I don't think bean counters (accountants) get into CRM, etc. They mainly want to keep the numbers in their ledgers low.
The main reason airlines don't rely on military pilots as much as in the past, is mainly, many of them stay in the military now, where, in the past, they might just do one enlistment, then go on to a high paying commercial airline job. The US military pays much more now, and is an easier, if not better place to raise a family than 50 years ago. This, coupled with all the pilots coming out of the many flight schools keeping pilot pay down causes a shortage of military flight trained pilots availible for commercial use. Mind you, I'm not advocating military flight training be a requirement for an air transport license, I'm advocating filtering out pilots with unsteady nerves in the course of civilian flight training.
All that said, since I'm in the tech forum, I'll write "Know your equipment" should be a mantra in air transport flight training.

Aerobat77, I think commercial pilots flying passengers should also "fullfill the mission at every price". That mission is to get the passengers back on the ground safely.

Coagie, your arguments are solely based on experience in the USA and has nothing to do with Europe. Air France pilots are one of the highest paid pilots in the industry.

Dani, commercial aviation has long been a worldwide industry, so what happens over there, and what happens over here, have much to do with eachother. Our trends end up accross the water and vice versa. The question must be asked: If Air France has some of the highest paid pilots, why did Air France not get what they paid for on AF447? I hear that the asian airlines are paying the most now, by the way. Anyway, I'm for better training, whether it be "Know your aircraft/equipment", "basic flying skills" or filtering out jittery pilots or some or all of them. Although Airbus could make some improvments, like having the aircraft default to a safe power and pitch, when the airspeed is unknown, I have to put the blame on Air France for not properly training it's pilots in the case of the AF447 crash.

"Aerobat77, I think commercial pilots flying passengers should also "fullfill the mission at every price". That mission is to get the passengers back on the ground safely."

in regards to bring them safely on the ground you of course are right- but i meant with it that civilian pilots should not bring the aircraft airborne and to destination at every price. i think military pilots are trained to take a higher risk, a risk which is not wanted in civilian aviation.

but its not the case in regard to this accident.

Lite and heavy pilots
 

Salute!

I am compelled to comment here.

There are many aspects of flying the neat fighters, with their vastly expanded flight envelopes compared to the "heavies", but the basic lesson here is simply "airmanship" and training.

The big advantage we lite pukes had over the folks that have never stretched the envelope was to see an unusual flight condition and then learn how to get back into controlled flight. And then there is the "pinball wizard" phenomena we have seen the last ten or so years. It deeply disturbs me.

I fully understand the "system manager" concept and trust me, the fighter folks have had to do this for the last 30 years or so, especially the single-seat guys as I was. Nevertheless, when Otto goes "able sugar" or the gauges do not indicate the actual altitude or airspeed or....., then it's back to "needle-ball-airspeed" and help from a standby attitude indicator and so forth.

There is no substitute for airmanship.

I do not subscribe to the position of at least poster here than continues to maintain that the jet did exactly what it was designed to do. Maybe aerodynamically, but not the human interface and some questionable control law reversion sequences.

enuf, and I'll cool down later. Somebody get me outta this tree!

CONFiture

I think what Dani means.....("pulling procedure"), is the last ditch consensus to keep the a/c aloft: "Tire, Tire, Tire..." Likely that is not in the book, as he says. If he means the apparent pilot induced climb, I don't know what he means.

Aerobat77, military pilots are trained to not wreck the millions of dollars worth of aircraft they are flying. This helps in civilian passenger service in that, if the aircraft isn't wrecked, there is a good chance that the passengers survive. Again, I don't think pilots need to be military flight trained to be good, and I believe some changes in training are needed and to filter out pilots who don't perform well under pressure. I bring up the military as an example of training that tends to filter out jittery pilots. In the age of automation, it's even more important, because a higher percentage of the time, when a pilot's skill is called upon, it's a pressure situation. HAL can handle the routine stuff.

Hi,

Coagie
From a Air France spokesman (Chief flight operations Mr Schramm) it was a crew with maximum competency on the AF447 flight deck :sad:
Seem's that the maximum competency level can be sometime low at Air France
Mr Schramm was fired from his position few days ago .. after the stalinist purges at AF .....
Laughable
Vol Rio-Paris: réactions au rapport du BEA sur la catastrophe - YouTube

Gums, needle ball and airspeed and a standby gyro would do nicely if only the Airbus had them. EVERY thing you mention is computer generated on the Bus. At least they are on the A320. Once you lose faith in the instruments due to whatever , like say maybe bad airspeeds, it's quite hard to find anything real to grasp.

Everything you mention was available on the aircraft well before the accident, BUSS, Horizon, etc. The disconnect between the manufacturer, who offered them, the Line, which chose not to fit them, and the beanies, who did not want them, led to these deaths by an inexplicable interdisciplinary ignorance.

Call it: Piss Poor Interdisciplinary Resource Management

The military single seat fighter pilots get lots of training in air combat manuevering -- and get lots of experience getting the airplane back in control from muffed maneuvers. A few have to punch out.

The bean counters will not accept training regimes where trainees throw around heavies the same way gums has done in his fighters. Preventing structural failures is a pretty good reason:E Plus retrofitting bang seats would be almost as expensive as a structural failure.

Not wanting to disrespect the civil way in, I will say that a military pilot, heavy or fast jet, has a stubborn sense of mission. This includes focus, confidence, and training to the mission.

As a civvy, the chances of washing out are remote. Not to mention that the soldier pilot has a strong background in teamwork, and chain of command.

We should consider putting a stop to giving every child a prize just for showing up. And re-instating proper reward for high performance.

Odds?

Just filtering out the slack jawed, spastic student pilots would help a lot and not add much to training costs. I agree that real time, push the envelope, training is too costly, but trainers can get creative. Changing the training from producing the most pilots, to more unshakable pilots, that can recite procedures and memory items is feasible.

Confiture and Lyman, after the second case (AF471), it seems obvious to me that AF had some sort of informal procedure to pull whenever there seems to be something wrong with speeds, attitude, altitude or one of it's expected trajectory. It is not possible that it's always AF that experience such bad luck while all others don't. The THY incident leeds me to them same conclusion, while they all support my observation in my cockpits (I told you some tales).

While most of you try to discuss other factors that might have contributed to the accident (missunderstanding of automatics, traps in man machine interface), you lose the sight to the obvious. Remember Occam's rasor. If it barks like a dog, it smells like a dog and it walks like a dog, it might be dog.

military + civil
 

Before the thread drifts to the area civil v. military pilots, grant me (as an old military pilot) a few remarks of caution here.

Where the sun is shining, also shades can be found.

Imho there are excellent civil trained pilots (and i hope most of them) and there are some, who would be better off to leave the industry.

There are excellent military pilots in their military job, the below average and most of the average ones are washed out of flying during training, during the job on the line, and sometimes due to accidents. Money is not a player, skill and dedication to the job does the magic.

To assume, that a military trained pilot would automatically be a better civil pilot, is not true. Some would not cope with the new task, would not be happy with the new job and the restrictions it comes with. There are others, who adopt well and fly happy until their retirement.

What makes the difference?
Some of the points had been anounced already here and in another thread. The military system in choosing only the best suited to get into sthe system and even then phases out those, who cant cope with the speedy (time restricted) and in depth academic and flying training. You get only a few chances to repeat a test or to do a recheck after a failed flight, after that you are out. That makes him a highly qualified military pilot. You can not buy into becoming a military pilot, you have to earn it by talent and performance.

The civil system today has no structures and no bones. Who ever has the money, can learn and train in some flying shack and try again and again to become a pilot, and if he does not run out of money he will get a licence, buy a type rating and some hours, and end up in a cockpit. It is mostly a question of spent time and available money, not much one of talent and detication. Even if this pilot is below average, he will find some company in some world on this planet who will employ him for few bucks and sell tickets to passengers. If this guy is lucky, he may become a average pilot someday, but he will never be outstanding. And the danger will be, that he stays below average. Fortunately thats only the shadow, there is lots of sunshine as well.

Most airlines hire on the free market and are not connected to any kind of training system, how will they know what kind of pilots they hire? The spent bucks will be the main motivation for preselection and hiring.

It is therefore not a question of military or civil, it is a question of preselection, training, supervision and continuos training on the job.

The two discussed systems can learn from each other.

so to say it straight and level : they steered AF447 in an area with high convective acitivity where pitot tubes became blocked and some systems ( mostly AP and AT) became inop. also the stall warning is designed not to warn at IAS below 60kt so becomes useless at very high AOA or blocked pitot tubes.

after that a pilot introduced pull was made and a basicly flyable and responding aircraft with also responding engines was put by pilot action in a conventional stall without a spin and was held in this stall for more than three minutes until impact .

that should be the essentials of the final report when i understand right...

@ RetiredF4
Side note: depends where... :E Agreed with the overall :ok:

@ aerobat77
No offence intended, Sir, but in two of your previous posts you should replace "when" [EN] (time notion) by "if" [EN] (condition notion), even if both are literaly translated "wenn" [DE] ;)

/off topic

AZR, lets keep US politics out of this, shall we?

I feel a slow urge coming on to pull out what's left of my university course notes ("stability and control" was supposedly my 'final' subject, got me my first job on Concorde systems).

"Aircraft pitched up to and beyond stall AoA, THS trimmed to fully nose-up, SS - and presumably elevator - being held NU, plus TOGA"
Seems to have been a 'nice and stable' configuration, all the way down.
I wouldn't call it a "deep stall", but it was certainly 'stable'. Why?

From my own very limited flight training - a long time back...., I still remember a full 'power-on' stall, mushing through the air nose-up, but going down at a rate of ft/min.... (sounds familiar?). Throttle back, stick forward, and the conditions keeping us in that 'semi-stable' state were gone, and the nose would drop, and we were back to a more normal state of flight.

Sure, a Piper Cub and an A330 are not the same aircraft.
I would have hoped these pilots had been treated to at least a few "power-on stalls" during their 'ab initio' training, and somehow have retained the memory.... as even I have.
Seems I'm wrong....

Christiaanj,
I've heard that stall recognition and recovery is no longer required to get a PPL here in the states (someone on the forum will know). It's because many people are not as fascinated with flying as in the past, and the smaller aircraft industry wants it easier to obtain a pilots license to have more customers. I wonder if this is true in europe, as well as the USA?
Side note: I feel sad everytime I see the Concorde mentioned. I have tremendous respect for the French and British people who developed it. I hope some day it will come back. France and Brittain should always take pride that it is their's!

"I've heard that stall recognition and recovery is no longer required to get a PPL here in the states (someone on the forum will know). It's because many people are not as fascinated with flying as in the past, and the smaller aircraft industry wants it easier to obtain a pilots license to have more customers. I wonder if this is true in europe, as well as the USA?"

due to JAR FCL stalls and even spins are required for the practical training.

look here at 1.125

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/175/Sectio...R-FCL%201_.pdf

flight schools for this have some simple approved trainer like a C152 approved for aerobatics or a subaru fuji eg.

but i doubt it will be helpful in stall recovery of an a330.

with multi engine turbine or jet aircraft i must say we only trained a stall in the simulator- NEVER in the real aircraft. simply because such a plane is not approved for intended stalling and no insurance would cover such a training in real life.

naaa, I'm pretty convinced that basic aerobatic and/or stall training is of some basic help even on an airliner. It's just not much helpful if you have a serious instrument failure (for BOAC I'm not saying worst anymore <grin>). In such a configuration you first have to realize that you are in stall, which is not easy at all. But the problem was not that they didn't get out of the stall but that they got in!

"Stable stall"
 

Christiaan J #1454

Perhaps it was having TOGA from engines mounted under the wings that made the stall so stable. I have tried to think what the effect might have been with DOUBLE the thrust actually available... Ultimately a tail-slide ? (NOT TO BE ENCOURAGED...)

The twin-engined Airspeed Oxford/Consul was nearly cleared for spin training - but could not be cleared throughout its C of G range. My flying instructor demonstrated a barrel roll with two pupils aboard, instead.

Within a short time under the hood of a Link Trainer, most of us had stalled and spun and learned to recover on instruments. An Engineering expression of that era was encouraging" Non Destructive Testing". Our failures were not lethal.

AF447
 

Lyman, I hope your "soldier pilots" are taught to keep away from CBs when close to "coffin corner". That is what caused the loss of control. It has nothing to do with :- the Airbus, stall recovery, automation, 2 FOs in the cockpit, alternate law, etc, etc. You simply don't fly into CBs when so close to coffin corner. That is where the training needs to be.
I'm really appalled at the amount of posters who are totally off track on this crash. Shame on you all. Remember that all the other 'planes that circumnavigated the storm landed safely. Wake up guys !!!
How many more times must this be said?? Night, heavy, high, many warnings at the same time, turbulence, loss of speed info, loss of automation, total confusion. What do you think they could have done under those circumstanced??
No, the training has to be simply, DON'T FLY INTO CBs WHEN CLOSE TO COFFIN CORNER. Judging from the comments, it seems that most of you don't understand this basic principal. Better hurry up and learn it so you don't have the same fate.

@ linktrained : i think applying TOGA in FL 350-380 in a non event, the engines by far do not develop the thrust they do in sealevel and are running at this altitude already close to the max available. when they descended lower- when i,m correct - the engines were set to idle . they crashed with engines idling and - but here an airbus driver may further comment, not fully sure- in alternate law alpha protection is lost and the engines will not go into TOGA by themselfes.

@ thermostat : of course the best is to prevent a critical situation and not to fight one. and of course its always a bad idea to fly CB,s . but some "fighting" skills should also be present. three people starring for 3.5 minutes at a high pitch / massive descend aircraft without knowing its a stall in my opinion also cannot be the answer to modern aviation safety.

@aerobat

The engines were set to idle two times, but most of the descent was in TOGA. In the end they were at 105% N1.

- do you too have an Oozlum bird as pet as it seems to have escaped into this forum from R&N:ugh:

Once again for all: THEY DIDN'T and THEY WEREN'T

Of course BOAC, Oozlum bird for thermostat
Remember that 2 flights flew through the same 'storm' and landed safely.
As you are perfectly aware of this, shame on you thermostat, and shame on the BEA, which choose not to display those 2 flights on its trajectory video :

http://i45.servimg.com/u/f45/11/75/17/84/af447_12.jpg


As the crew realized there was a problem with indicated airspeed, they selected, through the AIR DATA selector, another ADR source for the PF airspeed indication.
In the meantime, it is possible the crew realized there was a problem with attitude indication as they selected, through the ATT HDG selector, another IR source for the PF attitude indication.

The ATT HDG switch has been manipulated a second time later on.
BEA has been very quiet on those selections ...

No Oozlum here BOAC, not yet.

Thanks for the 12-bore, conf. Can ANYONE explain what 'ATT' does to an ADI and why it would be used. I know what it does on a 737 and I really hope it is not the same on the magic beastie.

They just change the source of the ATT information from IRS 1 or 2 to 3. With this procedure they can compare the 3 IRS - and found out that they all show the same thing, so it might have reassured them, at least it didn't resolve their confusion.

It's not a "one way button" where you go to attitude only information, or have to calculate variation/drift by yourself. This button also exists, but is placed on the overhead panel, close to the ADIRS. It wouldn't have helped in this scenario.

Not really. All selections of ATT HDG and AIR DATA have been reported. As to why the selections where done is somewhat in the realm of speculation. I don't think the BEA should engage in PPRuNe style of speculation.

The first selection of AIR DATA and then shortly after ATT HDG to F/O ON 3 makes sense for the AIR DATA part as the PF reports he has no speed indication.

Later both selectors are placed in CAPT ON 3. This may suggest there was a belief that both selectors should be on same source when out of NORMAL.

The last selection is AIR DATA back to NORM.

There is no indication that any of the IR mode selectors where set to ATT at any time.

The various selections of ATT HDG means that all three IRs had been used for attitude display in various combinations. 1 and 2, 1 and 3 and finally 3 and 2. On top of that there was the ISIS.

There is no indication that there was any discrepancy between the four attitude sources.

That seems illogical - when (presumably) all three ADIs were agreeing (they were, weren't they........?:) why change PF's EADI? Is this an AB drill?

AF447
 

Aerobat77, Yes I agree, however "the proof of the pudding is in the eating". They were confused. They did not recognize the stall so were unable to solve the problem. Other points I want to make :- the same super cooled water (ice) that blocked the pitot tubes would also have rendered the AoA inop.
Descending at 3,000 metres per minute (almost flat) would render the elevators ineffective. The action of holding the SS fully back would make the stabilizer trim nose up to fair the stab with the elevator, (some people don't seem to understand this). The 'plane's computers were not at fault.
This was a mess and I wonder how many pilots would have able to recover. By staying away from CBs you don't have to be a pro at stall recovery. That's my point and I won't budge from it.
Thanks.

thermostat,

did you read any of the threads here on the subject or at least the BEA report?

Thermostat, there was still enough airspeed for the elevators to get a grip. You should read through the different threads over the last few months and read the BEA report. I'm sure you'd understand it. You don't have an informed opinion. I agree it'd been great if they'd only gone around the storm, but they were hardly in dire straights.

Amazing is that the pilot put himself the plane in a stall .. and after .. don't understand that the plane is stalling and plumeting to sea ....
Seem's he don't know what he had made :sad:

jcjeant.

Are you actively ignoring the several reasons STALL went unnoticed, and hence uncorrected? Lord knows I can bang on, but you take the cake.

AIR DATA a lot.
ATT HDG bare minimum. Where is the ATT HDG switching trace ?

AF447
 

I have read ALL of the threads since the black boxes were found. Most of them pretty stupid. When passengers pay to travel on an aeroplane, they expect a high level of proficiency. They also expect to arrive at their destinations in tact.
They don't expect to be flown through CBs and end up at the bottom of the sea.
I have flown 5 different passenger jets over 32 years, 11 years on the A320.
I retired without scratching any 'planes or injuring any of my passengers. You don't accumulate 17,000 +hours by making stupid decisions. Flying through CBs is stupid, especially at 35,000 feet. You don't have to like my opinion, you just have to learn from it.
This will be my last post on the subject.