Forget Boyd
 

Salute!

Thanks Okie, that about nails it. Biggest thing Boyd sold was energy management in the new jets. OTOH, I think Yeager and others way back had already cracked the code.

WRT to AF 447, the swept wing jets share many aero characteristics going all the way back to 1950. So Boyd and others figured out that you could pull real hard and not get the classic stall warnings and such that the previous planes had. What you got was a lotta drag, and a need to use rudder versus aileron for directional control. Buffet and burbling and such depended on your jet. A-7 and F-101 that I flew let you know real early. F-102 and F-16 were smooth as silk. First clue you had 'stalled" was vertical velocity of 10,000 per minute and speed below 150 knots. Sound familiar?

Biggest thing about the OODA concept for AF447 is the the "O" and "O". The big jets have lottsa inertia and momentum and such. They are not gonna snap roll in a second. They are not gonna overspeed in 10 or 15 seconds. You don't have Mig at close 6 o'clock or a SAM headed your way. So a few seconds observing, then orienting can really pay off.

later from this old man.

Dozy, it was one of the experts who I thought said they got the initial roll under control – in a part of a thread about PIO or whatever it is called nowadays.

But it is not particularly relevant to the main point, which is that PF’s initial pitch inputs seemed to many to be incidental, even accidental, to his roll over-corrections. The full stick back came later.

Regards – Chris

@ Doze.... "Only once the evidence came back that suggested pretty conclusively that neither had occurred. Prior to that the most accurate thing anyone could say was that it was unlikely, and attempt to explain why it was unlikely with the facts at their disposal (as I did)."

I agree, Doze. I think it is unlikely, but it is possible. For a suspicion, I think the roll rate out of AutoFlight was pretty impressive, and Direct involves the outers, no? Damaged Right aileron, stuck a little, UP? A chronic right roll,then. Even after Roll was 'sorted', the a/c kept turnong to the right (Skidding?). Bent actuators? Who knows.

gums, don't short sell Boyd, he was a genius. O, and O were not new, they are nothing more than situational awareness. Boyd put S/A together with Decide and Act to close the circle, but there is more. Four parts OODA is four too many, to be triumphant requires instantaneous decisioning. Boyd's point was to make O,O into OO, then into ODA, then DA, then A.

No soldier who pauses to think will live, let alone prevail. Practicing OODA was prelude, if you are still in OODA, you should not be engaging the enemy. OODA teaches competence, and with competence come experience, and with experience and knowledge,wisdom. With wisdom, one can try for Intuition.

Boyd's philosophy hadn't to do with partitioning the process of thought/action, but in developing the means to enter the enemy's mind, and baffle him by pre-empting his best work.

Until one masters OODA, one cannot get to ODA, or DA. And the Goal is ACT.

For if you think, you die. Anyone who wants to get a glimpse of Boyd's genius must read this: Creation, and Destruction. He was way ahead of his time, and could have kept Einstein guessing, and in awe.

Any pilot at 35000 in ITCZ and on autopilot who doesn't know instantly where to put the nose and the throttles should OTTO dump, should not be at 35000 in the ITCZ at the controls of a beast. Keeping up is not enough, one must get to, and remain, in front.

For PJ2

My answer to the quiz was "B" without looking anything up. :}

For OODA loop:

If your instrument scan has broken down, how are we talking about OODA?

Observe and orient seem to me to require actually seeing something, knowing what it is you are seeing, and using what you know to set up some choices for a decision.

The PF seemed to be going to D without effective OO, hence the A's were not suited to his dogfight, a 1 v 1 with an A330 when he had a wingman there to assist ... too much analogy, sorry. :cool:

Cheers.

I'm no expert, but judging by the DFDR output, every single roll input prior to stall was in excess of what was required to correct it. I'm of the opinion (as a non-expert ;) ) that the initial roll was turbulence-induced, and that the initial overcorrection by the PF led to PIO in roll. The reason I'm fairly confident about the latter is that we know for certain that neither of the F/Os in the flight deck had ever done any high-altitude manual handling training, and the low-level manual handling they had done requires considerably greater stick deflection than required or desired at cruise level.

I'm not so sure (but remember - non-expert!). Part of the reason I leapt at the chance to try this in the sim was to find out exactly how the real Airbus sidestick behaved. Looking at the DFDR, the initial pitch input varied between about 10-50%. From my subjective perspective based on the sim scenario, 50% deflection requires significant positive movement to overcome the spring of the centring mechanism - very different from a computer joystick, where that kind of deflection is fairly easy to achieve unintentionally.

Everything about this looks to me (as a relatively well-read layman) like a textbook startle response, followed by breakdown of instrument scan and intra-cockpit communication. It may be fair to censure the crew for not following UAS procedure, but it is not fair to censure the crew for attempting to improvise and fumbling the recovery, because the institution to which they belonged had never provided the training required to do so effectively.

@Lyman - I know a few disagree with me, but I don't think the roll was induced by positive autoflight intervention or mechanical failure. Everything I see is consistent with the autopilot disconnecting in the middle of a turbulence event, from which it was trying to correct. Rudderrudderrat's mention of rudder trim is an interesting one because if autoflight had been using it, it may have left them with a slight roll tendency until corrected, but even then nothing that would require inputs as aggressive as those made by the PF.

@gums - See above. Nothing in the traces indicates aileron damage. I'd need to get the books out, but I think the outer ailerons are centred and locked when manual control is taken at high altitude, which is why the outer aileron traces centre at A/P disconnect. The take-away from the aileron traces for me is comparing the significant difference in magnitude between the corrections made by autoflight (indicating the required amount of deflection for positive correction at high altitude) and those made by the PF (considerably larger and way in excess of that required). OK, so with outer ailerons locked the inner ailerons would have to work a little harder - but not that much harder!

Wolf.

The pilot seems to have skipped the D as well, all we see are seemingly random "A's"....... Taking action whilst unsure of what to do was not in the instructions. At least when I learnt. It would be interesting to read his..... Don't just do something, sit there!

Sorry. Not turning then, but changing heading clockwise? Hazelnuts, come back!

From IR#3, pages 41-42: Between 02:10:40 and 02:10:50 there was little activity on the side stick laterally, no deflection of aileron or rudder, no roll.

Lonewolf_50;
Yes, it is, but of course determining the correct response is not the reason I posted the slide from a 1998 CBT on the A340/A330, ;-)

This is not as complicated as "OODA" and Boyd. The appropriate and correct responses are already there in the SOPs etc and do not require sophisticated techniques to address and correct.

If the instantaneous and then sustained pull-up had not occurred as in the other thirty-odd UAS events there would be nothing to discuss here.

The details of roll, yaw and subsequent confusions when stall warnings "quit" and then began again are all post-facto of the initial response. The devolution of aircraft stability and control are a direct consequence of loss of energy, entry into and sustaining of the stall. Why such sustained back-pressure occurred should be the subject of the Report.

Dozy, contrary to your observation, the data shows that the initial L>R>L etc roll was very quickly contained and controlled.

I cannot accept that a sustained pitch-up was the result of inadvertent stick-handling, not, at least, without also accepting that the most basic principles of high-altitude, swept-wing flight and the resultant attempts at manual control were for some reason not understood.

In my view the pitch up was intentional but the results were not anticipated and therefore not intuitively understood.

This is a matter for the Report to handle and somehow explain.

Lyman;
I said that more than a year ago..."do nothing". The observation was completely mis-interpreted. I've done this in the sim enough to know that "doing nothing" was the safest response in the moment, then collect one's thoughts, call the abnormal and take command of the airplane while the PM gets out the QRH to fine-tune the already-nominal pitch and power settings. That is what "do nothing" meant then, as now.

PJ2

@PJ2....I cannot accept that a sustained pitch-up was the result of inadvertent stick-handling, not, at least, without also accepting that the most basic principles of high-altitude, swept-wing flight and the resultant attempts at manual control were for some reason not understood.

Let's be more careful. There was no "Sustained Pitch UP" (Re: STICK). There was an overall average of NOSE UP, as seen from the results, but the inputs were not without interruption, and to claim so must be by mistake, yes? Many Nose Down inputs, changes in PITCH UP and DOWN, etc. The initial input was NU, followed by several Nose Down inputs. It can be inferred from such language that the PF set and maintained a climb, only. NO. What can be concluded, at least by me, is that there was handling that took different iterations. The climb was not monolithic, it was more haphazard, and resulted imo from a lack of awareness of VS, PITCH, and A/S, all of which were at different times, wrong, accurate and/or NCD. Or BLANK.

Yes, I meant to attribute "do nothing" to you, but had forgotten who posted it, my bad.... I was one who knew precisely what you meant, and regret that others made such a deliberate misunderstanding of your words. Clearly, with an a/c rolling at 4.5 degrees/second and nose down, Input was required, as evidenced by the work of the handling pilot. My previous comment re: a/ploss and the PF needing to be instantly prepared stands, but to me does not conflict with your counsel for patience, and calm......

with respect always

@Lyman,

Between 02:10:07 and 02:10:17 the pitch attitude steadily increased to 11 degrees NU. The side stick position fluctuated between 1/4 and 3/4 NU, never went to ND.

Yes, and the a/c attitude needed this input, for in the words of BEA: "Until the Pitch reached 10 degrees Nose UP, and the aircraft began to climb." It is a big plane, and the Pilot seemingly was behind in the a/c lag, and momentum, once moving... Here, in PITCH, as we also see in ROLL. His PITCH excursive inputs mimicked the ROLL, he had a mix of Impatience, "Catch-Up" and Adrenaline, all three rsponsible, perhaps in toto for this crash......

i think you're misquoting BEA, again.

Standby...PAGE NINE

The airplane’s pitch attitude increased progressively beyond 10 degrees and the plane started to climb. The PF made nose-down control inputs and alternately left and right roll inputs. The vertical speed, which had reached 7,000 ft/min, dropped to 700 ft/min and the roll varied between 12 degrees right and 10 degrees left. The speed displayed on the left side increased sharply to 215 kt (Mach 0.68). The airplane was then at an altitude of about 37,500 ft and the recorded angle of attack was around 4 degrees.

Hi PJ2,

Help me read the traces, because what I see is a considerable amount of roll oscillation for about 30 seconds immediately after disconnect, which dovetails nicely with the near-full deflection of the inner ailerons (timecode approx. 2:10:05-2:10:35). Immediately after this the inputs reduce in magnitude and roll starts to stabilise (consistent with getting a feel for the aircraft), but shortly thereafter the aircraft enters the approach to stall regime and control seems to run away from the PF.

As a non-pilot I don't have the subjective knowledge to say how long it should take to contain, but 30 seconds seems like a fairly long time to me.

Please correct me if I'm barking up the wrong tree.

@HN39 - I don't think he's misquoting - at least not dramatically. What he's doing is interpreting the phrase as meaning things happened sequentially rather than concurrently. Whether due to translation issues or problems with wording, it's difficult to say one way or the other when taken out of context. Put in context with the rest of the report though, it's clear they mean that the aircraft climbed concurrently ("at the same time" - for non-native English speakers) with the increase in pitch attitude.

Dozy. Yes. Sequentially. Can one read it another way? "As the Pitch increased beyond ten degrees NOSE UP, the a/c continued its climb?" Would this example be more accurate to describe what it is you think happened?

As written, it explains the pilot's sensed need for Nose Up, the a/c was not climbing until it reached ten degrees NOSE UP.....

The language is quite critical, and HazelNuts39 can help with the actuals, for as written, it describes an a/c caught in a massive downdraft. And/or a pilot believing there was such a thing happening.

French or English, writers get paid by the word, so long as sense can be made. Why does BEA mention the PITCH and the Climb? Because they need to associate the two. And ordinarily, since it would not be necessary to link PITCH UP with climb, what is it they are trying to explain? I think their meaning is that the a/c was reluctant, sluggish even, in acquiring climb.....

Lyman - I don't think so.

The important word there is and. If the climb did not begin until 10 degrees nose-up had been reached, the correct word would be "then". "And" simply states that two things happened, whereas "then" would imply one thing happened after the other.

All this means is that nothing has changed in terms of general aircraft response. The pitch angle increases beyond +10deg, and the aircraft continues the climb it began as soon as the aircraft began to pitch up past the cruise trim pitch.

I think you may be correct. You may also be wrong.... I would like some clarity before I claim to be right or wrong. As I say, the language here, is critical....

Humor me. Pause, and do not go immediately to the FDR, the traces. More important here, is not what actually was recorded in the FDR, but what the pilot determined the response (of the a/c) to be.

I can ask again, the Pilots had no access, nor did they care, re: DFDR. What was the a/c saying, doing? If you were looking at a ND on the display, and had held aft stick for ten seconds, would you be confused? I would be, I might even puke... Why? because if I am worried about Overspeed, and she won't climb, we are all dead, painfully. There is an explanation for us in the actions of the pilots, and hauling out the traces can be distracting. They will not morph, they will be there forever. The crash happened once....... To gain an understanding, one must not start with an opinion of the pilot's skill level, but what his actions are saying to us...

"Started to climb". When, exactly? at what PITCH?

The PITCH was in transit, UP. Increasing to and through ten degrees. Not Eight? Not Nine?

By the way, the original text stated "..and the a/c began to climb.."

When was the text altered? Anyone?

OODA and instrument cross check
 

Salute!

Gotta go with PJ

Seems to me that the OODA concept is the basic instrument crosscheck, or am I way off base? I am not talking about air-to-air combat, but basic IFR flying.

Some aircraft, such as the lites I flew, had a very short "time constant". So 1 or 2 seconds without action could be bad ( think 300 degrees per second roll rate or higher, and 5 or 6 gees within a half a second). The bigger and heavier planes are much more forgiving in this regard. So 5 or 10 seconds to figure out that initial actions weren't working does not sound unreasonable.

When we all meet in that hootch bar in the sky, we can ask the guy what the hell he was thinking. I have a feeling that he would do the drill differently now that he has also had the chance to see the traces and such. Ya think?

Lyman, neither you nor I can even begin to assume what the pilots were thinking or trying to do. In this case you have provided a phrase which out of context appears to be ambiguous as to the sequence of events. I have suggested that elsewhere in the report it is fairly clear as to what they mean (I'm not going to dig it out now - jetlagged to buggery).

The acid test is to look at the DFDR trace - the nearest to raw data we have, and see what was going on with the data. By telling me that I can't do that not only have you shut off the most effective avenue for resolving the ambiguity, but you've made it look like you have some reason for not wishing to do so.

So, for your benefit I'll use the fact that in the "1.1. History Of Flight" section, the BEA have placed events which happened either concurrently or in very quick succession into small, concise paragraphs, each of which starts with a timecode. The extract you provided is contained within one of these paragraphs. I put it to you that if there was significant lag between the aircraft pitching towards +10deg and the aircraft only starting to climb once +10degrees was reached, then this would have necessitated separate paragraphs for each event.

For the rest of us, let's look at the trace. The aircraft reaches +10deg nose up at approx. 02:10:16. At this point vertical speed is already approx. +3000fpm.

The climb begins in earnest (i.e more than +1500fpm) with the pitch attitude between 4 and 5 degrees.

As an aside, in my business it is vital to understand when events are happening sequentially versus concurrently, because the consequences to design philosophy and problem-solving are very different depending on which method is used. In the best-case scenario, the documentation is very explicit as to this, but I've read my fair share of lousy documentation from which it has to be inferred. Not to blow my own trumpet, but I'm pretty good at distinguishing these inferences based on context these days...

....So 5 or 10 seconds to figure out that initial actions weren't working does not sound unreasonable.

Given 447's rate and bank angle at handoff, she would be banked right at 56 degrees after ten seconds.... PITCH? I have no idea.

Did you fly the T38? 720 degrees per second. o lee she itt.

If they were getting that bank rate in clear air, then yes - prompt and expedited correction would be necessary. But they were *in turbulence*, and even in light chop, an aircraft can attain split-second accelerations that if continued would have them saying "Hi" to astronauts on one direction, submariners in another, and Australians in roll (if you're from the Northern Hemisphere).

But these accelerations are transitory, and even if they weren't we're talking 8.6 degrees of bank at handoff - most airliner turns can go between 10 to 25 degrees without unduly scaring us SLF.

In my opinion, there was time to wait and observe - but given the situation and the way it escalated I'm sympathetic to the instincts of the PF.

Please remember that I am sympathetic to the crew's position in general, and always have been. They were faced with a situation that for whatever reason their employers had not fully prepared them for either in terms of understanding or in terms of how to improvise if the published procedure didn't work. Based on the incomplete information we have now, my opinion is that we have a complex, systemic failure here - not a cut-and-dried case of pilot error (in fact I believe firmly that such cases are fairly few and far between at the ATPL level - just look at the stick I got on the Paul Holmes/Erebus thread for advancing that viewpoint!).

If I can abandon my usual desire to be dispassionate, looking at the traces to answer PJ2 showed me a period of 8-10 seconds where the roll had been ironed out and it looked like the PF was starting to get on top of things, only for the Stall Warning to kick in and startle him into fumbling the controls - pretty heartbreaking.

That is an excellent point; it can be counterproductive to attempt to smooth out a turbulent ride...

I meant to suggest that with impatience, "catch up itis" and a squeeze of Adrenaline, overcontrol seems to have been the order of the day, In PITCH as well as ROLL. Did the pilot fear a loss of control, and that manual inputs were critical? I sense that he did, at least somewhat. Before Colgan, I would have simply rejected the thought that a pilot would persist in the exact wrong thing.

But Colgan had a PNF also, and she did not "get" it either...

Dozy, in all honesty, do you think the Bus might need a special dose of targeted training? Because the bottom line is that all three pilots were at a loss, without a hint of the right "Stuff". Can the platform be that inscrutable to three independent airmen?

It's not "the platform". Escalating situations from UAS have claimed a 727 and two 757s just to start with, and likewise several Airbus FBW widebodies have been recovered from UAS successfully while the pitot tube problems were being solved.

Trying to make it about Airbus is to miss the point. The issue is systemic to the industry as a whole, and that issue is airline management forgetting what it is that their businesses actually *do*, which is ferry hundreds of people at a time from one place to another in a metal and composite tube which spends most of it's time at 30,000ft and doing over 500mph. Consequently they forget that while safety has improved considerably over time, the fallout when something does go seriously wrong tends to be catastrophic, and that even if the chances of something going wrong tends to be in the 1 in 10,000 range or lower, the two people at the sharp end have to be fully prepared to do everything in their power to rescue the situation. And that while SOP and emergency checklists go a long way to mitigating the risks, only confident, competent basic airmanship - including stick-and-rudder and basic principles of flight - can save the day on the occasions they don't.

The junior crew on this flight didn't need an encyclopaedic knowledge of the A330's systems to recover, all they needed to remember was the stuff they learned back when they were doing their PPL - namely recognising the symptoms of, and recovery from, a stall (which are more-or-less the same whether you're flying a microlight, a space shuttle or everything inbetween). Unfortunately airline management don't see fit to mandate revision of the basics like this by and large, probably considering it too costly.

Thank you, Doze.

You've nailed it. And still makes me cry.

The "mission" is to get the SLF home or to a vacation spot. There's more to the job than simply being a systems manager.

Gonna be an interesting final report, ya think?

A quick postscript re: ColganAir 4805 -

While the situations look superficially similar (pilots out of their depth fumbling the controls), the human factors aspects are considerably different in nature.

Firstly to address Lyman's point, it wasn't just the F/O in the Colgan case who made fatal mistakes, it was the Captain too. While it's true he was inexperienced and apparently below average in terms of ability, the crux of the matter was that in a sane world, both pilots should have called in sick that day - both for exhaustion, and the F/O for what appeared to have been either a bad cold or mild 'flu on top of that.

But Colgan, along with most if not all regional subcontractors at the time, operated a business model in which exhausted pilots were the norm, and that exhaustion was a direct result of those pilots being underpaid and undervalued, while the beancounters and management crowed about their profit margins despite rock-bottom fares. I'm tempted to go on a tear about deregulation, but I'll leave it for now. All I will say is that if I were king, the Colgan executives would have been up on as many corporate malfeasance charges as I could find, and a new statute of corporate murder created just for them.

Air France has had it's troubles over the last decade or two, there's no doubt about that - but for the most part it has treated it's pilots as well as your average flag carrier as far as I know. The misapplication of automation and atrophy of manual skills/aeronautical knowledge is not restricted to them. None of AF447's crew were sick or exhausted, they simply ended up in a situation that was beyond their abilities to understand in time - and what started as a benevolent gesture from the Captain (designating PF as relief pilot) had the unfortunate consequence of putting the least experienced crew member in charge when things started going wrong.

Just as it is difficult to paint with a broad brush without missing a few things, it does an open mind some dishonor to get too narrow. So I applaud your broad view, but will be happy to point out where you miss some things after the report. There will be some knocks on the Bus, let's wait and judge the platform in the context of your well put post in its defense.

In a spare no expense world, 447 makes Paris, and there will be others. There is never a justification for scrimping when the outcome is brutal, but if cost is fatal to the enterprise, I favor some economies because I want to fly.

AF will be savaged for deferring the Probes out and in, and the sidestick will make some designers blush with embarrassment. There will be other things, Radar, CRM, and why don't we have AoA on the dash? AF was caught out through some theoretical ICE, Renfrow forgot his STALL bug was too high, and the Warning was not the problem he thought. The onset of 447 demise is not so different from Colgan's cause. A small deal became lethal, due a convergence of a hiccup in the "Force", with a cascade of shortcomings, each on its own not such a horrid thing.

In an unforgiving domain, get some rest, and replace the effing tubes, eh? Such a brutal outcome for being a little too human.

All the best to you Sir.....

No problems, but I just want to make a couple of things clear.

I am not "defending" the Airbus FBW and computer philosophy. All I have ever done is explain aspects of the design and implementation that I am aware of, and occasionally this has meant refuting statements that, while part of popular myth, are either incorrect or unproven.

(And, on several occasions when my memory has failed me or I've made a false assumption, accepting correction on the subject.)

The design may come in for criticism in some respects, but because engineering is and has always been the art of compromise this is as true for Airbus as it is for any manufacturer. The only way to design an "uncrashable" airliner would be to make it completely immobile, which would fulfil the "uncrashable" part of the spec, but leave it completely useless as a mode of transportation.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - there's nothing wrong with the sidesticks or the control system designed around them when used properly. Some pilots are uncomfortable with the notion (I suspect that number is decreasing with time), but the truth is that all the sidestick design does is confront the reality that has been the case with every new airliner design since the '70s - which is that the flight controls are not connected to the surfaces and that artificial feel is not only just that - artificial - but also in itself a complex system which can be prone to failure. Be sure of what I'm saying here - I'm not saying the sidestick design is better or preferable to the yoke, I'm saying that there are positives and negatives to both approaches and that any preference is therefore both personal and subjective.

5X5. No problem whatever. I don't have the skill or experience to make a finding on the stick, yoke. Yoke is all I know. So I am merely curious, readily admitting the location of the SS outside the pilot does not in itself suggest anything untoward to me at all. My question rests on what the choice was, and how it was made, from an engineering, ergo, and safety standpoint(s).

I always fly with my left hand anyway, and it is not that far from where a SS would be....

It's been a slice, Doze.

Dozy - quick note as I'm on the road - my observation that the PF had the roll under control quite quickly comes from an examination of the roll trace trend - it exhibits increasing stability - the peaks and valleys in a smoothed trace are reducing and do so, (iirc) over a period of about 30 seconds. They certainly get out of hand later on but we're not talking about anything after the apogee. The sim exhibits this behaviour as well...a bit of "chasing the bank angles" as you have put elsewhere, occurs until you get it right - it's PIO but not in a way that leads to a loss of control, and yes, I think turbulence contributed but again, not in a way that should lead to a loss of the airplane. I think inexperience and more than a few training issues, (chain-of-command, discipline, handling, SOPs, CRM) have contributed here - your comment about back-to-basics is, of course, spot on.

Lyman;

Regarding the position of the sidestick, I will say this - when first checking out on the A320, (left seat, 1992), I was a bit taken aback and even mildly concerned that the "iron cross" symbol for the position of the opposite sidestick which was displayed on the PFD during takeoff, was removed at, (IIRC) 100ft RA. I thought it was a useful symbol so the other pilot would always know the position of the other sidestick. Over the years there were so few circumstances that made such knowledge necessary that I quickly got used to the symbol's absence. Also, sidestick movements are normally very small - 2, 3 degree-shifts when flying manually - the recent exhibition of sidestick-stirring in that video demonstrated precisely what NOT to do with the stick - the guy who posted it ought to be embarrassed - the airplane is subtle. The flight controls are already "busy" trying to maintain the last selected attitude - the airplane can be "flown" hands-off once the desired attitude is set...because FBW means, no input = no output and so no change in attitude, even in mild turbulence.

Here, I do not believe a yoke would have made a significant difference. The pitch attitudes displayed on the PM's PFD (and, we assume, the PF's PFD) would have/should have provided ample information regarding the attitude of the aircraft and what to do about it, (immediately!). The yoke may have made an initial difference given the visibility of its movement rearward, but almost within seconds, the results of the sidestick's half-way deflection were known to both pilots and I would have expected the PM to say "Stop! - I have control" or something to that effect. So there is possibly a cultural element at work here as well - in fact the third report comments on this but not wanting to take the airplane away even when things are coming badly off the rails is still a psychological "barrier" even though CRM has begun to tear it down.

This is about flying an airplane...C172, Viper, T38, DC8, A330, A380...here, no difference. After the stall had been deeply established, the potential for confusion increases exponentially and the possibility of recovery decreases by the same amount because there were in territory where no test pilot had ever been let alone any line pilots.

We may hope that one outcome may be increased awareness of and avoidance of stalling one's transport aircraft because those accidents on the increase over the past eight years or so.

from the beginning,i was mostly interessted in the human factors of this flight.
i looked at bonin not as being a pilot but as a simple human beeing.it does`nt matter ,if you are a pilot,train-or bus driver,when there is immediate danger for you or your pax,there must be a reaction at once.
in any other case,what will one do? sort things out!
imagine you`re driving in your car,there`s an unusable noise,what wil you do?
you can stop,check your car,accelerate to see if the noise changes or slow down.just to sort things out.
but what you will not do is putting the steering wheel 90% left or right and accelerete until the road cannot manage the speed of the car.
yes there are defiencies in training and manuel flying at AF but there could`nt be a training as bad in any airline worlwide that bonin could forget simple standards :sort things out ,adhere to the QRH and use CRM.
NO WAY !
we must not forget that he was still a pilot with nearly 3000 hours on the book.this was a minor UAS event.it is a characterisk of humang beings ,if you don`t know what`s going on to sort things out.
what was the thougt-model he developed in his head within a few seconds?
and most surprisingley,the pnf even when it looks like he "knew a bit better" was similar clueless what was going on,both forgot at the sane time the simpliest meassures,CRM,QRH.
this failure of two pilots at the same time is unbelieveable.
did they develope the same thought-model? why,what did they see?
some say we did`nt have the whole CVR report.
BEA made so many informations public before the final report as in any acc.inv.before so why not the whole content?
could`nt it be that they heard someting what no investigation team
heard before and is this the reason we must wait so long for the final report?

by the way AB surely condemns the day they have introduced that s/w feature

I have a pretty strong hunch that there are (or were) similar gotchas in the stall warning systems of all modern airliners, because 99.9(rec)% of the time it's a logical assumption to make.

This is where revision of the basics comes in again, because pilots should be able to recognise the symptoms of a stall without having to rely on the warning instrument in the event that the warning instrument fails. No sales department of any manufacturer likes to talk about the possibility of their product going wrong, and with airline management coming increasingly straight out of an MBA without experience of the industry, pilots are the last line of defence and, for better or worse, have to think the unthinkable and prepare for it - because if they don't, there's a chance that no-one else bar the aircraft's designers and engineers have.

A quick question, my Airbus pilot neighbor last night said their airline says their UAS checklist says 5 degrees nose up and climb power as a memory item at higher altitudes. I disagreed and said if you are at FL350 and are too heavy to climb how can you do this because airspeed goes TU? Especially in RVSM airspace.

He called me a retard and left because I would have maintained altitude with cruise power and not followed his airlines checklist. Am I missing something??? I chose not to fly the Airbus but RVSM airspace doesn't care what airplane you fly they just want separation in my opinion. Now I have two airline pilots against me so need other points of view please.

bubbers44;

Your neighbour's confusion over this checklist seems to be common among many Airbus and even non-Airbus pilots.

The Airbus Flight Crew Training Manual specifies that if the safety of the flight is not at immediate risk then the memorized items are NOT to be followed. Instead, the aircraft is to be leveled off for troubleshooting once above the MSA or circuit altitude, which FL350 certainly is.

"Immediate Risk" is not specified in the checklist but it is specified in the training associated with this checklist in an Airbus document which I posted the link to some time ago.

I have maintained for a very long time that it is this confusion and some recent low-level training (UAS event right after takeoff) that triggered AF447's PF to increase the pitch attitude of the aircraft because it was the only thing he could recall in this confusing and poorly-designed memorized drill and checklist.

The series of "if-then" statements in the memorized items do not apply to cruise altitude events where the safety of the flight is not at immediate risk. The loss of airspeed information is not an emergency and it is not a high-risk event which demands immediate action. Your response is precisely the one that should have occurred on AF447 - maintain level flight through pitch and retain the power settings which existed just before the event, while the PM gets out the QRH to fine-tune the pitch and power settings. In other words, do nothing with the pitch and power if they were suitable prior to the event. Things aren't going to change that much while the QRH is retrieved and read.

You argue correctly with your Airbus pilot neighbour but it is not his fault that he is confused, and, I submit, this and the low-level training the PM and PF had recently received are factors in this accident. How much is for the BEA to determine but I believe at least one pilot, the PF, was psychologically "primed" by the low-level UAS event which is the only UAS event training he had received.

In re RVSM, one does what one must do in an emergency of course but a thousand feet is nothing for the airplane to gain or lose so I think your point is a very good one to consider.

All that occurred after the apogee of the pitch-up and stall are far beyond transport pilot experience and territory and it is questionable whether anyone could sort out what this crew faced, after the AoA had exceeded 30deg in the "flat-plate" descent.

I have discussed this at length on all these threads, with graphics if you wish to examine this further.

Over the past year or two others here have disagreed with this assessment, and stated that above FL100, a 5-degree pitch-up is required by the UAS memorized drill regardless of altitude.

While I heartily disagree, (primarily because I think the FL100 case caters to high altitude airports and not 10,000ft above the local ground where the safety of the flight is not likely threatened by a UAS event, and a pitch of 15deg at, say, Bogota risks losing energy for obvious reasons whereas 5-deg is certainly safe enough in the initial climb until above the local MSA), the airplane will not suffer a swift and severe loss of airspeed in a 5-deg pitch-up, (I once said it would but was wrong), with an added 2.5deg pitch to the cruise pitch attitude of about 2.5deg, although it will slowly lose energy/airspeed.

But the FCTM specifically states that when/if the memorized items are accomplished by the crew, a very quick response using the QRH pitch and power settings is required to prevent an overspeed.

There is the admonition/warning to the crew in the FCTM and the schematic diagram therein which illustrates how to do this drill and checklist, to always respect the stall warning in a UAS condition.

Your Airbus pilot neighbour is wrong in his views on how to handle this event. One simply does not de-stabilize an airplane at cruise altitude without very good reason, (such as avoiding a greater danger). Pitch and power were suitable prior to a UAS event and should serve perfectly well for the few moments it takes to get out the QRH tables to fine-tune these settings. It is essentially a non-event. It may be disturbing but that is why we are thoroughly trained every six months or so...to reduce surprise and the degradation of cockpit discipline and the forgetting of SOPs.

Thank you PJ2, maintain altitude and do not fly through other flight altitudes. UAS can easily be controlled by staying level and using cruise power for where you are. Thanks for the response.

Both of you are missing the basic aerodynamic fact that either procedure will result in aeroplane that is flying, not stalling! Of course it's far better to maintain the known cruise pitch and power, caveat is "known". If it is not known, 5° ANU with climb power is safe attitude+power for almost any aeroplane (exception being high powered, low mach limited designs, not in production anymore). Collision risk does come into play with memory items, yet chances of having mid-air have to be weighted against chances of losing control. No extra points for guessing which is more likely to occur when ADCs go nutty.

I don't think so. He reduced pitch when warned by CM1, then pulled hard when stall warning went off. Nothing suggests trying to achieve any target pitch or any rational procedure at all. IMHO, it was sheer panic that doomed the flight, like the one Richard Bach wrote about:

Methinks FMS/autopilot/ADC failure can have the same effect on the airline pilot who doesn't know his aeroplane and doesn't feel confident he can control her when times get rough as the engine failure has on the pilot of piston single on night cross-country. However, as a lot of crews made it unscathed through similar ordeal to AF447's I am not so pessimistic to suspect the malaise is widespread. Also I still maintain that middle of the WoCL significantly affected the crew's performance for the worse. There's not enough data in preliminary reports to conclude whether the crewmembers were underperforming before the accident flight.

We don't have FCTMs (or A330s, for that matter) yet we recently had a hairy situation where relevant chapters of AFM and AOM differed. Our CAA's ruling was very quick: since AOM is recognized as OM-B, it should be followed when discrepancies with other manuals arise. Was AF FCTM part of OM-D?

Agreed, here's my COM section. Sorry for the formatting I'm on an iPad.

Message: N/A
Condition: Unreliable airspeed indications caused by pitot/static probe obstruction or radome damage.

MEMORY ITEMS - if safe conduct of flight is affected: Note: Respect all stall warnings if in ALTERNATE LAW.
1. AUTOPILOT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OFF
2. FLIGHT DIRECTOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .OFF
3. AUTOTHRUST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OFF
4. Adjust Pitch/Thrust: - Below THR RED ALT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15°/TOGA - Above THR RED ALT and below 10,000' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10°/CLB - Above THR RED ALT and above 10,000'. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5°/CLB 5. FLAPS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maintain current CONFIG
6. SPEEDBRAKES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Check retracted
7. GEAR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .UP

When at or above MSA or circuit altitude, level off for troubleshooting.
Continued....


The way I read it, "level off for troubleshooting" means level off. It doesn't mean double your cruise pitch and apply climb power.

to always know the PF's inputs
 

You are using here the right term : We get used to be deprived of a valuable source of data … How is it better ?
It is for those few circumstances that the information is useful and necessary … but missing.
Usually, that information is most useful for the rotation and the flare, but AF447 now demonstrates how it is also valuable at FL350.

Again, why wait for the final result when the initial action is immediate and first class information for a PNF to better appreciate why the result is undesirable. How is it better for a concept to suppress such source of meaningful information ?

I have not known that time, but in 98 the iron cross was already removed as soon as there was no weight on wheels anymore. Lately, as iceman50 made me realize, that indicator is now removed as soon there is no weight on the nose wheel anymore.
Everything indicates that it is not a tool they want the PNF to use to check the way the PF manipulates its sidestick. Actually Airbus thinks as absolutely useless for the PNF to know how the PF is doing its flight control commands ... In an attempt to justify the concept, the Airbus chief pilot himself has to refute the critics but his explanation simply does not make any sense. (Time 48:00 in the video)

So I will as always set cruise power and about 2.5 degrees nose up and get out a checklist. With no airspeed that altimiter will keep you just fine until AS pops back again. No worries on falling out of the sky.