Victims' families want to ground A330/340 fleet.

Air-France-Absturz: Hinterbliebene wollen Airbus-Flotte stoppen - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten - Panorama

A33Zab,I have emailed the journalist from Flight about the article.I will let you know the basis of his story when I have it

..there is no such thing as elevator trim.

Again, I was addressing (only) the specific case of reversing from Normal law to Alternate (not general flying skills here, this is type/law related). This could explain the initial oscillation in roll that would be fixed by re-trimming the rudder due to this axis protection being released as it went direct.
Take it easy.

Takata wrote:
No.Incorrect. Co-Pilot No2 was PF starting 1:55 according to BAE report may. Taken from the CVR. He took over Captains seat, left at 1:59.

PF had 800+ hrs on this type.
NPF was David Robert

At 2h11, the captain took again the pilot seat. This was already in the decent.
I deliberately took the french version, as the english translation contains some differences

But the captain wasn't the pilot flying if i read the report correct, he was the PNF on that sector and the copilot 2 took over his place, as PNF.

MartinM: If I can make a small contribution to this thread. I have flown the A330 in ALT 2 LAW after a twin ADR incident due to icing conditions.
What surprised me was how "twitchy" the aircraft was, especially in roll. The handling was much harder than I had experienced in the simulator during training. We however continued to have valid ADI indications with which to fly attitude + power whilst trying to sort out the very numerous ECAM warnings plus alternating "Stall, stall" + overspeed warnings (spurious of course)
Why the crew should have applied pitch up inputs is a mystery to me unless it was a response to a perceived large overspeed but then why leave the power up?

As mentioned by other posters - the need to manually trim the THS forward is an area that is often seen to be missed by crew undertaking unusual attitude recovery training, especially from very high nose up attitudes and is, in my opinion, one of the few `real gotchas` about the aeroplane.

@MartinM

I'm with takata all the way - are we reading the same document?

Hi Martin,
There is nothing in the French report saying that.
. At take off, Captain is PNF from his LHS; FOx is PF from RHS.
. At 0159, Captain go to rest and FOy takes his place (LHS) as PNF.
. AP2 is engaged, meaning that the aircraft is flown from RHS.
=> If the PF was FO2 at take off, FO1 would have taken his RHS (but he didn't).
It means that the PF at take-off was FO1 from his RHS (David Robert).

The ambiguity (and press belief) is due to this sentence "le commandant de bord réveille le second copilote"
But it takes to be a French native speaker to understand correctly that it doesn't mean "2nd Officer" but the other co-pilote (as they are two on board, it could be either copilot).

Correction?
 

Takata,

Quote: His reaction was immediate, he was not asleep, and he should have been fooled by something.

Do you not mean, "he should [B]not[B] have been fooled by something?

A thought has crossed my mind, bearing in mind that we are talking about iced up pitots, maybe static systems, could it be that their altimeters were not unwinding like one would imagine, with a 10,000 fpm descent, and that their VSIs were also not responding to the descent? Possibly even showing a climb, when they were actually descending.

As I've mentioned earlier, a prolonged nose down input should have brought them out of the stall, but why would you do that, if there was no indication that the sea was getting closer...

rgr on this. Missleading in the german and english translation and i misread this in my french knowledge.

I just received this from the Flight journalist:

This information – that the aircraft did not switch into abnormal flight law – has been confirmed by the investigating authority.

Meikleuor
"Why the crew should have applied pitch up inputs is a mystery to me unless it was a response to a perceived large overspeed but then why leave the power up?"

I'm wondering if at that point they believed they were in a serious downdraft.

Also, the only transcript of events I've seen must be omitting cockpit conversations. There is too little talking.

First, "Prendre ma place" can refer simply to the captain's physical position, ie his seat, not necessarily to his role.

Second, you forget that the captain was PNF. So even if the new arrival did take over the captain's current role, he would have become PNF.

There's enough ambiguity in the French version that your interpretation is possible, but to this native French speaker it seems more natural to read the report as saying that the initial PF remained PF.

Note, for example that it is the PF that conducts the briefing for the new arrival.

New here as a writer. Read almost every article on this tech-log thread#3. Thank you, for all the good ones!

@takata
post #931
Your deduction concerning the PF omits that the 800hr F/O was not qualified to fly in the L/Hseat (see first BEAreport). So for me, it could have only been the 32year old, 800hr F/O who was PF.
your post #908 and #934
whereas I appreciate most of your posts and your efforts to get the"specialists" back to the ground I want to make a few comments.
We train to use the rudder(trim) mostly for engine out and crosswind landings on transport category aircraft. Especially after some accidents, where airplanes had been taken apart by misuse of rudder. I know the FCOM suggests to do so in some cases, but had that improved their situation? The chances of making it worse are much greater. (I totally agree with post #937).

I dont know whether you are pilot (maybe engineer?) but if you have a chance, watch pilots performing the F/CTL check on ground after engine start. you will often find that few are moving elevator only, respectively ailerons only when performing this check. In other words there is a good chance (especially under stress and during turbulence) that you also move parts of flight-controls which you did not intend to move in the first place. And, as you wrote, those ailerons are powerful in ALT2.
Please don't get me wrong! I really appreciate your work!



The friday BEA report really makes me sick, the new discussion about whether the aircraft was in ABNORM ATT LAW or not is a good example. If not, why did they not provide this information on friday?
A lawyer would probably state that this report would imply "circular reasoning".

@tubby

And the French BEA now put out official releases via a reporter based in London?

Meikleour
Thank goodness. Someone with A330 with Alt 2 law experience.

Meikleour. If you had been handed the aircraft in Alt 2 law, with substantial lateral imbalance (probably due to a rudder trim change), how do you think the aircraft would have flown then?

Sorry, poorly expressed. I meant consequently, he was fooled by something, as of course, he should not have, being fully alert and experienced.
In fact, I'm thinking that his persistance to do the same mistake all the way down would not find an explanation if his possibly wrong initial reaction was not inverted at some point, when considering all the time it takes and the two other pilots.

Very puzzling. If the THS did not trim down, there was no nose down.
I have no explanation so far and I wonder if this is not the reason why the BEA is refraining from publishing a lot more up to this point. It could take them a very long work to sort all this mess out.

BlueJet wrote:
This literally confirms my assumption

PF was the Co-Pilot No.2 with 800hrs on an A330.

There is another part in this while dialog which made me assume that PF has less experience, which does not mean he was a bad pilot.

At some point in the CVR transscript it gives me the impression that the PNF knew better in what situation they were.

And from the ranking, it would make sense to me to sit the higher rated co-pilot on the captain seat.

i understand that this is a target way to continue the flight, trim to hold altitude and speed as before

but with high altitude und UAS is it not much saver due to more aerodynamic stability to set trim for an auto-stable slow descent (flightpath mayby -3 deg?) with not so much trust, lower risk of unexpected climb, searching a lower FL with a major speed range, thinking about the CG ..... is it not much more essential to recover stability than constant altitude