Lyman
Still pushing an agenda I see. Practicing the lawyer's art are you? :rolleyes:

At least your factual arguments are getting more factual. It is just your IMHOs that we have to be careful of. What effect do you suppose the extinguishing of the stall warning had on the captain when he re-entered the flight deck? In his shoes, wouldn't you normally think that the guys in the seats had reduced AOA? That affected his mental starting point, and the bunnies in the seats then didn't help with their minimal brief.

Machinbird, agreed. While we have every right to expect fully-trained personel on deck, this airplane needs much more work on idiot-proofing. :eek:

At the very least, I would change the UAS drill to require cross cockpit crew communication.

Either pilot should be allowed/required to challenge air speed reliability and there should be a SOP in the manual for exact phraseology to be used in such an event. The challenge should be required and the response exact. i.e., "UAS suspected, Left side indicates xxx. What is your airspeed?" followed by "Right side indicates xxx, Stdby indicates xxx" . Or something to that effect.

We take our time dealing with engine failures at V1, why not take our time dealing with UAS?

As written, the UAS procedure is "immediate action" and it appears that the rote response to immediate action could have been incorrect in this AF447 case. (at the very least ;)

Be willing to pay more for a ticket (or e-ticket as the case may be).

This particular recommendation would have had a positive influence on the outcomes of at least 3 accidents that I can immediately think of. Is there any down side to this type procedure? Are there any limitations on when to apply it?

Thanks for posting the B787 method of using "synthetic" airspeed and GPS altitude when discrepancies with the Pitot/Baro system are detected. I've placed the details of the image you posted in quotes above, mainly so that it will be found when searching the thread.

So my answer to Machinbird's challenge is for Airbus to implement a similar system as described above and alluded to by me as early as July 2009 in post #3999 in the AF447 Thread and recently in post #616 in AF447 No.4 Thread.

Now I haven't heard of any B787 pilots objecting to not having to deal with UAS - has anyone else??

and as suggested by Machinbird in July 2009 in the same thread http://www.pprune.org/5093224-post3981.html:) and probably by a number of others as well.

Boeing is one upping Airbus in the technical wars of how to design a better airliner. Now we can have competitive pressures to add to pressures from regulators to improve the existing Airbus design.:ok:

Airbus already has backup speed scale - BUSS - which is effectively a synthetic airspeed from same source parameters as the Boeing one.

How many types is Boeing implementing this on ? I think BUSS is available on everything later than 320, and mandatory on 380 onwards ?

BUSS is really an AOA indicator gussied up to look like the PFD airspeed indication as best they could. Very different principle compared to Boeing's synthetic airspeed (from what we can learn from A33Zab's post).

...And as long as BUSS is optional there are thousands more lives it can't save.

A competent pilot would not pull up into a stall ignoring his altitude and pitching far above any attitude that would provide any hope of recovery. These new guys needed the captain to help them because they were lost as far as flying properly and not prepared to fly the plane properly. Copilots should be able to handle these situations if properly experienced. These two were not obviously. I just wonder if they have improved the FO standards since this happened. Most US FO's have over 10.000 hrs before they fly the long hauls over the Atlantic. Much more before they can be a captain. We can do it so why can't they?

Interesting, you are pretty well informed here.
I note the one on the non availability of the FD … part of the reason I am very much interested in the AP/FD vertical mode trace.
Some seem to be a consequence from Perpignan, some others maybe already from AF447 …

NAV IAS DISCREPANCY ECAM MSG became standard on our fleet sometimes between 2008 – 2009 but I could not tell precisely which month. I would have thought AF447 was equipped, but I’ve been wrong on the electrical rudder already so …

The real link between Habsheim and AF447 is that the BEA is investigating an Airbus accident.

Habsheim – 2 pilots decided to present the brand new 320 at very low speed very low altitude with minimum preparation. To perform such maneuver with just the front crew onboard would have been questionable already, but to perform it with a pax loaded cabin was a total lack of judgment. Obviously the crew decision is the reason for the crash and must be remembered as such.

But did it absolve the BEA to tell the all story ?
Is it the BEA mission to cover up the truth ?

The truth had to be told – The crew would not have been considered less responsible.

1. When the pilot applied the thrust, one engine stalled, and the other one responded much slowly than expected. As the captain had that very bad idea to fly below the trees line ... happened what happened.
2. When the pilot applied full back stick, the airplane refused to deliver alpha max. That characteristic will be documented 20 years later by the NTSB following the Hudson ditching. Maybe at the end that would not have done any difference, but it was the role of the BEA to detail that flight control behavior below 50 feet.

It is not called a conspiracy Dozy, it is called damage control.

Funny - I've seen the footage lord alone knows how many times and not once did I hear anything indicating a compressor stall. The engines were *spooled down*, because that's what had been ordered to try and fudge the rushed approach.

The aircraft *did* gave him alpha max, but alpha max was *limited* by the airspeed. To have increased the AoA much further would have induced a stall and probably would have killed most of the people on board.

Now - AF447 please.

"Funny - I've seen the footage lord alone knows how many times and not once did I hear anything indicating a compressor stall."

Funny, instead of listening, LOOK, it is VISIBLE........

Could the crew have survived if they had lit the APU? (447, Doze. Oh for some alpha prot above the Atlantic....).

Hi CONF iture

The only similarity between the accident reports for Habsheim http://www.bea.aero/docspa/1988/f-kc...f-kc880626.pdf and AF744 is that both have the CVR transcript & Flight Data.

Page 35.
The aircraft is at 30 radio,
At 12:46:34 the CVR picks up the sound of the TLs going through 3 clicks to TOGA.
At 12:46:37 the Co-pilot reads the FMA "TOGA SRS"
At 12:46:39 the sound of impact with the trees.
At 12:46:39 the Captain says "M....!" (code for merde?)
At 12:46:41 Fin.

I believe the agreed display was a fly past at a height of 500 ft.
At 30 ft radio, with thrust at flight idle, speed back to Alpha Protect and below, don't you think the application of power just 5 seconds before impact with the trees is leaving it just a tad too late?

No it isn't.

Hi CONF iture,
Relative to Habsheim:

I don't believe there was a compressor stall in one engine at all. indeed the engines did not spool up in 1 or 2 seconds. This comes from the a pilot error of setting the engines at minimum flight idle. In this case, engines may take 5 seconds to increase from complete idle to good power (80% of continuous max). The lack of power was made worse with the slowing down and the extremely low speed in such a way that the tail was lower than the undercarriage. It can be pointed out that those conditions never happen during a normal landing, that is why pilots have been baffled with the airplane's poor reactions. Air France had been informed by CFMI of the 5 second delay in spool up from minimum flight idle, but the word was never passed to the Habsheim crew before the flight. Subsequently the delay in spool up was fixed by CFMI, probably by changes made to the engine control electronic management system.

I'm not so sure. The much-referenced delay in spooling up (and the reference to earlier problems in the A320 testing regimen) referred to slow spool up at medium to cruise altitude, and thus a completely different area of the flight envelope compared to the position of the Habsheim jet.

The consensus as I understand it was that allowing high-bypass jet engines of any type and on any airliner to spool down at any point of the approach was a big no-no, and pilots of the calibre and experience of those in command on the day should have been well aware of that fact.

:mad:#2, about 200 meters short of the trees, keep looking. And he did not say 'compressor'.

Now I had to go look. It is #1, looks more surgy than stally. sheesh.

Of all the posters, Turbine D is one I never even bother to check/question. His posts are impeccable. There was a bulletin (OEB) sent to Air France prior, and the Engines were modified as a result of Habsheims folly. So from Habsheim comes progress. Had Asseline been less stupid, would the initial crash/failedGA of a 320 loaded with pax been inevitable? Life is strange.

Dozy, CONFiture has a pov, one that involves BEA doing some questionable things re: reporting. I happen to agree with him. You have the advantage of being so sure of yourself, it is clear you buy their perfection. I am merely sceptical, and worship at no altars involving the technical work of mere humans.

I am agnostic.

Not just a consensus, but a feature of all jet engines, not just high-bypass engines. The very reason for having a flight idle higher than ground idle is the spool-up time. Since the adoption in 1958 of Special Civil Air Regulation Nr. SR-422A for Turbine-Powered Transport Category Airplanes of Current Design, the 'baulked' landing climb requirement must be met with:

Lyman,

The year was 1988. What you are "seeing" is neither a "stall" or a "surge". It is a result of a throttle burst from minimum idle to max thrust. In those days, when you did that, even on a test stand, you would see unburned fuel vapors out the tailpipe. It had to do with the state of design knowledge in those days regarding the combustor and fuel insertion into the combustor. With today's combustor sophistication and knowledge rarely would you see this.

Anyhow, both engines performed as advertised, with power application being just a little late.

Dozy,

Without getting into a lot of detail, I am sure. It was a warning and reminder of the spool up time required on this engine from minimum flight idle to TOGA thrust, whether it takes place at 50 feet or 250 feet from the ground, much more critical than at or near cruise altitude.

Speed and the Paris Air Show.
 

I believe that we all as pilots knew very well that jet engines took about 8 seconds to spool up. That was the case on the B727 when I flew them back in the 70's. I am quite sure it was a lack of knowledge and experience that caused that accident. The A320 was new and no one quite understood it's idiosyncrasies. When I started my training on the A320, I realized how complicated the technology was and understood then why they lost that first one at the show. Remember too that the A320 of today is very different to the one that crashed. Many mods over the years. I don't fault the pilots. The technology was new, difficult to understand and the training possibly inadequate. It's so easy to point fingers after the fact.

What recommendations ??
 

First of all that :
(1) Pilots understand and respect high altitude flight into thunderstorms
(2) Radar must be properly setup at Top of Climb.
(3) Pilots understand "supercooled water" and how it behaves.
(4) Respect SOPs and apply them
(5) Better training on high altitude manual handling
(6) More use of GPS info. A separate GPS readout of speed (GS), altitude (true), and track, would have saved the day. I carried a handheld unit and it made me feel sooooo good. It was all I needed to land the thing if all was lost.

It's hard for me to accept the loss of a perfectly good airplane due to all of the above. Hope we all learn from it.

This statement:

and this one:

are logically incompatible with one another. Either you believe that the BEA are involved in an ongoing effort to shield Airbus from blame by fudging information or you don't. You cannot claim to be agnostic and hold the viewpoint in the first statement.

Don't you dare put words in my mouth - I "buy" nobody's "perfection". I just don't believe the BEA are any less independent than any other international accident investigation body you care to name.

@thermostat and Turbine D:

I'm happy to bow to those more knowledgeable, but I'm having a hard time reconciling the idea that the A320 had any specific "idiosyncrasies" regarding engine spool-up time that the crew would have been unaware of if the guidelines regarding spool-up time were known of in the B727 days.

The captain of AF296 was AF's second most experienced pilot on type - he was well aware that the aircraft would limit alpha-max if there was not sufficient airspeed to initiate a climb. I believe that he simply became so goal-focused on getting to 100ft at the runway threshold, that he didn't factor in the side-effect of expediting his descent (by throttling back to spool-down) to do so. "There but for the grace of God" is one thing, but to blame the aircraft for being inscrutable is a cop-out.

Since appointment of BEA as investigating authority for both Habsheim (which definitively is not another name for "Paris" or "Le Bourget") and AF447 disasters is perfectly IAW Annex 13, it is either completely normal or we are all doomed because ICAO is part of conspiracy to cover-up the fatal design flaws of FBW Airbi.

:E

If your desire is to increase informational value of the thread, read and understand reports before posting something brutally at odds with them, without source of reason why you disagree. If you are participating in discussion for entertainment purposes only, keep up the good work.

According to DFDR readout, no penetration of storm cell occurred. Discussed to death but the notion keeps re-spawning.

Hi,

Something certain about the crash at Habsheim :
Both flight recorders (CVR and DFDR) disappear the evening of the event, transported by air by the Director of the DGAC Daniel TENENBAUM without any judicial seal there is affixed by the Prosecutor of Mulhouse, Jean WOLF.
It is therefore by an illegal act that begins the investigation
I am not surprised, therefore, of the controversy that followed and which is still not closed for some
BTW ... there is good reason for all the publicity that was made during the sealing of the black boxes of AF447 .. it was even filmed and shown to public

Or a mistake.

A lot of that "controversy" was manufactured by a private Swiss investigator who was paid to come to the conclusions he came to.

The BEA were so horrified by the accusations levelled at them that they (and the local gendarmerie) wouldn't touch the recorders from the subsequent Air Inter crash until the NTSB team that they had brought over were able to confirm that no tampering with the CVR and DFDR had occurred. The NTSB team were genuinely worried that the data would be lost due to remaining in the burning wreckage for so long.

Mistake or not .. it's illegal act .. turn it how you want !
What followed I don't bother anymore .. it's history ..

Maybe so, but the DGAC is *not* the BEA. What followed was an honest attempt on the BEA's part to prove to the doubters that whatever happened with the boxes from AF296 would not be repeated on their watch. The people who won't let the aftermath of AF296 go conveniently forget about those efforts, and do themselves no favours by doing so, because it doesn't suit their agenda.

Perhaps it was, but that was completely irrelevant to the investigation just as it is completely irrelevant to AF447.

Turn it how you want, it was said. Another oblique swipe at BEA seems to be the favoured direction

And where exactly are we going now?

SAFETY FIRST issue 11 Jan 2011 page 8

Under STALL WARNING and STALL

A340-600 " performing a low altitude level flight deceleration at idle until SW is triggered and then push the THR levers to TOGA...

The thrust actually reaches TOGA (20 seconds later), the aircraft stalls ... "

Others may know whether this information is helpful - or relevant.

I had a new Captain nearly do this unintentionally with a very empty Britannia freighter, where the time would have been less but still seemed an age. It was night time... I learned from that example... I didn't copy !

BPBsen
Sorry for return on this subject .. but if this is not revelant to an investigation .. why the boxes must be sealed ?
What is the exact purpose of affixing seals ?

Round in the same old circles until new information comes out.

@jcj : The seal is for the judicial inquiry, not the accident investigation.

Thank you .. so it's a very important matter of the judicial inquiry ( Pièces a conviction - exhibits ) like a gun discovered on a crime scene ...

It is the usual attempts by the usual suspects to cast doubt on BEA's credibility with the usual Have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife type of questions.

A form of early insurance in case the contents of the final report is not liked, I suppose. Or perhaps just a case of disliking anything French and having a dig any which way.

Hi,

Voss Says Pilots Must Back Up Automation
http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-ne...ack-automation

Clandestino. Have you heard the saying "Doctors differ, patients die" ?
I watched an informative video in 4 parts with a pilot. 2 investigators (one English and one American) and an expert in weather matters. They showed a segment on supercooled water and how it reacted when disturbed. This video was extremely well done and all the ppruners should watch it. My experience in aviation spans 32 years, and I do my own thinking thank you. Common sense mixed with experience on different jets allows me to draw my own conclusions.
It's very clear to me (as I have posted many times before) why the accident happened.

thermostat,

Do you really think they encountered supercooled water? Wouldn't ice crystals clogging the pitots be a more likely scenario? I think they finally saw what was ahead on the radar (somewhat late) and started to skirt around the worst of the CB. I am of the impression that CBs in the ITCZ are different than those over land in that the updrafts around the edges of the CBs are warmer (ocean warm water effect) and wouldn't produce supercooled water at the altitude they were cruising at. In fact, they couldn't climb because of the warmer temperature. Am I wrong here?