On extended leave but just got the BBC Ent (Polish) a full report of this incident. Old ground too but it does seem to be a case of blocked pitot tubes caused by supercooled water droplets. This was after a careful study of the meteorological conditions at the time. Looks like the crew were faced with a number of confusing indications. I have to say, at great risk on the PPrune pages, that 'Flight with unreliable airspeed indications' is a regularly practiced exercise in my present company. Another fave is to leave the seat, pretend to be in the forward loo, return (after closing your eyes) to find Handling pilot confused with a series of events. Sort it out as a crew. Most agree, good value & that was the point of my earlier offering. Return to the Flt-Deck and face something that needs to be corrected, quickly. That is what the Trainer did on my mate's Line Training even though it provoked much heated debate, later.

Not wild - that is exactly what AB Normal Law is.

Unfortunately in this case, normal law bailed out because of sensor failure, on the not-entirely-unreasonable logic that computer may not know best when it knows it is half-blinded.

Unfortunately when normal law went off line the pilots were not capable of going on line. It is a new problem caused by over reliance on automation and not competent pilots. I think the clock is ticking until the next one because nothing has changed. Competent pilots are expensive, new hires out of school are cheap. The bean counters have full control.

Two levels of Alt law. If speeds have not failed, then it trusts those to keep some protections in place (Alt1). If speeds have failed, then it will latch the lower level of Alt law, with no protections in place.

Quite possibly it's this way round because airspeed was considered one of the more reliable air-data parameters...


Is attitude and vertical speed enough to warn on ? - I'm not sure. VS is coming, I think, from the same airdata that's dubious. What if there's static port failure ? If anything. I'd want to go to just the inertials - accelerometers should be plenty reliable enough over short time frame - and engine data only. Something like "if pointy end up, and engine power up and IRU says we going down, must be still stalled, or wings fallen off".

Need to be careful though that we're introducing a lot of complexity, and hence additional failure risk, into a very simple system (currently more or less "is aoa > threshold"). Stall warning failure is not good either.

Inexperienced pilots ? Both co-pilots had more hours than a lot of low cost carrier captains.. The pnf more than a lot of not so low cost captains. Methinks quite an experienced crew over all. As for rest periods you have to take them at some point. Who knows what reasons the capt took that break, maybe the lesser demanding part & he trusted his crew.
At least unlike some airlines where the co pilots only have 150-200 hrs which apparently is fine if they have appropriate training.

150-200 hrs does not qualify anybody to fly an airliner across the Atlantic. 2000 hrs doesn't either. In our country it was 5,000 hrs minimum to be an FO on an airliner. Recently the bean counters have found a way to get cheap help at 350 hrs. Good luck.

"Hours" are less and less relevant unfortunately. Especially for FO's flying long haul routes. Somewhere back in one of the previous threads this was covered with the approximiate math that the PF probably had something on the order of 9 hours a month of actual "PF" time with actual stick time literally measured in minutes (if any at all). So over the course of a year he might have 90-100 total flying hours with possibly a dozen takeoffs and landings and potentially less then an hour of "hands on" line flying.

So how unexpected is it really that under extreme stress and in totally unexpected circumstances he would fall back on the protections that had been heavily stressed in a low altitude stall recovery....in effect he appears to have been instinctively flying a missed approach type "recovery".

So the reality is that a bright carefully selected 300 hr (actual type specific with significant hands on stick/sim time) would be more likely to respond correctly then a more experienced pilot whose training was far in the past.

Personally I think this incident highlights how important actual hand-flying is toward maintaining situational awareness. My thought is that the over reliance on automation decreases the ability of the "PF" to actually be mentally "flying" the airplane which can lead to a mental "brain lock" when suddenly forced to assume flying responsibility. From all I've seen the AP disconnect left the plane relatively trimmed and stable with a slightly banked and nose down attitude at (or immediately after) disconnect. The flight control inputs required should have been very minimal and consistent with normal inputs in mild turbulence.

I've got to belive that the combination of surprise and a focus on low altitude upset recovery procedures led to an ingrained response that was completely incorrect for the specific circumstances.

If only the Airbus could be flown by hand.

The only time we get to fly by hand is the first and last 50 feet, or if something goes terribly wrong and we find ourself in direct law. As long as the FBW is in normal law, the SS is nothing more than a autopilot input device. Adding a bank request through the SS is the same as turning the heading select knob on the flight control panel. Both actions result in the autopilot turning the aircraft.

Hand flying an Airbus in normal law does not prepare one for hand flying an Airbus in degraded law. And we haven't even discussed hand trimming. It is virtually impossible to practice hand trimming. Yes, I have tried.

I routinely turn off AutoThrust, Autopilot, and Flight Director when flying visual approaches. All I'm accomplishing is to maintain my instrument scan. I have no confidence that my hand "flying" practice will translate to proficiency in degrade law ops.

This just made my day, that was funny!

How about a "smoke in the cockpit", AP unavailable due to some electrical cock-up that concoctes the smoke?
You have your goggles on and are battling to read and work the ECAM on old and faded screens. With no feedback whatsoever just try to "see" what kind of inputs your buddy is swinging ...

I bet you'd give one nut for some tactile feedback then.

FWIW, the older F/O had many more hours on type than the captain as well as considerably more experience in the ITCZ...

Zorin 75

So then why didn't the Captain put him in control...Wouldn't have that made much more sense???? :confused:

A Question for Jet Drivers.
 

I fly helicopters and dont fully understand fixed wing. I sort of follow the stall that caused this crash but I dont understand how the Aircraft got into the stall in the first place.I seem to remember it happened at night so no external reference , and it happened in a storm so was the cause windshear caused by the updrafts downdrafts etc?Any explanation appreciated.

brantlyb2b
 

The stall was caused by the pilot flying mishandling the aircraft.

Things like 'experience' and 'qualification' seem to become more and more relative. Unless requirements are uniform, "qualifications" generally can be achieved in two ways - extensive and intensive training plus a certain dedication on part of the trainee OR by lowering requirements and artificially reducing the fail rate. Pretty much the same goes for ''experience" that is measured in hours/days/years. All depends on what person does most of this time. With advances in technology and increases in its reliabilty there must be pilots that would have thousands of hours and not a single malfunction just as there ARE people who never experienced things like a light bulb going off when they were alone and had to "deal' with it and there will be more people like that in the future.

In this context praising someone for obtaining "qualifications" or passing exam is premature unless you know what is required to qualify and what questions are asked at the exam.

It happens everywhere but it's very sad and definitely wrong that it seems to be happening in aviation. Human capital is the most expensive of all, this is where the costs always seem to grow and this is the one single area management ALWAYS look into when they want to increase the profit margins. I heard that aviation cannot be taken out of the context of the wider economy, but I think that it has to be. I suspect if regular economic enterprises were physically at the height of 10000 meters above the ground and keept there by the quality of the personel, the attitude to outsourcing scr*w-ups would be little bit different and the ratio of professionals knowing which buttons to press and WHY these buttons and not the others to office plankton only capable of pressing the learned combinations of buttons would be a bit higher.

The fact that both FO were "qualified" and type-rated yet there are number of things that they had never even been trained for speaks volumes. And its a huge regulator's failure that despite that they were allowed in the cockpit of a commercial passenger flight, and what's worse BOTH of them at the same time in the same cockpit. But unless this is strictly regulated to ther point of directly criminalising deviations it will be happening and will be happening more and more often. Nothing illegal after all, whereas it should be illegal just as its illegal to sell contaminated aviation fuel. And coming from corporate finance I know that generally companies will do as much (as little) as the regulation let them get away with. Humans in general do not often do more than is formally required.

And this is precisely the reason why I believe that Air France will be let off lightly considering that they just killed 228 people including their own staff. Unless regulation changes other big airlines might be tempted to follow their example. It's easier for them too - they are the ones that can afford the newer aircraft and better mainainance, so their estimated technology fail rate is lower and human factor doesn't play as big a role when everything works 100%.

Punching through the ITCZ is not a habit to be recommended, serviceable pitots or not. I have done it several times and it is one of the worst flying experiences you can have. The Captain would have known that.
We will never know why they did not deviate 100, 200 or 300 miles to go around it. It is plausable the 1st and 2nd officers did not feel they had that sort of authority and did not want to wake the old man up for his say so. I think it was a grave mistake of the Captain not to have been there and the talk of him needing rest so as to be rested for the approach is laughable, there was another 7 hours for him to sleep after the ITCZ.
My guess is the plane would have deviated if he had been there. I mentioned at the vey beginning that I suspected the Captain not to be in the cockpit and was shouted down by the experts.
IMO it raises other issues of whether the younger generation of pilots are too hestitant to do things without a clearance. Did they ask for a deviation? Perhaps they did and could not get through or it was denied? Descend 500 feet and deviate anyway without a clearance but I think this sort of thinking outside the box is not encouraged in pilots anymore.

hawker750, you talk much sense there.

Surely it would be prudent for the Captain to be on the flightdeck when approaching an area of hazardous weather such as the ITCZ? Is there not anything in the Air France Operations Manual which states this?

Sadly it often isn't know apart from some notable exceptions by some operators but you can't blame it on the individuals - they are merely a product of the "system".

There are times when you just have to have the moral courage (aka b***s) to do what you consider necessary and face the music later.

-ah! That must be why a/c do it day in day out then, including several that night on that track. Are we not being a touch melodramatic? It's only a big front (think Dolly Parton...)

BOAC
The two times I have had the misfortune of being caught in a cell in the ITCZ (both times because the radar lied) were not fun. Firstly in a King Air I went in at 28,000 feet and it spat me out at 38,000 feet, the 10,000 feet climb was dome with zero thrust. It destroyed the nose cone and had two lightning holes in the leading edge. The second time in a Hawker only destroyed the nose cone and dented the leading edges. I would deviate as much as it takes to avoid lines of CB's in the ITCZ

BOAC.
We probably flew together VC10's or 707's?
Quote:
ah! That must be why a/c do it day in day out then, including several that night on that track. Are we not being a touch melodramatic? It's only a big front (think Dolly Parton...)

I do not think I am being melodramatic. In a cell your margins for safe flight are dramatically reduced and it is crews' responsibities to mitigate risk as much as possible.
I'll bet the souls of the passengers now wish perhaps the crew had been a bit melodramatic

is the melodrama. You did not say 'punching through CBs' which we all agree is not a good idea. Remembering the ITCZ effectively encircles the world it makes it a bit of a challenge to 'go round the ITCZ' as you were suggesting - which is why hundreds of a/c have for YEARS flown through it. - no.

Do we have, yet again, to tell YOU as well that they did not, as far as we know, 'punch through a CB' - unless you know differently, of course.

I can hear that Oozlum bird flapping again.:ugh:

"The older I get the better I used to be....."

Along with command comes discretion. Command diminishes a degree at a time, so's you wouldn't even notice......

hawker and fireflybob sound a lot like the Captains of old, and in a very good way. With the loss of Power in the cockpit, even as power on the wing increased, we lost a safety margin. A big one.

That there was any ambivalence on 447's flight deck as to who had command as the Captain left, speaks volumes. If it isn't important enough to make clear to one's subordinates, it isn't important at all.

I am weary of picking on the aircraft. One does not seek risk for thrill, but when it presents, one gains focus and self confidence, or one need ride in back. And weather is risk.

"What do we do?"......

TTex your comments are way beyond my experience and understanding. I've got a bit of PPL time (long ago) but limited to 152/172 VFR. What your saying scares the hell out of me as an SLF. If I understand you correctly even under "manual" control the airbus is actually flown by the AP??

That seems at odds from what I have read....my assumption based on everything I've read is that it has all the built in AB "safety" but that within those parameters when off autopilot it is still equivalent to a corresponding Boeing model. Is that incorrect?

BOAC
I agree, picking your way throught the ITCZ is done daily. But I think it is clear that they went through a cell, I doubt if the pitots would have iced up by flying through the rest of the stuff. My question is why did they choose not to deviate a long way away from a cell? This may have been discussed before and I appologise if it is old ground. My comment is that IMO the Captain should have been there. Putting it another way, it would not have been detrimental to the situation if he had been, so I cannot understand the view that he need not have been there.
There will be lessons learned from this tragedy and I guess after a decent time interval it will be used in CRM classes. I just hope the lessons will be remembered.

@SLFinAZ

I don't think so - I think what he is saying is that in a lot of cases airline management decree use of the autoflight system to the extent that manual handling tends to fall by the wayside.

However, when he says...

...he is actually incorrect, and conflating the FMS/autoflight system with the FCU system.

You are correct in stating that they Boeing FBW setup is exactly the same in terms of high-level function. The FCU (which mediates the flight control inputs and commands the flight surfaces) can be considered roughly equivalent to the old "Q-feel" system on hydraulically-controlled conventional airliners in that it translates the pilot's inputs to flight-surface deflection.

I suspect that TTex600 considers the FCU to be a quasi-autopilot because of the bank angle and pitch limitations in the Normal Law protection suite, whereas the Normal Law limitations in fact give a pilot more than twice as much leeway (in terms of bank angle limitation) as the old-fashioned autopilot bank and pitch limits.

For both Hawker750 and BOAC - from the POV of a skipper that often punches through the ITCZ with two F/Os. I am ALWAYS on the flightdeck through the weather:ok::ok::ok: Every single time. As I would expect my fellow captains to be when I'm taking advantage of staff-travel through the same areas.

Likewise I am always in my seat when crossing the Himalayas - FL280 being the on airway MSA... Why some of my fellow skippers aren't is a source of endless confusion to me:=

- where is your evidence for this? You do not need 'CB' to produce icing cloud, do you? - see previous

- so you know they didn't? - certainly has, and we are forever pointing out that there is NO evidence they did fly in or near a cell. You have around a week of reading to do I think - it is all on PPrune somewhere in one of the many threads.

The rest of your statements I agree with, and there are few who support the absence of the Captain. In view of your career it may interest you to know that some of the 'old' BOAC/BA chaps I contacted in 2009 assured me that they would always 'take their rest as rostered' regardless???.

I am sorry to say that your story of your KingAir and Hawker 'adventures' leads me to say you got what you deserved and it should have been little surprise. Was the radar u/s?

This talk of the Captain not being there, and taking his rest, is a red herring, as far as I'm concerned. If the aircraft had crashed at some other point in the flight for some other reason, you would argue exactly the same point.

I regularly "punched" my way through the ITCZ, as an FO, on a 747, heading to Jo'burg etc. with the other FO sat next to me, and the Captain sound asleep, in the bunk. Occasionally, between the two of us, we even had the wit to deviate several hundred miles, past weather.

To be an FO on long haul in my airline, you need to have an ATPL, be qualified to P1 standard, and have several thousand hours experience. For sure, the Captain is in charge, but he has to delegate that responsibility, make sure his FO's are briefed, and are happy to call him if they feel the need. Using the weather radar, and course deviations are not really a big deal. They happen all over the place, as can any other emergency, whilst the Captain is asleep.

I am now a Captain on short haul, and to judge by some of the comments on this thread, I'd better never go to the toilet, in case something happens, whilst I'm chatting to the CC, and the "200 hour wonder", or whatever you want to call them is at the controls.

These AF FOs were deemed qualified to act as P1, by their company, whilst the Captain took his rest. They could easily have been captains, on another fleet, or in another airline. Let's move away from this "man and boy" concept, and "if only the captain was there" rubbish. Frankly, if you's seen some of the captains' flying skills I've seen, you wouldn't be saying such things!

Of course there is the emotional concept of "being responsible" when one is a captain, and I take that very seriously, but I doubt anyone wants to die really, do they? When I was an FO, I would frequently look left, for advice, whilst now, I only see my own reflection, but hopefully always remember to then look right, and share the problem. These sorts of moments are almost invariably not QRH actions, or "flying the aircraft" ones, but more typically, tricky ones on the ground, involving ATC, passengers etc.

There should be no reason why 2 experienced FOs could not navigate, using the weather radar, or fly their aeroplane equally as well, if not better than their captain.

[quote =SLFinAZ]oTTex your comments are way beyond my experience and understanding. I've gOot a bit of PPL time (long ago) but limited to 152/172 VFR. What your saying scares the hell out of me as an SLF. If I understand you correctly even under "manual" control the airbus is actually flown by the AP??

That seems at odds from what I have read....my assumption based on everything I've read is that it has all the built in AB "safety" but that within those parameters when off autopilot it is still equivalent to a corresponding Boeing model. Is that incorrect?
[\quote]

Incorrect. Every Boeing (less 777and 787), Douglas, Embraer, Canadair, etc, places the pilots hands and feet in direct contact with the control surfaces. Airbus places a battery of computers between the pilot and the control surfaces. The 777 and 787 place computer there also, but the computers don't modify the pilots request before they order acontrol deflection. The Bus only gives me what it decides I need, not what I ask for.

The FMGC flys the airplane. FMGC = master computer in simple terms. The pilot communicates with the FMGC through the MCDU - keyboard that programs, the FCU - glareshield mounted knobs and buttons used to request specific speeds/altitudes/headings/vertical speeds- and the SS. Regardless which input device the pilot uses, the FMGC flys the airplane. Unless the computers give up and hand the pilot the aircraft because the computer can no longer do the job. That is the case withAF447, BTW.

I actually operate/program/"fly" an Airbus unlike certain persons on is site with obvious agendas and positions to protect. In simple terms, the Airbus is flown by the various computers. The SS is nothing more than an input device to the computers. The pilot does NOT receive the control outputs he commands unless the computers agree with his requests.

The thousands of posts on this forum alone indicate that there is more to the Airbus than just "it flys like a normal airplane"

@TTex600

I disagree completely.

The last Boeing to have directly-connected controls was the 737. Everything since (and that goes for the DC-10, L-1011, 747 and onwards in terms of US-built airliners) had fully-hydraulic controls, which ran through a Q-feel system that modified the outputs to the flight controls with weighted feedback to the pilots to simulate the feel of direct connection. Without that mediation, it would have been possible to yank the flight controls from neutral to maximum in less than a second (and tearing the airframe apart in the process), as the hydraulics were performing the movements and *not* the pilot's muscle power. D.P. Davies explains the development of these systems in great detail. Indeed, the reason Capt. McCormick was able to effect a landing when he lost most of his hydraulics over Windsor, Ontario was precisely because he was unsatisfied with Douglas's assurances that complete hydraulic failre was impossible and therefore direct connection was unnecessary.

The 7(7/8)7 systems mediate the inputs and feedback - of course they do. They may be designed to simulate the more traditional control systems, but that's all it is - a simulation, like the Q-feel units before them.

The Airbus design simply takes that one step further, reasoning that since direct connection had been done away with for nearly two decades prior to the A320 starting development, they might as well start from a clean slate, which is where the G-loading and rate command control technology comes from. Yes it's different, but only marginally so and as I understand it the difference in behaviour between Normal versus Alternate versus Direct is more than manageable.

The 'bus in fact gives you what you ask for unless what you're asking would take it outside the flight envelope. It even goes beyond that and tries to accommodate what you're asking by managing thrust if necessary.

I'd like to know what "agendas" and "positions" you see, and who you think is "protecting" them, as well as why you think that's the case. In my experience the ones with the agendas seem to be the ones taking every opportunity to bash the 'bus.

Slickster

I have a feeling that you might be one of the 'nightmare' F/Os of my experience in a very large British airline. Senior F/Os who spent their entire working lives shuttling to and from "Jo-Burg", racking up the credited hours and 'Box' payments.

I spent years on short-haul, and your biggest decision is normally whether to have the steak or chicken. I contend that you would think about this matter in a different way if you were 50 years of age, about to penetrate the ITCZ, and you were looking at two kids on the flight deck who had shiny new ATPLs in their briefcase, and an ego the size of the moon.

You guys have grown up in the job being totally spoiled by technology. You couldn't do a better job than your old captains if they had one hand tied behind their backs. You would probably be lost without GPS. You probably haven't had to manually set take-off power in your life! You just hit 'EPR'.

Your attitude reinforces my opinion that there is no way I would fly as a passenger in my retirement with guys like you up front.

Slickster, that may be true but they're not qualified Captains

By severe stretch of imagination, it just might be true. FMGS is integrated FMS/FD/AP/Autothrust. It calulates navigation and guidance parameters for FD, sends commands to FCCs and FADECS via AP and ATHR respectively. Kick out the AP and ATHR and FMGS has no authority over aeroplane anymore. ATA22.

You are wrong on sidesticks - they are not connected to FMGC but rather to flight control computers - ELACs/SECs on minibus, PRIMs/SECs on widebodies. ATA27.

Dozy,

I recognize that my views are fundamental not professional in the sense that my actual first hand experience is limited to basic airman-ship (152/172) vs flying more complex aircraft. With that caveat out of the way my personal feeling is that the entire airbus concept is the single worst development in professional aviation. It unquestioningly takes flying to the lowest common denominator and I think that AF447 has to be taken as the wake up call.

In spite of the endless drivel and speculation this should have been a non-event. For a professional pilot to lose an air frame that was handed off from the AP in an entirely stable configuration is unfathomable (vs a circumstance where the AP "spun out" until the airplane was in an entirely unstable configuration).

In effect the specter of "what is it doing now" has met the reality of why isn't it doing what it needs to? Evan as an "amateur" pilot the total lack of airmanship in this incident astounds me. At the end of the day the blunt truth is that the PF was fundamentally incompetent...and that is a scary reality.

You are not alone SLFinAZ. Know of a gentleman who cut his teeth flying the A-26 in Vietnam and went on to an airline career with a major US carrier. Not only did he refuse to fly Airbus products but also refused to fly as a pax on them. Now living out his days in a nursing home unfortunately.

Well, you go with your feelings then. For the record, "Box payments" are ancient history, and the credit hours for a Jo'burg ain't that good. There may be a trade off, if you love your golf, but in a very large British airline, credit is king. In any case, you might find yourself flying over the Bay of Bengal, or in severe turbulence to LA, on a 3 crew, which was my point.

No senior FO has spent their entire lives racking up credited hours. They've either done it in said same airline on short haul, come from another airline (where they've racked up their golf, no doubt), or the forces, where they've racked up their points by demonstrating their talent (even though they probably have low hours?). No doubt, whilst doing all of that, they've managed to kid the selection process. Well, if they're that clever, good luck to them.

There is much talk of this, but I don't see it. I occasionally have to depart with the autothrottle u/s, and we deal with it. So, yes, I have had to set take off power, manually. My aircraft does not have GPS, we fly on N1s on it, and universally, we call "set power", so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Well, I couldn't give a toss whether you're on my aeroplane or not, providing you behave yourself. In the meantime, I'm curious to know which airline you will fly with, based on your rational assumptions above.

Dozy, does it disturb you that someone such as myself actually flys the Bus? I obviously don't know much about flying it or anything else.

Maybe you forgot that this string is about the crews final conversation. Some of these readers may not be interested in pedantic and anal analysis. That's over in the tech log.

My generalizations regarding the way an Airbus is hand flown are correct.

NOTHING you say or write will change the FACT that the SS does not directly control the control surfaces in other than direct law. Lateral SS movement is translated into roll rates and longitudinal SS movement is translated into load factor requests. I've flown cable controlled, steam gauge, jets for thousands of hours and I assure you that an lateral yoke deflection in a Lear does not result in a roll rate; it results in an aileron deflection which results in a roll rate depending on the airspeed and other factors. Likewise, yoke movements in pitch do not directly result in load factor changes; yoke movements in a Lear result in elevator movements which result in load factor changes depending on A/S etc.

I am NOT anti Airbus FBW. I'm anti the continual statements to the effect that it flys like any other airplane. It does not, and most anyone who actually operates one understands that fact.

I do have a question for you. Why is it that old dogs like myself, reared on the likes of DC9s, (NWA crews for example) manage to maintain control of UAS A330s in the ITCZ while the only airframe lost was flown by Airbus only pilots? BTW, everyone who's read more than my last three posts knows that I defend the pilots and am insulted by those who want to blame this accident on them.

I may be technically incorrect about the exact function of the FMGC, but that doesn't matter. My point is that the SS's are not connected to the controls, the SS's are connected only to computers; a point that you yourself concede.

TTex600
 

:D:D:D:D

I'm makin' the popcorn!

--The Peanut Gallery

SLF, the airframe might have been entirely stable when the A/P and A/T dropped off line, but they dropped off because of false inputs. The pilots were not faced with a stable situation. They were faced with the same bad data and had to quickly separate good data from bad data - and deal with a control law situation they had likely never before experienced.

I'm not ready to declare the PF fundamentally incompetent. :Let's wait until the entire CVR and DFDR data is released before we pass judgement.

It does appear on that pilot actions were incorrect, however that in no way exonerates the machine. The crews last comments indicate extreme confusion and I maintain that the machine was causing that confusion in large part.

Organfreak,

I spent an hour pecking away at rebutals on my iPhone during my commute home today, but never hit send after I got a signal. Had I done so, you'd need an adult beverage to go along with the popcorn.

Alas, I decided that I don't have the interest to pursue it further than the last three posts. The "experts" can have it. They aren't going to convince me that the Airbus flys like a normal airplane and I'm not going to convince them of anything. Besides, I initially followed this string for education and I actually have benefited from the information guys like Dozy provide. And..................I don't have a position to protect, an airplane to defend, a concept to justify. So we'll have to see where it goes from here. In the mean time, I'm certain that certain posters will continue to provide entertainment. ;)