As I understood it the group from which requirements were drawn involved a fairly broad cross-section of pilots.

I'd venture to say that *your* big issue with Airbus is the lack of tactile feedback. You're not alone, Heino Caesar of Lufthansa felt the same way - however a lot of pilots have no issue whatsoever with it.

If you really believe it's that simple, give it a try, and good luck getting that gear certified. "Pride and principle?" - rubbish. In order to pass certification the devices have to be proved to be able to resist failure to a probability ratio of 10^-9 per hour. My CH simming gear went back twice - the first time failing after 6 months, and that was kept in a dry, sealed box, not constantly exposed to the ever-changing temperature and humidity of a line aircraft - though somewhat ironically, the cheapo rumble stick that I used when flying the A320 sim (sadly, I don't have the free time anymore) never gave me a day's trouble.

Who do you mean by "we"? If you mean pilots, then it's clear that a significant number consider it a "nice to have" rather than a necessity in day-to-day operations, otherwise Airbus would never have been able to challenge Boeing in the airliner stakes.

If you mean human beings in general, I'd say that it becomes a matter of training and what we become used to. I maintain that tactile feedback is useful in the initial training scenario in order to accustom the pilot with the inputs required to maneouvre the aircraft, and additionally to understand the factors of how air resistance affects the control surfaces at various attitudes and speeds - in line flying, when you're supposed to have all that stuff (as well as stall recognition and recovery) down, I (along with others) don't see it as so much of a necessity.

No need to shout. As I said earlier there are several things to take into account. The A320 project went onto the drawing board in 1982 and was just about ready to enter service by 1988. This meant that in those 6 years (which is by no means a short time to develop an airliner) every new system had to go through a long certification process which, coupled with the engineering complexity maxim, meant that those systems had to be kept as simple as possible.

Combine this with the fact that the hardware specified had to be proven and therefore a few years old at the time. I'd hazard a guess that the hardware was specified around 1985, which meant the venerable (in computer terms) 80186 (introduced 1982) and 68000 (introduced 1979) were pressed into service. They were quite advanced for their time, but even by the standards of the late '80s and early '90s they were fairly low down the pecking order performance-wise. When Boeing caught on to how the airlines were responding to the new FBW offerings and put the 777 on the drawing board, they had more advanced proven technology to work with, and so the complexity of a force-feedback system was less of a challenge. Added to which the FBW concept in general had been proven by Airbus, so Boeing probably had an easier job getting their basic control logic systems certified in the first place.

What this tells me is that you have an innate distrust of technology, and that colours your perception of the systems - which is quite ironic given that the modern Airbus and Boeing systems are designed to degrade quite gracefully - they've convinced the certification authorities and the regulators that they won't automatically control you into an unstable attitude and then hand you back the controls, yet you seem to be fully convinced that they will.

Now I'm not saying they won't or can't, but I believe the chances of it happening are suitably remote, and I hope that given a competent pilot, the aircraft is capable of being recovered in the highly unlikely event that they ever do.

That's a fair amount of conjecture in there, and a couple of outright misapprehensions. They didn't perform the stall recovery procedure *at all*, the PNF clearly called out that A/P and A/THR were off, followed by announcing Alternate Law - and none of us know whether the PNF was ever "head down" reading the ECAM messages, let alone scrolling through them - he certainly seemed to be aware enough of how the PF was controlling the aircraft to tell him several times that he was overcontrolling in pitch and roll.

He had no control because he'd stalled the aircraft! Look, regarding the priority switch, the Airbus design (due to the factors I mentioned earlier) was designed to operate in an environment where the crew follow procedure, which is that one pilot should be PF and the other PNF at any given time in 99% of operational situations, and as such is an aid to enforcing CRM and flight deck discipline. Double inputs *are* allowed by the system, but they are summed, meaning that in an emergency situation, the pilots can theoretically command twice normal pitch-and-roll rate in an emergency situation if they co-ordinate properly, and that a pilot can counteract the inputs of an incapacitated pilot in the other seat if the situation is recognised. Compare that to the old yoke system whereby whoever was the strongest decided the direction of the aircraft, or the more modern yoke in the 767 when opposite inputs cause the elevators to move in opposite directions (as EgyptAir 990 appeared to prove).

But that's just it - you're hammering the known aspects of this case into the frame of your particular dislike of the Airbus design. There's no evidence that the PNF was unaware of the inputs being made because he told the PF to ease off several times, and there's no evidence that tactile feedback would have told the PF that he was overcontrolling, and it looks like he simply had no appreciation of how little input is actually required to get positive response from the aircraft at altitude.

It's so easy to blame lobbyists and beancounters, because it's not well-known by the public that pilots were involved in the Airbus FBW design, that the march towards pilotless airliners was a fabrication of the press (as was the junk about the Habsheim A320 "thinking it was going to land") and that the politics being played by pilot's unions in the wake of the A320's introduction were largely a response to the cr*p being spouted by the press, and not because they'd flown the A320 and found it wanting.

This wasn't just pilot error, this is a systemic problem affecting the airlines and the industry as a whole. PPLs start their ATPL training knowing how to recognise and recover from a stall - that this knowledge is not periodically revised and enforced is a sad indictment of the real issues that cost-cutting and poor corporate morale produce.

Just to add to DozyWannabe's comments, the nonsense is further compounded by the data in an earlier interim report showing many other cases of A330s and A340s encountering precisely the same circumstances - two of them in the same week as AF447 - but never making it to the front page.

Why? My guess is that the crews handled the aircraft with the required bit of professional respect and care, and it responded without any problems.

Angle of attack
 

Would not a relatively simple and I believe inexpensive AOA indicator have helped these poor pilots. Why is there not one on the panel or is there?

Hi,

Maybe the AF447 crew are not in this group
Unfortunately they can't more report .. but they let us a testimony with the CVR

My guess is if at that point they'd known what to do with an AoA gauge, they wouldn't have needed one in the first place...

Petercwelch
 

There was no AOA indicator on the AF A330. I'm not sure whether it is an option. The BEA's latest report recommends that the reg. authorities study the case for making it mandatory.

On one hand it would be hard to be against it, given that during the final four minutes none of the three pilots recognised they were stalled, not even talking about it as a possibility.

On the other hand, for most of the way down it was AOA that was setting off the stall warning. Presumably they didn't think that was reliable.

I understand your desire to shill on the part of the airline manufacturer as it seems your livelihood is attached to it. Nevertheless, this accident is primarily a manufacturer's problem, not an operator's problem. That's the historical trend. For more than 75 years the liability of the manufacturer has been increasing, not decreasing. You can blame that history on the pilot's union, you can blame it on the press, you can blame it on whatever you like but casting blame doesn't change the underlying reality it just evidences your irritation at it.

The underlying reality that Airbus (and Boeing for that matter) can't escape is this. In a matter of 30 seconds the PF managed to kill 200+ people and cost the people of France hundreds of millions of dollars. That French crew did more damage to France in blood and treasure than the recent riots in England did to the English. How could so few people do so much damage so fast. Paeans to pilot competence ring hallow. As a cultural matter in the Western world we expect technology to solve our problems. Right or wrong, good or bad, that is the expectation. And the person responsible for the technology and the hardware in the airline business is the manufacturer.

How have thousands, nay, millions, of pilots flown their aircraft without AoA indicators....?

To me, it seems a red herring.

Thery're useful for carrier-based aircraft.
They were fitted on Concorde (a somewhat unusual aircraft configuration - and even there, they were on the side of the panel, not inside the primary scan).

Can anybody, and preferably a pilot, comment on the practical use of an AoA indicator ? How would you "fly" it ? How would you train for using it ? In particular during an unrecognised stall at F370 ?

Dozy, don't lecture people when you know that little ...


What do you know about being PNF on a FBW Airbus after all ?

Yes, a Red Herring. The 'AoA' is already in the cockpit. The Shaker, the pusher, the Horn, etc. Do what they say, or.....die.


Spend the money on BUSS. It's here, available, and it costs only money. The knock on BUSS is by the beanies, "It ruins the trip", Law disruption, etc. Only avaliable below xxx, etc. Point is, it is consistent with AB Philosophy. Buy it, Train it, and move on.

In this particular case it is hard to disagree with Zorin 75.

ChristianJ: you don't fly an oil pressure gauge, but you need one nonetheless to tell you what's going on.

See also the AoA gauge, in an airliner's cockpit, a good cross check in certain situations so you know what's going on.

But Zorin made a decent point: with what looks to be a scan breakdown among two pilots, who would the AoA gauge have helped? Most likely the Captain in this case, as he entered and tried to suss out the problem.

I flew 76 different types of airplanes and the only one with an AOA gauge was the citation jet. It was fun to look at but didn't really do anything. Sure, put an AOA gauge in every airplane and see how safety improves. It works well for carrier landings otherwise just fly the F....n airplane, you don't need it. Honor stall warnings and if you ever get one in your career ask yourself how it happened. Then never do it again.

The ones I've flown, you "fly the needle," or lights, or indicator bar. In other words, If the needle/bar is slowly heading upward on the panel instrument, deeper into the yellow band and toward the dreaded red at the top, you "push it down"--add power and maybe a bit of forward stick. The display is typically either vertical or half-round, like a VSI though usually reversed--pointing to starboard rather than port.

Conversely, if you want to slow to approach speed, you bring the needle/bar up out of green by reducing power and adding a bit of back stick or trim, then watch the needle/bar rise into the yellow band as you "pull it up."

AoAs are remarkable instruments, and I've always been amazed that they aren't more broadly used.

You don't need no stinkin' AOA. As bubbers44 says: "just fly the F....n airplane..."

AOA
 

I believe for technical reasons the stall warning was not continuously sounding despite the persistence of an aerodynamic stall. These guys did not recognize a stall IFR at night with lots of other alarms. AOA indicator might have alerted them to the fatal condition. It also might help avoid some stall spin accidents in small aircraft,not a rare cause of death.

Ive read the CVR transcript from the 3rd interim report and it opens up a lot of questions that I know you have been debating. I have one immediate question:

Is that the complete transcript as it says its an "Extract" so do we take that to mean that the transcripting of the CVR has not been completed?

As there seem to be many communication gaps and obvious things you would expect the crew to be discussing given stall warnings etc.

I've flown with the AOA indicator for the aforesaid carrier landings role, and given the choice I would want one in the cockpit of any highly wing loaded aircraft I was flying, whether or not it was flying aboard a ship.
We used it also for maneuvering limits, unusual attitude recovery (to avoid entering a spin) and it was always available as a backup to airspeed for lowering gear and flaps as well as setting a safe approach speed.
Now you guys flying airliners around do not plan on landing on aircraft carriers, but the maneuvering limits and unusual attitude recovery would have applied very well to AF447.
So next time a bird plugs up your pitot tube, what do you plan to do for an alternative?

Yes, I guess occasionally AOA would be helpful with plugged pitot tubes but these guys couldn't have figured it out no matter what they had, they both panicked so couldn't fly the airplane. They needed the captain to sort it out for them because they couldn't. Kind of a sorry state for our new pilots who need someone to watch over them.

Ever used one? Somehow I doubt it.