Hi,

This month .. a new book from the author J.P Otelli

Livre : Erreurs de pilotage, Tome 5. Jean-Pierre Otelli - 9791090465039

From what I read .. Otelli tell he had access (or had intelligence) of not yet public parts of the CVR .. and can affirm that the crash was the consequence of pilot error .. no more .. no less ...

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The crew of AF447 briefly had the Speed brakes out.
If fast, they should have been thrown forward. They obviously felt next to nothing.
Their thoughts were unable to focus on this deviation from expectations. They were clearly not in problem solving mode.:sad:

Have you found exactly when and for how long the spoilers were up?

I repeat, from the outset, the a/c may have misbehaved, at least in the judgment of the flight crew. It appears the PF wanted NOSE UP for the duration, and didn't 'get' it. Initially the a/c did need NU, and it did not respond to ss until PITCH reached 10 degrees (and this without the THS). Were the spoilers active in auto? If their deployment did not cause decel, couldn't PF have concluded they were not working?

So with initial pull, the a/c did not trim itself to follow the pilot's stick, how do we explain that? He knew to control the roll (the roll impetus is irrelevant) and he has to have been using the FD w/o external cues. So was the Pitch cueing working? Both pilots were fixated on Roll? To the exclusion of noticing the NU? It is not sufficient to use partial data to conclude these things. Especially the "thoughts" part. That recorder has not been invented yet. A poor resource would be CVR, and that is being parsed to political ends.

I'd rather remain frustrated without sufficient data than to more or less blindly put their final four minutes in stone.

You propose to know his thoughts. I'm trying to find something that worked for them. That would be a better starting place than to join him later at spoilers with a preconceived conclusion. What we see are results of data that was unavailable to the crew, for the most part. Assuming this crew could follow along with data derived from recorders is nonsense.

I presume that barb is directed at me, which is a bit of a shame - because I try not to insult you directly, even if I do think your choice of heroes is misguided.

The question is not one of who is paying for the repairs - though it could be a factor in the decision. The problem is this - even if an AD did make Airbus pay for the repairs as opposed to the airlines, the airlines still lose money because an aircraft on the ground is not generating revenue. Airbus are, I'm sure, business-savvy enough to factor in a budget for unscheduled repairs and in the grand scheme of things it would be a cost of a few million dollars to a multi billion-dollar company - one that was in relatively rude health in 2008 and 2009.

With airlines it is less clear-cut and some have more of a margin available to them than others - however even a major flag-carrier like AF will not have the margins available to them that Airbus do. I'd like someone who knows to confirm, but at a guess I'd say that AF stood to lose more in revenue from the aircraft being on the ground in MX than the cost of the repairs to their fleet.

To my mind the issue of pitot replacement will be a factor in the findings and Airbus will have to take their share of the knocks there. What bothers me though is that AF's procedures allowed for two members of a crew who had little to no experience in manually handling the aircraft at high altitude to occupy the LH and RH seats at a time when the whole industry knew that frozen pitot tubes could lead to the aircraft being handed back to the crew at cruise level.

Sub heated Pitot's
 

Important issue to be discussed. Simple devices with so much (Systemic) responsibility, that failed in AF447? and triggered the sequence of events.

1) System redundancy techniques are good for random (time) element failures.
2) F-GZCP Pitot's failed? They had just a "brief thermal glitch".
3) Pratically SIMULTANEOUSLY.

"Who" failed?

IMO, this is an complete ABSURD! And ongoing?, as CJ ask.

Oh come on. The "descent" at A/P drop was not only arrested it was turned into stupidly rapid climb at 10-15deg nose up. And if PF didn't grasp that from the instruments, PNF also told him, at least twice I think.

The later descent starts from nose up and stall warning sounding, and the nose never goes down - how could that not be a stall ? When later the nose does go suddenly down (as the control surfaces hit the stops) PF carries on pulling hard back. Had it dropped rapidly at the stall, surely he would h\ve done exactly the same as a minute later - pulled back.

Infrequentflyer789

NO. The a/c did not respond immediately to PF's back stick, read the report. The a/c did not start upward until the PITCH UP reached ten degrees, read the report. Hence my comment that the THS seemed unavailable from a/p drop, until just prior to the STALL. It also counters the myth that he pulled the a/c up immediately, HE DID NOT. The report shows a pilot with measured pull, and interrupted, waiting for response.

The a/c was raising her nose as an artifact of the last gasp of the a/p. She did not climb, not initially. And we don't know if she had NU at that point or no.

We also rely on the pilot's words themselves; he susses overspeed, and likely did until just before impact, when all three wanted to pull. Was that a mistake? Yes, but it was not "Blindly pulling into a STALL". The recorders make fools of us all, unless they get overwritten, after a safe landing.

You are putting motives and methods into this that do not exist. They had been dealt a hand that we have analysed without restraint. They had several cues that lied, that caused on their own the circumstyances that led to the crash.

Their is NO determination of Iced Pitots. It is a guess, for all we know it may have been wind shear that bolluxed up ADRS. And that is a reason for TOGA and high Pitch, in its own right.

I appreciate your response.

I kind of hope he's just a liar - there's been enough leaks already and there are almost certainly bits of the CVR that should never be public.

On the other hand, perhaps it would dissaude those who keep insisting the investigation is hiding things / covering up - when it can't be, because it's already been shown to leak like a sieve...

Lyman
As I read this, the adrenalin flowing from each of the guys sitting in the cockpit was enough to override their ability to evaluate their surroundings.
3 seconds of speed brake is enough to feel deceleration if you have speed. They felt next to nothing at the AOA and speed that they were actually at. They would have had to sense a non-event in order to realize its significance, i.e. NO deceleration-Why?

Never been a secret how I evaluate your behavior : Write a lot as if you have the knowledge but proved repeatedly that you don't necessarily have, IMO of course.
Who are my heroes ? You ?

I presume that if an AD had to ground a fleet, the manufacturer would have to share more that the only cost of the repair.

What bothers me is that something was wrong in that aircraft before anything happened. The crew had to deal with something bizarre ... and the BEA has not said a single word about it.

http://i45.servimg.com/u/f45/11/75/17/84/af447_20.png

Full data for the families.

Confiture, your graph of V/S commanded vs V/S actual is missing time marks. Looks like the selector for V/S was misbehaving. What is the source of this graph?

Run hamsters, run!
 

Well done, OK465! Seems I still owe you Saint-Exupery's quote. Oh well...

Good old Dick Bach's "Steel, aluminum, nuts and bolts" is applicable too.


2:09:00 to appx 2:10:06
BEA interim 3
They haven't issued a final report yet. Hurry up and make your concerns known to them before they settle on the final version. You might just be onto something and if they ignore your wealth of expertize, you can always expand on "How come that records of spurious V/S selections have no correlation whatsoever in aeroplane's behaviour while ALT CRZ mode is engaged" thesis and get master's degree from the Institute of Conspiracy Theories, Department of Aeronautics.

I trust you on F-16. Since I have to be blunt: F-16 is unstable fighter, A330 is stable passenger aeroplane. One has wing optimized for maneuver and supersonic flight, the other for high-subsonic cruise. No points for guessing which is which.

Again, some general principles apply for both F-16 and A330 but not each and every. A330 wing starts decreasing its AoAcrit at mere 0.3 Mach - that's why graph on page 20 of interim 3 looks so crooked.

Carefully there! Captain Michel Asseline blurted-out that engine did not responded as required in shell-shocked state. Eventually he settled down and accepted the facts of his fateful flight, as put down by BEA. He does not support any of our "Airbus is soooo complicated and veeeeery dangerous" claiming friends. Also, while they try to appear they are fighting on his behalf, they go great lengths to never explicitly state so and all they offer is series of nudge-nudge-wink-wink-you-know-what-I-mean.

Great shame about Habsheim disaster is that some of us (well, IMHO it's actually most) allow that the smokescreen of technical discussion obscures the real issue: how come that Air france and Mulhouse Aeroclub came to idea that it's just fine to fly planeload of passengers during display flight! Mind you: they were not stupid but somehow they were lead to the point they considered it to be OK. To draw out that thought and decision process into the light would be fitting monument to the three victims.

Now you mention St Odille: it's another tragedy where technical talk has drowned out the HF anaylsis. Most pilot just remember it vas 3300 fpm misselection instead of 3.3 FPA and that's about it. FWIW the crew undershot the final approach track and were well left of it when they hit the mountain. Had they been more concentrated on horizontal navigation (as the report claims) and got established or overshot to the right, they would have missed the mountain. Whether they would realized something was terribly wrong when cloudbreaking above the plain south of Strasbourg or they would have hit the fields instead of forest, anyone's guess is as good as mine.

Did not. Airbus procedures were clear, simple and not adhered to. AF FCTM was out of step.

Cry me a river about it. Unless you're capable of performing just that, don't go flying, you're gonna hurt yourself and others in the process. It's a tough world outside.

See previous entry.


Prove it. Win Nobel for physics. Go down in history as "The man who disproved Bernoulli and everything we thought we knew about flying"

EASA AD 2009-195 had four months compliance period, starting on Sep07 2009. Is it conspiracy? Is it possible that by the time of issue we had 20-odd cases of freezing pitots and going ALTN, some involving Air France, one involving Goodrich pitots, all of them landing uneventfully, bar one so there was no perceived need to hurry? No use in having the right to know without the capability to understand.

Taken completely out of its context, it would be quite useful as the best evaluation of this thread in quite a long time.

You may be right, at least that's what I have done and left the blue side as soon as I could. I never felt on top of these machines and I bet many feel the same but do not admit it.

I feel competent enough on another system now and that's what counts in professional aviation.

You can now lie back and feel safe because one of the subjects who seemingly was not good enough for the wonderbra has left the building. But that does not fix the filling, believe me.

Instead of aping the infantile slogans of the lobby-corner ("love it or leave it"), you might have read a little further and caught what I said as well: That there exists a better solution to the problem and that it might just be a better idea to copy that than shout down those who bring up the problem.

Doing the latter is what happens to a great extent actually and that in turn does not comfort me, because these machines share a great chunk of airspace with me. And my theory is that too many of their jockeys are similarly not as good as you think you are.

Re: Run hamsters, run!
 

Clandestino

Quote:
See previous entry.

WRONG - Not my quote, you got your "hamsters" mixed up.

Quote:
Did not. Airbus procedures were clear, simple and not adhered to. AF FCTM was out of step.

I'll stand to be corrected when you show me evidence of AB's high altitude, high Mach cruise situations, such as UAS events, which are clear and simple.

Captain my Captain how do you positively know ALT CRZ mode was engaged when the trace is nowhere to be seen ?
BEA has that habit to forget to share what could be interesting.

Full data to the families.

Take that sunday off Clandestino and try to find someone ready to demonstrate you a bit of love, this could help to relieve this aggressiveness to us all around.

Or would that be full data to self important internet conspiracy theorists?

Zorin, drop it.
Neither those conspiracy theorists, nor the families, nor their 'ambulance-chasing' lawyers, have the technical competence to interpret those data correctly.

Clandestino. BEA report the a/c did not begin to climb until the Pitch was 10 degrees+.

In descent, robust enough to keep the altitude from increasing with 9 degrees PITCH UP, a/c don't climb whilst arresting descent.

They reduce ROD instead, until the rate becomes positive, as per BEA.

WINDSHEAR event on ACARS. TCAS event on ACARS. Repeated descent commands of 5000fpm by the autopilot.

BEA have vacuumed the time period prior to the loss of Autopilot.

Odd. "Baby AUTOPILOT kills all!" ?

No they did not. It is a fabrication and repeating it does not make it more true. Nor does fabricating more do anything for credibility. If any remains.

There is a thing known as intellectual dishonesty and a great many things here fits the definition quite accurately.

KBPsen

FROM BEA

"The aircraft's Angle of Attack increased progressively beyond ten degrees...AND THE AIRCRAFT STARTED TO CLIMB..."

Do you speak, read English?

Yes I do, but not selectively.

The BEA probably knew that there would be people who would apply their own selected meaning to anything the BEA would publish. So they also published this.

http://i1135.photobucket.com/albums/...itch-Climb.jpg

BEA: "....and the pilot applied NOSE DOWN INPUTS and alternately left and right roll inputs..."

Did they get it wrong?

The graph shows F/O Pitch commands. The PILOT FLYING was flying from CAPTAIN's seat?

I'll leave it to you to sort why the comments don't jive with the graph. For now.

Know that vertical speed does not represent altitude, or "CLIMB"

Could just as easily be a glitch in the FDR data though - which can have issues with sampling sometimes and after all had spent the best part of three years on the bottom of the ocean. The regularity of the missing data samples suggests a read/write failure rather than the value actually being read.

Even so, I'm sure I remember seeing Airbus pilots post that they don't tend to use V/S select all that often, and in cruise there'd be no reason to use it. If it's not referred to in the final report, write to the BEA and ask for it - it can't hurt.

At this point in the flight, DOZY, the a/c is in autopilot.

After all this you still haven't figured out who was PF? Not that it is surprising.

Only in your mind. How to sort that I have no idea.

The graphs are there for all to see. Perhaps you should start having a look so we can be free for you home baked "facts".

The graph and comments are self evident, and conflict.

@KBPsen

Perhaps you'd like to explain the difference between SELECTED and MANAGED mode on the A330's FCU - and at the same time how the use of the word "and" is equally valid for simultaneous events as it is for sequential events - in fact to imply the latter tends to require the phrase "and then".

Then show where on the graph AoA ten+ is.

And having given the hamsterwheel another spin, Clandestino goes off snickering down his sleeve.
Welcome back to the hamsterwheel Clandestino, did you miss your old friends?:}

Please clean your monocle!:}

The BEA Interim Report No3 actually said,
That was in relation to the initial climb, but during the second phase the SW activated at AoA 5.9°, AOAmax was passed at 7.6°, and CLmax 'break' occurred at 9.6°.

This graphic should help.

That such basic concepts and use of language needs explaining boggles the mind, but then I doubt it needs to be.

It is the deliberate misunderstandings and misrepresentations, selective use of data and the mixing of a sliver of fact with handfuls of fiction that needs explaining. If it is even possible.

Zorin_75 and ChristiaanJ,

Beside the conspiracy theorists, anything you could bring to the subject ?

Ahem... BEA's interim #3, §1.11.2 ;)
No trace indeed, but unequivocally written : "Le vol est effectué sur la route prévue en modes ALT CRZ / NAV."
"The flight followed the route envisaged in modes ALT CRZ / NAV."

I'm perfectly happy, for myself, with Clandestino's posts. Shall I ask him to marry me? :confused: :p

Joking aside, I also would like to know why the selected V/S varies so much (and so regularly) before AP disconnect. I think (guess) it is a "normal" behavior but would like to have a confirmation by knowledgeable people.

This is an educated guess rather than certain knowledge, but based on what I've learned on the subject of data analysis (which is actually part of my professional remit - lest CONF think otherwise) those negative peaks are at such regular intervals that I suspect that they are unreadable values rather than reflective of the actual setting, as I said here:

http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/46062...ml#post6741729

Given that it looks like they've used Excel to generate the graphs for the interim report, I know that Excel's default graphing behaviour for unreadable values is to render them as the lowest possible value (in this case -5000).

Now, whether that value would be unreadable due to corruption of the memory chips from damage sustained, whether the memory chips were faulty in the first place, or whether there was a pre-existing fault on the FDR bus that meant that the value was incorrectly read is something I'm not qualified to speculate on.

Ultimately though, if we can make a reasonable assumption - based the BEA's statement that the flight followed the ALT CRZ/NAV mode - that the flight was indeed in that mode up to A/P disconnect, then the V/S setting should not have had any effect as, if I recall correctly, the MANAGED mode does not use V/S as a parameter.

CONF, I thought the somewhat 'odd' V/S SEL recording had already been solved, either earlier in this thread, or in one of the earlier threads.

I have, I guess I just don't see what you see in the traces.

I have been looking at the graphs with expanded timescale - which show the time we are interested in. P29-31 of the report has useful graphs but without gridlines so it is difficult to be precise, P42 is the best for that - it doesn't have pilot input, but we know from P29 that this begins at 02:10:07.

From graph on P42 I reckon at 02:10:07 we have pitch = 2, THS -2.8, VS maybe -300. Then at 02:10:10, pitch = 4, THS -3 (started to move), and VS maybe +300 (ie. started to climb). Pitch 10 degrees is not till a bit after 02:10:16 by which time VS is already +5000.

It looks to me to be moving to follow elevator trend, with a delay, a rate limit and a stop, not much more complex than that. At some point I might try and digitize the traces and try and extract the rule, but it looks right. It also matches the sim results (see P41).

Page 29 - A/P drops 02:10:05, "I have controls" at 02:10:06, stick goes back 02:10:07, 2secs delay. I don't see the stick going back to pitch neutral awaiting response either.

Further, the response tracks simulation, so the a/c was responding as PF should have expected. If we ascribe his actions to unexpected a/c response, then we are back to the question of why doesn't PF know what to expect from his a/c, are we not ? [and is it PFs fault if he's never actually flown (been allowed to fly) his a/c in cruise ? - no]

If there's a windshear procedure that calls for 15deg pitch and TOGA in cruise (at max alt) then I would respectfully suggest that it is a recipe for another disaster. No ?

On the pitots, I think I almost agree. There is some evidence (audio ascribed to icing), and there is the experience of all the other flights - but not totally conclusive.

The worrying thing to me is that I can't see anything that connects the PF actions (cause of stall) with pitot failure specifically, or even uAS specifically. If he climbs to arrest a (real or perceived) altitude loss, or inadverdently while focused on roll, then pitot failure is not a required cause, and fixing the pitots will not prevent a recurrence. UAS may make the recovery less likely - but speeds were actually valid again by the time they stalled, and stalling a big jet is big trouble regardless.

If the triggers for the PF climbing his a/c into a stall were only: A/P drop out, Alt Law, and turbulence (maybe), then we have a big problem, because Alt Law / A/P drop could have lots of causes, and is an expected condition at 1 in 10k flight hours (I think). That is more than a little worrying.

AFs procedures at least are clearly confusing since preople here can't agree what they mean even with plenty of time to read them.

But, turning it around slightly, what evidence is there that any procedure was bring used ?

The quoted (confusing) procedures I have seen all have AP & FD OFF as first actions - and this was never done (AP dropped itself, FD remained selected on).

Hi
Infrequentflyer789

Not only does AF's procedures seem confusing, AB's procedures don't seem to me to be much clearer. Below is a briefing (2006, may have changed by 2009) as to what to do with an occurrence of UAS. The briefing was to identify new procedures as the airlines were confused with the older procedures. Of particular interest, note how UAS is highly referenced and dealt with during cruise at high altitudes and high speeds.:(

It's not that the crew of AF447 did everything right, it's what they may have been taught or not taught, remembered or not remembered for the situation they found themselves in.

Take a look and tell me what you think.

http://www.iag-inc.com/premium/Airbu...ableSpeeds.pdf