bear, one may make some criticisms of various members of, and actions of, the flight crew without precluding criticisms of the others whose contributions to this event, via their roles, actions, and inactions were prelude to that dark and stormy night.

Let's not raise a false dichotomy.

I estimate that the key to your objection is the way that cause factors are communicated.

The vague term of "pilot error" has so much currency, and so dubious a meaning, that it can be misleading or be no more than a fig leaf.

Halfnut, that's the link to the four page synthesis report.

Bear - look at the traces. This wasn't a LOC ending in stall, this was an aircraft *controlled into* the stall, because the guy with the stick in his hand had not been properly trained to deal with the set of circumstances with which he was faced.

After starting by insisting the vertical stabiliser must have separated, then moving on to various dark murmurings about the computer doing sometihng that the pilots didn't expect, or random actuation of flight surfaces taking them out of stable flight, your insistence that something must have been wrong with the aircraft (over and above the pitot tubes) in the face of all the evidence put forth has been puzzling. Why are you so sure they're hiding something?

If there was anything nefarious going on, then you'd expect AF (which is a also a commerical interest of the French government) to have been given the whitewash treatment too - as it is they've come in for some pretty heavy stick here.

Nefarious? The only thing I accuse the agency of is bias. As such, I believe it is equal to manslaughter, regardless the presence of fraud or no.

Look away from this current state of affairs. The Probes? Identified as problematic, and suspected of many episodes of intake to UAS. Rejection of AHI? BUSS? An apparent and outrageous ignorance of high altitude flight with untrained Pilots (That is the charge). This is outright negligence.

It cannot be seen another way. And yet the galling (gaulling) nonchalance: "perhaps a study of the need for AoA?"

I fear I have been crying wolf for two years; since he has not gobbled our young quite yet, "I see conspiracies." The wolf's jaw is full of blood, yet I have been overreacting?

My skin is 4 gauge dermis, and critics don't bother me. I have tried, and if I cannot convince you of shortcomings in the approach (unstable?), I have given up.

So three 'pilots' in the cockpit, a pull back on the stick and hold it there for....how long... until it hit the deck. OK, one may have panicked but all three?
'pilots'?

If the disconnect between a/c and 3 pilots is that pronounced, why is Air France still flying?

Wait - come back here- we're not finished.

And I say again, would a biased agency be hauling AF across the coals for failing to train their pilots correctly?

Let's start with the technical issues you present:

Airbus put out a service bulletin and AF implemented it, but did not expedite it. BUSS was a system developed to assist with the pitot problems, and was still very new at the time this accident occurred - I don't know how take-up has progressed since then.

And Air France will answer it. This is nothing to do with the aircraft at this point.

AoA indications were available in the form of FPV display. Whether that usage was trained as such or not I don't know.

Shortcomings in what approach? The Airbus control philosophy? I'm really having trouble understanding your point and I really want to.

Dozy

Absolutely. Which is why my favourite training philosophy has always been KISS (keep it simple, stupid), to cater for the worst case/lowest common denominator scenario.

Levelvibes.


Well, I thought this quote was rather surprising from the report---
"Really?! Wonder how much high altitude manual flying he's done, (and I'm not talking about simply keeping the aircraft straight and level, unlike what these guys had to deal with).

In the miliitary, we had lots of practice, and I can tell you it was not as easy as it might sound. A small pitch input that would normally be of no consequence at low altitudes would quickly put you in stickshaker zone high up, especially if you had made the mistake of climbing way above your optimum (buffet margin) level.

Not that these matters concerned us at the time; (no SLF to worry about) :ok:. Different matter these days...

just this once, then I'am off for vacation

Dozy, Say I develop an intricate and efficient new line in my production shop, it will streamline my production, cut cost, and widen my market. Something I can be proud of.

I pay the enormous development costs, exercise patience, have it installed, and debugged. It has problems, as do all sophisticated technologies, and it goes on line. Some of the problems have to do with training my personnel, so an expensive and sophisticated system takes care of that.

It works flawlessly. As it happens, there is a fantastically remote chance it may malfunction, which is acknowledged, and workarounds are installed. The workarounds are not modern, and involve a bypass of the new technology onto the old (left in Place) machine.

There are now two methods of avoiding this remote malfunction.

Step One. Do nothing. The machine has a good chance of self correcting.

ALTERNATE. Cycle THIS LEVER, and the line switches to the old machine which has a phenomenally good record with this remote but systemic problem.

In my business, it is called the CRITICAL PATH. Only in my business, if the Path is lost, no-one dies.

I agree it does fail a gut check.
I will not be satisfied unless they provide at least the same level of detail as the Colgan 3047 incident report i.e. full transcript from push back, simulated representation of flight and control inputs.
On the training issue why wait for bureaucracey. A pilot always has the option of paying themselves for extra training/sim time. Personally I would like to have basic flying experience in all the control laws including mechanical. But then I am a control freak. I detest the idea of driving an a/c and not knowing how it feels in different modes. Isn't the purpose of training to go through all the options, bells and whistles? Why hold back any training of flying characteristics from the pilots. Have we not learned from the titanic. Ships can sink and a/c can stall so we have to train for it.

If you had old style fixed wing military pilots the aircraft would never have been lost. All these aircraft need a magic switch that, when it is turned on, the aircraft turns into a basic stick handling machine.

xcitation : Don't get too xcited, Sir ;)
The transcript cannot be "full from push back", as only 30' or 2h (depends which track) are recorded.

4greens: Really cannot see how this magic switch would have improved in AF447 case... :confused:
- If the crew (ex-military in your hypotesis, but any crew would do) had recognised the stall, there is no evidence that a proper recovery action (ND until the plane flies again) would have been prevented by the "system"
- If the magic switch was there in AF447, but the crew didn't recognize the stall, no difference in the end.

4Greens, what if the pilot flying isn't "old style" military pilots, but guys who have flown mostly FBW and HUD, in planes that don't quite spin? (I suspect your point has merit, nonetheless). (gums has given us some great insights into an early gen FBW system, the F-18 is another that could compare, though I've heard it's tough to make it depart. No personal experience.) F-35? F-22? Typhoon?

What monkey skills are being imbedded in flying those birds?

The "old style" military pilots are running into some training changes. The elementary level Out of Control Flight and three dimensional upset trainers are gone. (I now speak only to US, not idea on the other side of the pond).

The Tweet (T-37) which the USAF could spin and inverted spin, is gone. T-6 has replaced it, though it still spins. Turbo prop.

The T-2 is gone, USn jet pilots used to spin, depart, cross control, and inverted spin train.

In its place is the T-45, which does not have quite the range of maneuvers one can train in that regard.

In time, the military experienced jet pilots will have had spin training, on our side of the pond, only in the T-6, which spins well enough. It isn't flown up where Eagles dare: spins tend to be somewhere in the 8-15,000 feet box. (Depends on the Op Area, they may have raised the floor in the past few years, not sure) .

What does the future hold?

I still don't fully understand what you're saying. If this accident had anything at all to do with the control philosophy, automation, FBW or whatever then I could make sense of what you're trying to say.

But in this case no amount of steam gauges, big red buttons to disable the automatics or probably even interconnected yokes would have made a difference. The PF responded to the UAS by pulling back on the stick and inducing a climb to the apogee and stalled, then after a brief moment where he corrected downwards he applied full TOGA power and hauled on the stick for most of the way down to ground contact, making control inputs far in excess of what would have been considered acceptable at cruise altitude. Just the same as with Birgenair the crew were overwhelmed by a situation that ran out of their control. The PNF did not take control, despite having a much better read of the situation and the Captain's advice seemed not to register.

Hi,

Well .. the miltary pilots (at least jets pilots) have a ejectable seat ... that can make the difference now and in the future

Lonewolf
Well perhaps this Wolf...

NASA - NASA Dryden Fact Sheet - Intelligent Flight Control System

I feel sure that this has already been posted but here it is again anyway.

http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp...90601e1.en.pdf

Cost benefit analysis
 

Back to the original concept:
With an airplane that is prone to iced up pitot tubes, which then causes loss of airspeed, which causes loss of autopilot and autothrust, and with no high altitude training in hand flying, and flying in an area of high buildups and potential turbulence, it seems to me the best course of action is to AVOID it all in the first place.
Simulator training costs money, deviations around weather costs money, hiring experienced pilots costs money --
If you can't afford it you shouldn't try to operate an airline.

You know, I have been watching this thread for quite a while as all of us have. There seems to be basically 2 types of us in here. The 1st type insists that if they were able to hand fly the aircraft with just basic instruments this never would have happened. These guys probably flew way before X-Bots came out, began in a Champ, maybe flew some ag, sweated it out flew light twins in crappy weather sleeping on an air mattress at the crash pad. They caught a lucky break to fly jets and loved every minute of it.
Then there is the other group whom I will divide into 2 subsets. Subset (1) knows they do not have 100% control of the aircraft 100% of the time since it is FBW. However they know this is a design of the manufacturer and since the manufacture has designed the aircraft to be pilot proof they know each flight is a roll of the dice but they are OK with this. They just pray nothing serious happens the system as a whole cannot handle.
Subset (2) has not only drank the KoolAid but has the KoolAid main-lined into the subclavian artery. These poor suckers pray to the god of automation almost daily, totally believing the manufacturer is all seeing and knowing. Since it knows and sees all the system has to be able to do a better job in the flying aspect and the judgment angle. I mean why would the manufacturer make something having the ability to vote out humans if this was not so?
The last group probably came from some academy and took the fast track to the airlines. Not that there is anything wrong with that.......
Anyway to make a long story short, we are screwing ourselves out of a job slowly but surely. You do not need to pay computers, they do not unionize and do not require life support.
Is this truly a step forward?

Examples of this type please? I don't see anyone around here that matches that description at all...