doing anyway. The ever growing list of incidents, and near misses would seem to confirm my pessimism. |
vee tee you are talking from the wrong end. Turn yourself upright and start again.
I remember a completely analogue Boeing losing air data and guess what it crashed. I remember a 757 having a problem with only one speed source and not all 3. Guess what...it crashed. Aircraft are complex and inherently safe. When things go wrong however, regardless of manufacturer analogue/digital, all rules are null and void. Now please come and join the real world. |
The Airbus design philosophy is flawed, and unsafe Statistics are not on your side. It's pretty obvious that you have a personal dislike of this particular brand of plane but that doesn't alter the cold hard facts so do yourself a favour and stop spouting nonsense. |
Captain not in cockpit?
DER SPIEGEL (a usually reliable German weekly) reports here (sorry, only in German) that the CVR reveals that Captn. Marc Dubois rushed to the cockpit and shouted commands to the two pilots flying, moments before it all went horribly wrong.
According to the Spiegel report, the pilots successfully tried to avoid the convenctive wx in front of them, but the pitot tubes iced over. Shortly after the ASIs failed (I quote Der Spiegel here), the a/c was pulled up steeply. If this maneuver was commanded by the pilots or the systems is - according to Der Spiegel - unclear at this stage. |
DER SPIEGEL in engl.
Here is a comment in english on DER SPIEGEL
Report: Pilot "not in cockpit" when Air France plane ran into trouble - Monsters and Critics |
The Airbus design philosophy is flawed, and unsafe. Plus the new breed of 'pilots' / IT monitors inhabiting the flight deck are inexperienced in hand flying, which the design of the aircraft prevents them doing anyway. The ever growing list of incidents, and near misses would seem to confirm my pessimism. FYI, the A320 series of aircraft have one of the best safety records in the history of aviation, and they have been flying for over 20 yrs. So can it! Finally, it is true that AB pilots do more system monitoring than hand flying, but that is the way of the world. I myself can control all of my business via my hand-held I phone. I don't remember anyone's phone number anymore, because I don't have to. Is it full proof? No, in a pinch I cant even remember my mothers phone number.....:rolleyes: |
Well.......
Just go to the webpage of BEA and you will see that they DO ALWAYS publish the CVR transcript. |
AF 447 was not brought down by a design philosophy, it was brought down by a set of events which are not, as yet, known with sufficient completeness to draw ANY conclusions as to proximate cause, much less contributory causes. Furthermore, the only thing that preconceptions (positive or negative) regarding design philosophy can do at this stage of the investigation is to reduce the completeness of the analysis of the empirical evidence, to the overall detriment of the proper objective, which is improving aviation safety.
Something else important to keep in mind, before condemning the design philosophy whenever there is a severe incident or accident affecting an FBW aircraft, is a characteristic of abnormal incidents that occurs for ALL types of embedded computer systems. (Indeed, a characteristic that is well known in the embedded computer industry, and was widely discussed 40 years ago, but is largely taken for granted today.) Whenever an embedded system is widely deployed to control (or "automate") a formerly-manual process, the proportion of severe abnormal incidents goes up while the total number of abnormal incidents goes down. Note it is the PROPORTION that goes up -- the total number of abnormal incidents goes down, but the embedded system is so good at dealing with routine problems that the number of common incidents is reduced far more than the number of unusual/severe incidents. In the case of sophisticated flight control systems (all of them, not just Airbus), the very presence of the system may increase the risk of extreme or severe events by doing such a good job of dealing with common events that the (collective) exposure of those aircraft to the possibility of the uncommon events goes up. For an excellent discussion of the differing kinds of risks that affect complex systems, see Epistemic and Aleatory Risk « Dark Matter That author has also written interesting material regarding AF 447 from a systems safety perspective, see The Airbus A330 Aircraft & System Safety « Dark Matter |
MFgeo :ok: Thanks, your links would seem to justfy my rant.
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Which of your rants would that be? The one about flying at coffin corner, which it didn't and they don't?. Or the one about how the aircraft prevents pilots from hand flying, which it doesn't?
Or how you now seek support in articles which are about none of what you ranted about? I hope you are merely trolling as that would, to some degree, make you appear less of a you know what. |
Which of your rants would that be? The one about flying at coffin corner, which it didn't and they don't?. Or the one about how the aircraft prevents pilots from hand flying, which it doesn't? Or how you now seek support in articles which are about none of what you ranted about? The Myth of the Perfect Automatic Man « Dark Matter Criticizes Airbus design philosophy calling it "unnatural". AF 447 – What The Crew Did … Maybe « Dark Matter States that the airplane was in coffin corner. I'm not defending either the facts or the viewpoints in those articles. But they say what they say. And a fair reading of what they do say does indeed support vee-tail-1 "ranting" or "trolling". |
Did YOU bother to read any of those articles? When a "article" such that has been forwarded appears that does not contain a nationalistic/jingoistic slant, then fine, until then....... .....REALLY it's becoming TIRESOME.... |
A casual comment in a single article about it being at coffin corner without offering any proof or anything resembling proof, amounts to nothing. It supports just as much.
I suggest a search for Hazelnuts and PJ's posts on the subject. The other article linked to offers neither support or opposition. It is merely a subjective description without judgement. The series of articles is a compilation of guesswork and assumptions mixed with a little fact. So yes, I did read them all. . |
Well....... Just go to the webpage of BEA and you will see that they DO ALWAYS publish the CVR transcript. For this Friday communication (that was the question) .... forget it |
I did read one of the links to whom some posters refer, and it clearly states:
For the moment we don’t have hard data such as a Flight Data Recorder (FDR) would provide, but we do know something of the psychology of human behaviour and perhaps that can shed some light on the possible actions of the crew. Give me strength. :yuk: |
vee-tail-1
As an Boeing and Airbus driver I feel that your 'RANTS' are just that -RANTS. Fear comes from lack of understanding, or ignorance - I suggest that you go and learn a little more about what you are RANTING. Just because an operator plans a flight too high for the conditions doesn't mean that you have to fly there - it would be negligent to do so and that is why there are huimans on a flight deck. In fact this frequently happens because most flight deck try to carry more fuel than accountants like resulting in heavier aeroplanes and lower 'coffin corner' - perhaps you would like to RANT about safety in fuel policy too. Most Airbus operators encourage as much hand flying as Boeing operators and most pilots only fly because they love flying - not just monitor. Monitoring the approach of coffin corner is exactly the same on an Airbus as a Boeing - responsibility for ensuring it's avoidance is the same flight deck responsibility ( and often predicted by the same manufacturer of FMS ) and skill. And...I'd certainly prefer to be in an Airbus if I had to cope with consequences - degraded law on not. |
From the two articles quoted earlier:
The BEA has said it will release details of the circumstances of the crash on May 27, but that the cause of the crash will take longer to elucidate -and The BEA this week condemned conflicting media reports on the supposed cause of the crash. The BEA's official explanation of the available data is expected to come in an interim report which it plans to publish in the summer. The agency says the black box data is intact and should allow investigators to shed light on the disaster. |
News is that the Captain rushed to the cockpit and shout instructions for the pilots and then the aircraft became uncontrollable, we know the rest of it.
When they are going to release the CVR contents? We all need to know what really happened. |
Der Spiegel
Hi there,
The German newspaper Der Spiegel releases 2 news derived from the data recorders: - the CVR would show that M. Dubois, the captain (the most experimented), was not in the cockpit when the serie of problems began, and rushed to the cockpit to try to shout his orders to the flying crew - the AF 447 stalled at high altitude due to a sudden pitch up, but whether it is a crew manoeuver or a response of the autopilot (just before it disengaged, fueled with erroneous airspeeds) is not avalaible. This pitch up seems similar to the Bigernair case. I don't get why the AP would react to an underestimated airspeed by increasing the pitch angle ? Wouldn't it be an AP reaction to an overestimated airspeed ? Jeff |
Air France 447 May Have Stalled on Sensor Failure - Bloomberg
Air France 447 May Have Stalled on Sensor Failure Air France Flight 447’s flight recordings show the aircraft lost speed and stalled after its airspeed sensors failed while the two co-pilots were at the controls, two people with knowledge of the investigation said. The chief pilot, Captain Marc Dubois, was not in the cockpit when the Airbus A330’s airspeed sensors malfunctioned, causing the autopilot to disengage over the Atlantic Ocean, said the people, who declined to be identified because the investigation is still confidential. A low-speed stall occurs when an aircraft slows to the point where its wings suddenly lose lift, an incident pilots learn to overcome in basic training. Flight 447’s last automated transmissions logged faulty readings from airspeed sensors that caused the autopilot to shut down in bad weather, minutes before the accident in which all 228 passengers and crew perished. “To get out of a stall, you stick the nose down and wait for gravity to speed up the aircraft,” said David Learmount, a former U.K. Royal Air Force pilot and safety editor at Flight International. Pulling out can be straightforward, “providing you realize you’re in one,” he said. Making Progress Air France spokesman Jean-Charles Trehan said the company had no comment on the investigation’s early findings. France’s BEA air-accident investigation bureau also declined to comment on the circumstances of the June 1, 2009, crash. Investigators say they are making progress after maritime search and salvage experts retrieved the flight data and cockpit voice recorders this month from a depth of 3,900 meters (12,800 feet). Dubois was among the victims recovered from the sea surface in the weeks after the crash. The failure of the Thales SA (HO) airspeeds sensors, or Pitot tubes, occurred while the plane was cruising at about 35,000 feet, four hours after take-off from Rio de Janeiro. At that stage in the Paris-bound flight, it is routine practice for the captain to take a rest break and leave the co-pilots at the controls, Air France has said. Airbus declined to comment beyond a BEA-approved May 16 telex, in which the company told airlines that preliminary black-box analysis yielded no additional recommendations. Two months after the crash, Airbus advised A330 and A340 operators to replace the Thales sensors with a model from Goodrich Corp. (GR) A stall is typically preceded by shaking and vibrating of the aircraft, and modern jets are equipped with a steering-stick shaker and audio warning to alert the pilot. Stall recovery requires pilots to coordinate the aircraft’s angle and power to the engines to avoid aggravating the situation. According to a report by Der Spiegel Online, which could not be verified, the black boxes reveal that the Air France plane climbed sharply after the speed-sensor failure and Captain Dubois returned to the cockpit before the crash. The BEA has said it plans to issue a preliminary factual statement May 27 on the findings of its initial black-box analysis, without identifying any of the accident’s causes. An interim report is due in mid-July. To contact the reporters on this story: Laurence Frost in Paris at [email protected]; Andrea Rothman in Paris at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at [email protected]; Benedikt Kammel at [email protected] |
Anton Du Flasheart:
Monitoring the approach of coffin corner is exactly the same on an Airbus as a Boeing - responsibility for ensuring it's avoidance is the same flight deck responsibility ( and often predicted by the same manufacturer of FMS ) and skill. And...I'd certainly prefer to be in an Airbus if I had to cope with consequences - degraded law on not |
Air France plane climbed sharply after the speed-sensor failure http://sokolov.org.ru/RA-85185.jpg |
Oh Dear SKS777, I don't think you are a pilot. All the 777, 757 and 767s you are watching are actually overpowered in order to meet take off safety requirements. An aircraft must be able to continue its take off safely in the event of an engine failure after its go/no go speed (V1). So, if a twin loses a donk, it is on half power, with four engines it has only lost a quarter. It is no wonder, therefore, that the twins seem to leap off the ground like spring chickens! In the cruise, however, all that excess power is an embarrasment as the match between engines and airframe cannot be as precisely matched as with four engines. Have you ever seen a 747 or 707 (KC135) stagger off? No different to a 340 I assure you!
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In the cruise, however, all that excess power is an embarrasment as the match between engines and airframe cannot be as precisely matched as with four engines. As to the news releases: It may well be that the pitots iced up, the flight computers sensed high speed and the autoflight system wanted to counteract and pitch up and reduce thrust, as it could not cope it disconnected the autopilot and "told" the pilots you have controls. What I am curious now, is what was the input of the pilots and did the aircraft obey them, or did the duped protections still inhibit a eventual stick down input! That will be the really interesting point. |
What I am curious now, is what was the input of the pilots and did the aircraft obey them, or did the duped protections still inhibit a eventual stick down input! Although the protection is only active in Normal Law and can be overridden in Alternate Law (at least that's the case for 320 family) Whilst I can't be bothered to trawl though the pages of nonsense on this forum I believe I read that the ACARS messages indicated that the aircraft did downgrade to Alternate Law? |
With the autoflight inop. and Protections not performing as advertised, the question is actually, "Did they manage to get the beast into Direct?"
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What I am curious now, is what was the input of the pilots and did the aircraft obey them, or did the duped protections still inhibit a eventual stick down input! By the way... GPSes does not get clogged by ice. How much tail/head-wind would be required to stall/overspeed an aircraft if GPS speed was used as input to AP/AT? Of course, it would not be the one and only speed reference. Say, we use GPS speed as a "sanity check" to catch a clogging pitot? Is it even possible? Probably not... |
What a horrible Catch-22.
The diagnosis appears to be, from the leak (I realize that isn't the whole picture) airspeed unreliable, pilots thus unaware of actual aircraft performance, and they must make a nose/pitch decision to control aircraft when X event happens. (Nose pitch up? Stall warning based on AoA? High speed warning from otto due to approaching? No, scratch that one, airspeed not reliable ... ) If you don't know your actual airspeed, you may change pitch in the wrong direction (see what the guy in Buffalo did a while back, wrong input to a stall scenario) as you either approach Mach limits, or you approach high speed stall. If you guess wrong in the corrective input, you make the situation worse. Hell of a coin to flip there, and not a lot of time to ponder. Granted, maybe "pitch and power we had set a moment ago" is the proper response with a flurry of error reports and warning audio going off? But to get to that decision you have to figure out the first issue, that your airspeed (a triple redundant sytem and a primary performance indicator) has gone awry. How long does that take, what are the cues? Aside: Over at tech log sub forum, poster takata has some interesting info on airspeed sensing failures from Airbus, a few years old. Is task/sensory overload an issue? Someone at Tech Log mentioned the plethora of warnings and ECAMS messages for the Qantas A380 turbine disk loss ... were the gents in AF 447 similarly assaulted by a lot of warnings at once? To top it off, you have no AoA indicator in the cockpit (do I have that right, in the A330, no AoA gage to read?). AoA gage might help you direct the attitude to set acceptable performance, while you sort out what is wrong with your airspeed sensing system. AoA is the basis for some of the protections built into the various laws for Airbus flight control system, but pilots don't have an AoA gage. Would having an AoA gage have been helpful to this crew, I wonder? :confused: |
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