Hi Bear,

I am sure if the BEA reported this as they did, the speed was reduced to Mach 0.80, the turbulance penetration speed and it was done by moving the throttle levers while in AP/AT. When you do this, it doesn't drop out of AP/AT. However, when the disagree event occurred and the AP & AT did dropped out, the thrust locked into whatever the setting was in AP/AT. So, I assume this would be a slightly reduced N1% verses normal level cruise N1%. If my assumption is correct, it sure influenced speed bleedoff (more rapid) in the subsequent climb event to 38K as the throttles were never touched until the TOGA command.

GerardC.
You may be correct on a number of items. I (like all others who have posted on this topic) don't have the answers to this accident. All we can do is speculate with the meagre facts reported so far. We can only base our opinions on the many years spent flying different jets under all kinds of weather conditions.
Perhaps you would like to enlighten me on the difference between red on the wx satellite photo and red on the radar screen, I had no idea there was a difference. To me, red is red and means danger.
I agree there has been no mention of radar failure. This is only a hunch on my part given the fact that they flew through what appears to be an area of bad weather (even though they must have received a weather briefing before departure from Rio) and the fact that Airbus issued a notam reminding us not to depart with inop radar if there is known weather on the route. This came some time after the 447 crash. coincidence ? Maybe.
The other question is, why did other aircraft deviate around this weather that wasn't so bad in the eyes of some? Were they stupid to burn unnecessary fuel? Are they alive today?
I walked away from flying 2 years ago after surviving 32 years on 5 different jets. I did not fly through CBs at any time in my career. The old saying "prevention is better than cure" was always my guide. Thanks you for your interest in my post.

Hi,

More questions about softwares ...
Do the BEA use this for their investigations concerning the FDR data ?
Flight data analysis software - Flight analysis 3D : CEFA Aviation
http://www.cefa-aviation.com/CEFA%20Brochure.pdf
Or this ?
SimAuthor, The Leader in Flight Data Analysis & Visualization
A result of their usage
(with a stall)
If they use one of those softwares ... can we assume they know many more than some weeks ago ?

I ain't ever flown Airbus. But reading about this accident and looking back over it seems an endless stream of similar disasters... well, it has got to be the end of the road for Airbus' cockpit and flight control design philosophies. And ditto for such loony ideas as multi-crew licenses.

FBW pilots should spend four hours a year minimum in aerobatic gliders. It wouldn't do the rest any harm either.

Agreed on the glider.

...and agree on the aerobatics, too... But to all airline pilots. Not just Airbus drivers.
Gliders and aerobatics are a great learning tool. It is unbelievable the number of actual airline pilots who have never actually experienced to fly more than 30 deg bank turns...

Yes to acro also.

Notice the title in the video says "briefing tool" and not "analysis tool"

There is a big difference.

Imagine the uproar about computer limitation on planes being explained by yet another computer limitation in an analysis tool :E

Objective investigation?
 

Latest AW&ST has a must-read commentary by Pierre Sparaco - Information Chaos (p.50, 13 June 2011)

He quotes Thierry Mariani as expressing hope the investigation can be completed in time for Airbus' marketing push at the Paris Air Show (!)

A veritable model of impartiality. :ugh:

Pitch, power, airspeed, altitude?

At high altitude, unless you have rocket power, available thrust is always less than at low altitude.

But gravity is always available as an acceleration force, and it's undiminished by altitude. :8

jafa

Terrific point, IMO, jafa. Anyone who thinks that 'power comes first' should try a bit of flying with no engine!

Mind you, we're very lucky here in Australia - there are so many thermals around, most of the year, that in my gliding days we quite often had to use the spoiler to get the darn thing to go down at ALL......

But, flying sailplanes, you very quickly realised that 'pitch' really WAS your primary source of 'power.' Flying nose-up for any length of time in a glider meant, quite simply and quite soon, loss of airspeed and an inevitable stall.

Well actually it IS diminished by altitude... a little :)

Anybody here for multitasking, power and pitch(or pitch and power;)) ?

What a lot of confusion regarding flight hours !

It's hard to admit for a lot in the industry, but flight hours don't have the same value, depending on the background... Even if it doesn't prevent them for having accidents (see Toulouse Airbus crew, also british Trident stall in the 60's, dozens of others...) hours in a flight test environment have thirty (or more ?) time the value of hours in an airline environnment, with nothing happening in cruise, and landings always identical - if not in external conditions, but for sure in performing. Comparing flight hours of both sides is like mixing strawberries with potatoes.
Maybe there will be an understanding of all this after ?
The Perpignan crew was conducting an acceptance flight, and they had no training for that, period. To call them test pilots is totally unappropriate. I know that in the companies (including mine) you have supposed experienced pilots, calling themselves "test pilots" when they just perform "out-of-maintenance" check flights ....

One day airline pilots will have to admit that their hours don't have big value, compared to other backgrounds ... but as flying big jets is supposed to be the pinnacle of careers, its' not going to happen soon, I'm afraid.

Jafa and others said just above : give airlines pilots 4 hours of glider every year (or 4 hours of aerobatic aircraft) ... Who will pay for those hours ? Airlines are already saving money on pilot's food and hotel allowances, they are squeezing every hour of duty times from them, and you would expect them to pay for general aviation hours for their pilots (thus losing flying days of the same pilots, by the way..) A bit unrealistic, I'm afraid.

Just give more consideration to the hiring of ex-fighter pilots, by factoring their hours an appropriate way, and the industry will have moved significantly forward regarding safety. Yes, I know, very difficult to swallow for some, especially for those having been saying for years " Ah those guys for sure, have a good set of hands, but in commercial approach... bla-bla-bla-... CRM...bla-bla-bla-... putting mission before safety...bla-bla-bla..(what the hell do they imagine with this last point ?!?)

As AF337 is showing, a good set of hands and an alert eye might be of some use from time to time in aviation.

And stop flying at night with the storm light "On" in the cockpit, that will help a little bit... (flying in a dark cockpit is also supposed to be typical of ex-military pilots, I heard...)

thermostatPlease do your own homework on the subject. (in breif : colors on Wx satellite pictures are based on temperature ; colors on "our" radar displays are based on droplets size. Red on a satellite picture do not mean "danger", these temperature differences could be shown with any other color).

As I suspect you already know, there were some good reasons for that, which included the need to remain night adapted when you needed an inside outside scan during certain parts of your night mission. The military now (as I understand it) deal in two kinds of night flying: aided and un-aided. Unaided is like old school night flying, aided is with various NVG suites added to the pilots kit. (ANVS 9, etc) That requires NVG compatible lighting.

Lucky for the airlines, that modification requirement hasn't arrived.

Will it? Not sure. Treating night as instrument probably covers most bases in that regard ... with the exception of different challenges in see and avoid.

Which takes us to the weather/clouds.

"See and avoid" vis a vis clouds at night can be tricky.

For Gerard: To expand on your comment in re weather.

The depicted differences in temperature (Vasquez plots referred to) typically accompany differences in the characteristic of the air columns within a cloud (like the build ups in the ITCZ), a difference which at high altitude (warm air rising) any pilot will be interested in since it influences his aircraft's performance to one degree or another. (AF 447 crew were keeping an eye on temp (was TAT probe iced?) and commented on how that influenced their original plans for the route ...) Is there a way to link those sorts of data from weather services to a cockpit selectable screen?

Food for thought. Might be a handy tool for crews at high altitude. (IIRC, we discussed this somewhat in the first iteration of the AF 447 search thread ... )

Of course, with technology, everything is possible. As far I as know, for the moment, this system is not implemented on intercontinental airliners.
I understand weather can be displayed on the flydeck over USA only for the time being (wonder if many airlines invested in the system ?).

Concerning temperature, you have to monitor SAT at all times (especially in this area) not only for aircraft performance but also for icing : it is not uncommon to see the SAT rise well above -40° C at cruising flight levels.
If you get into clouds -> NAI ON even at FL 350...

In reply to aguadalte: ...and agree on the aerobatics, too... But to all airline pilots. Not just Airbus drivers.
Gliders and aerobatics are a great learning tool. It is unbelievable the number of actual airline pilots who have never actually experienced to fly more than 30 deg bank turns...


:ok::ok:

YES! Totally agreed!
Maybe in the long run we could even extinct the use of the word "Stall speed" by Pilots and use the correct "Stall angle of attack".

Especially in aerobatics it can be seen - and demonstrated - that a wing can be stalled at almost any speed (limited by structural design), remain unstalled even at 0 airspeed (with 0 g´s) and that the attitude / pitch / bank is only secondary.

This is exactly what meant by unloading the wing.

And that´s what probably happened to AF447 on the way up to FL380, until gravity struck again.

You're probably preaching to the choir - I suspect many of the older generation of airline pilots here have taught aeros and/or basic combat manouevering at some point in their career and, many, for a variety of reasons have seen the speed off the clock, have had to unload the wing, and all that other good "pilot s*** :ok:

Problem is the airline bean counters are not going to like the idea of pilots being taken "off line" to indulge in some form of high AOA manouvering course ( though we could invoke the tombstone imperative). Also would such training, presumably in a light aircraft, really prepare one to really unload the wing of a 200 tonne plus airliner at night, in IMC?

wiggy:

If a pilot is adept at attitude instrument flying, power management, and recognition of erroneous airspeed indications, he would unload the wing whether or not he understood the aerodynamic implications.

Having said that, having conventional thrust levers and flight controls would probably help as well.

Recent posts bring up an interesting question - to me anyway. Does anyone here have any idea (rough estimate) what proportion of jet pilots fly light aircraft "recreationally". That is, own their own Cessna/Cirrus/light twin/whatever or rent one occasionally.

Back in the day, when my old man worked for Pan Am (as a dispatcher in Europe), I recall learning that a fair number of pilots put some piston hours in every year. Couldn't say what percentage though.

This might be a tad off topic, but then again it might not be. When I go up for a couple hours in a Cessna I like to spend a fair bit of time in unusual attitudes, incl. falling leaves, power-on stalls and the like (lots of trim wheel cranking involved). It's one of my favorite things.

Any thoughts?

SD, I have a friend who flies for Southwest. A few years back, he restored and flew a T-34B for a while. I think he later sold it. He once told me he had to be careful how much recreational time he flew, since his log book entries compared to his log book entries for the 737 he flew for pay could not exceed X hours without a waiver, or he'd violate a rule (IIRC, an FAA rule). Not sure enough about the rules to say more.

Don't worry about recovery from extreme attitudes chaps/chapesses: Rockwell Collins is going to replace the P2 with a button that will put your aeroplane the right way up if you don't know what that is:

Rockwell Collins to inject new autonomy into business jets

Oh yes, and if you don't notice the cabin altitude has climbed too high the FMS will turn and dive the aircraft for you.

And when you lose all engines in ash it'll calculate let-downs to all nearby aerodromes.

Ho hum! Anything left for me to do, then?

Somebody will still be needed to push the panic button, no?

If a pilot has lost situational awareness by definition he has lost the presence of mind to press a button. If he comprehends enough about the situation to press a button to save the aircraft he truly hasn't lost situational awareness. At least he hasn't lost it completely.

To me, it sounds like the type of 'idiot button'. The type of thing a person would use when they comprehend the situation quite well but they don't have a clue as to have to fix it.

Sort of the air-transport version of the Cirrus SR-20/22 BRS parachute, then...

Cathay Pacific and Virgin are doing that, I believe.
Those hours are in any case more appropriate than general aviation hours, of which some have been writing about just above.

AF447 Wreckage Found
 

What happened to Stick Pushers ?

They were made redundant by pen pushers.:ugh:

FMS = Fix My Situation ?

I still find it hard to believe that a simple event like loss of accurate airspeed indication could lead to the total loss of a modern commercial jet aircraft

Hirem Trashcan:
Check this out:

AVmail: June 6, 2011

aterpster:
Although I generally agree with the "video game" idea of the author of that letter, I think his idea of "following Flight Directors" is wrong, once in the case of AF447, FD's were not available, which turned the "game" much more difficult...

Lest we forget the human cost of this accident...
 

I hope this will bring comfort to some of the families. Very sad.

I wonder also how someone calling himself "one of the most experienced A330 Captain" (this AVmail's letter author) may be also completely wrong about what an A330 autothrust is actually doing when it is disconnected at cruise level by the system (thrust is locked at its last settings without being "moved/adjusted" to the levers actual position. ie. levers set to CLB at cruise, N1 at 75% won't result, if autothrust is kicking off, to Max climb thrust => thrust will stay locked at 75%, including a warning).

Hence, his whole point is quite moot and his credentials very doubtful.
He certainly should be called a "video game A330 expert".

Hi,

Methink .. Air France will face some problems ....

From the BEA preliminary report:



It's appears that the copilot aged 32 years was the PF and was in the right seat.
Why it was in the right seat as PF with no ATPL in abscence of the captain ?

Hi jcjeant,
Actually, despite what the press is saying, the PF was certainly the other one, 37 years old (FO1) in Right Hand Seat, with 32 years old FO2 being the relief pilot just replacing the Captain as PNF in Left Hand Seat before the start of the accident.
No qualification is needed for LHS during cruise legs and it is standard for AF to use this resting order for second cruise legs.

Hi,

I'm not on the professional side ...
Can you post here the AF rule(s) about flight deck pilots management in cruise (what is required by pilot to be PF and when) on long haul (licenses etc .. )
Thank you in advance.

So far I can't be certain (like you) of this fact ..

Oooops, are you sure?

As far as I know, e.g. for LUFTHANSA, there is a special qualification called Senior First Officer.

It takes several weeks including classroom instructions and simulator.