@mm43 - That's one interpretation. Another is that he was so startled that he lost focus from the start of the sequence and never recovered. There was no call to turn off FDs, but there was no call to initiate UAS procedure either.

I've said it before, even if you're among the best pilots in the world, a mistake - even a small one - which causes you to lose SA, can kill you with frightening ease.

mm43&Dozy
Our underlying likes, dislikes, attitudes and suspicions about automation go to form our opinions. We may be entitled to them but for the truth to emerge if we keep ithem aside what we see? Lets take a case where a pilot has regularly hand flown normal approaches and is profficient in it. But he was never explained the principle of the UAS procedure nor was he current or profficient in it. Another pilot who practices minimum handflying but is knowledgeable and had recently practiced UAS at high altitude. Who do you think would have managed the situation better? The human factor here is lack of proper knowledge or misunderstanding of UAS and stall recovery procedure. This particular abnormality is not straight forward and calls for investigation first, memory items and then paper procedure. If 447 pilot knew the procedure but was not very profficient in it might have saved the situation, may be he would have stalled 3 times on the way down but the flight would not have ended in 3 mts.

A short comment from someone, who has done handflying for the most time in his flying life albeit a suitable autopilot was not available.

To compare handflying a glider in the heart of its envelope with handflying an airliner at the top of its flight regime as being similar or equal is far fetched. Aditionally the mental picture needed for flying a heavy against flying a glider is completely different as well. Therefore being able to handfly a glider does not qualify at all for flying an heavy airliner.
What does qualify is training with the specific aircraft in the required environment.

At the end of my military turn i started flying a PA28 prop, and nearly nothing of my previous flying hours helped me in doing so. By the way, my instructor had the same impression.

'RF4' whilst I can see yr beliefs as being true to some degree I cant subscribe totally to it all. As I am sure you know the basics of flight are no diff from an A380 to a model plane just the handling of that energy which is wildly different as well as the vast implications of Re (Reynolds No's).
Most likely the author of that statement 'same as flying a glider' or words to that effect had good intentions but it was probably not a good comparison in this case.

The basics of flight knowledge can be obtained by different sources and using different devices, you named one yourself like flying a model plane. Does flying a model plane qualify to fly a glider, or a SE or Twin Prop, or a jet or a transport?
You agree that it does not? Therefore the fact, that one FO was a qualified glider pilot has nothing to do at all with the AF 447 desaster. Because the basics of flying you are talking about should be a knowledge base any pilot from model pilot to transport pilot should have, and that's the point i totally agree with you.

That's essentially what I'm saying too - however I do think that his sailplane qualifications and experience have some bearing on the *reporting* and *discussion* of AF447. You've got several posters waving around accusations of total automation dependency - saying the crew were incompetent and unable to handfly in any way, when that was clearly not the case.

I'm not, and never was arguing that flying a glider does or should "qualify" one to handle an airliner, I was simply saying that the PF could handfly to a reasonable level - certainly proficient enough to know that you neither maintain a straight and level flightpath nor escape a stall by consistently pulling up.

They clearly demonstrated, that they were not able to handfly this aircraft in this particular situation. And they clearly demonstrated, that they could not cope with the loss of some part of automation.

If we look at other happenings in this new world of commercial airplane flying and in the way automation flying is trained and stressed, and in part manual flying is even most times prohibited by the respective training departments of some airlines (and not few of them as the saying is here), how can one not see a lack in handling skills caused by too much automation dependency?

Yes, this crew might have been able to handfly once and the FO might have been an excellent glider pilot (which nobody knows so far), but at that special moment in that aircraft and at that flightlevel with the loss of valid airspeeds they only proved the following:

After loss of Airpeed indication, which caused the loss of automation devices like Autopilot, autothrust and degraded the flight envelope protection they crashed an airwothy airliner within a few minutes due to their inability to fly this aircraft straight and level by their own hands.

Whatever you like to call that, it never should have happened and it never should happen again. I go with those, who call that incompetent and unable to handfly, period.

Our concern should be, who is to be made responsible for this kind of incompetence and for this kind of automation dependency and how can we promote further training to stop the degradation of those required skills. More glider flying is not on my list though.

The rest of your post is well put. I'd like to add a slightly different emphasis to your clear identification of some root causes:
in a class of aircraft and on a mission where crew coordination and CRM are required fundamentals, a profound lack of same was in evidence from early in the event on this flight deck. Beyond hand flying difficulties, it seems from the evidence available that possession and use of an instrument scan (another fundamental requirement of flying in that class of aircraft on that mission) was beyond at least one of the pilots on the flight deck.

Scan problems and poor hand flying are related to one another. The concern this accident raises in my mind is linked to the standing complaint about "Children of the Magenta line:" how pervasive is the skill limitation exposed by this particular crew?

Not common, or very common?

I don't know if that is an answerable question given the size of the industry and how practices may vary from carrier to carrier. It's an answer worth pursuing, IMO.

That's just it though - I think that a lot of posters here are putting too much into this "Children Of The Magenta" scenario, which is not necessarily the case. After all, the ex-Air Force Captain of the Birgenair B757 did exactly the same thing as the AF447 crew, and he was a veteran.

And let's not forget, there are far fewer smoking holes with automation at this kind of level than there were when handflying was more prevalent in the early part of the jet age.

Frankly a lot of this "much better in my day" routine (the "magenta" talk often overlaps with disparaging remarks on new 200hr cadets) smacks to me of people who miss their youth, then see the ongoing changes in their industry - and it makes them feel old. No-one enjoys that feeling - but I swear there's a lot more to this case and others that have been conveniently swept into the "Magenta" pile without sufficiently examining the evidence at hand. Dismissing pilots and crews as generally 'incompetent' is a little dangerous, as it can lead to complacency - "After all", thinks Captain Hypothetical, "I'm not incompetent, so it could never happen to me!".

These aspects can all link together,

In one life in the nice shiny transport you follow the magenta line and if you are lucky and it is your 'turn' you may get to hold the controls for a few minutes in an 8 hour flight but only with full system support.

In another life you fly a sailplane that is responsive to the controls even if you have to use full deflection at times, stalls are big nose drops that cannot be overcome by even full back stick. And you get that wind noise that gives you the impression of speed....

Then one dark and stormy night the nice shiny transport decides to have a problem - and you are in a sub-state of Alternate law which you have NEVER flown and you are at close to the ceiling of the aircraft. You have to fly manually - and you revert to flying manually the way that you do in sailplanes and perceive the performance as you do in sailplanes - it can't have stalled - the nose is still above the horizon and that noise means we are going fast....

If there is no sufficient training then people will revert back to what they knew from previous experience - it is all they can do. If your previous experience was sufficient that's fine. But it would appear that modern 'streamlined' training and limited experience is starting to show signs of insufficiency.

Dozy, the problem of overdependence on automation is not a chimera. Ran into it two decades ago in the fleet. Here is another example:

On a CAVU to the moon day, at SFO a Boeing 777 crashed, thank God more didn't die.
Hand flying, not done.
Scan, broken.
CRM: out to lunch.

Core competency issues.

@LW_50:

See above - I'm not saying the problem doesn't exist, I'm saying we should be careful not to prematurely shove all mishandling/loss of control incidents and accidents into the "COTM" bucket.

I asked a few pages ago, and got no answer.

Can you, Dozy, or anyone, explain to me why it takes 17 seconds for the pilot to make a control input during the A330/A340 altitude excursion that is of such interest in discussing the various features of the A330 flight control system?

I asked for anyone who flies that family of aircraft, as the flight control systems seem to be similar enough.

My impression from that statement was that no corrective stick command was made. If I misunderstand what that tells us, that would be nice to know.

That would be my reading too. As to your question, the obvious answer would be that for at least some of those 17 seconds, neither of the flight crew were paying attention to their attitude - but as to why that might have been, we can only speculate.

Wouldn't be another possibility that they froze in a "what's it doing now" mode or / and were trying to resolve the problem by pushing buttons instead of using the obvious, the SS?

It'd be possible, certainly - however the possibility would rely on the idea that neither of them recognised that the AP had disconnected. As I said above - the "why" is something on which we can only speculate.

You could ask this guy:

Retired...re, "Wouldn't be another possibility that they froze in a "what's it doing now" mode or / and were trying to resolve the problem by pushing buttons instead of using the obvious, the SS? "

Yes, that is absolutely a possibility.

Here on the forum, we can quite reasonably assess "17 seconds" with no SS input as a very long time to respond but in such an environment the moment is fleeting indeed. Such turbulence also makes it nearly impossible to a) physically read the instruments and the various warnings, timed as they are, and b) to mentally "re-cognize" what's actually occurring, primarily with the pitch, vertical speed and altitude - the same phenomenon which would challenge the A330 crew to respond to the CLIMB-CLIMB TCAS RA in a timely way.

BTW, none of this applied/applies to AF447. The failure was benign - lots of messages and aural cautions/warnings but other than the potential distractions from momentary ECAM re-prioritizing the system failures as they occurred and the dozen or so single-chimes associated, the airplane itself was stable, and fine.

OK465, indeed, we could probably ask a few crews about this same phenomenon!...

no, I can't, as I don't think he flies the family of aircraft I am curious about.

I'd like to ask him about his own excellent adventure, but I doubt I'll get an answer. Did the AAIB come up with a final report on that flight?

EDIT:
DonH, thank you.

LW50 original question:

bit of insight:

60 year old 340 Captain with 15131 hours, 5175 on type, who told the board he remembered seeing something he wouldn't have seen and.....

.....a board that said he probably saw something he couldn't have seen.

It appears not to matter that much. :)

In the a330/340 pitch up event the initial biggest non reaction here was purely due to the 'startle effect'. Remember in the Crz we would be at a low eb or state of mind especially after hrs of continuously the same noise levels & body movements. This is why people fall asleep at the wheel of a car & crash. These factors coupled with something that we are rarely exposed to (sudden pitch up)accounted for those 17 secs.

As I mentioned in an earlier post re the AF447 there's no way an Airliner operating close to it's highest performance Alt limit could suddenly have the ability to aggressively Clb & sustain it (other than using the energy avail initially ) due an over-speed in Lvl flight. To have the pilot/s react with full back stick to compensate (a natural reaction when first confronted with this rather odd & totally unexpected indication) is almost plausible when you think about it.
As we all know a blocked Pitot system effects just one primary system, Airspeed/Mach & it's associated connected elements (A/P FD etc) so any rapid increase in indicated AS/Mach isn't something that naturally occurs in Lvl flight to any major degree with thrust set.
It all boils back to basic airmanship....PITCH (or Att)/POWER & with 2day's extensive auto flight systems doing ALL the work for us our brains are becoming slowly de-tunned & desensitized to erroneous indications such as in this event.

Man will continue to fly perfectly serviceable flying machines into the side of a hill, such is the tenuous joining of man & machine despite all the technology.
It won't be long now when all the drivers in a typical Airliner will only ever have had exposure to highly sophisticated automation at transport level & raw flying skills will have been pretty much bred out as they are essentially no longer needed.

A340 AIRPROX and AF447
 

Lonewolf_50 and respondents,

You discuss a period of 17 seconds before the first sidestick intervention. Re the AAIB Bulletin into this incident, I still find the description on Page 11 ("A340 Data") confusing, and the time scale on its DFDR trace virtually unreadable on the version I have. However, it states clearly enough (my underscoring):
"The first recorded sidestick input was made at 14:22:08 which was some 28 seconds after the commencement of the Master Warning."

The Master Warning and CRC (continuous repetitive chime) coincided with the AP disengagement (due to MMO exceedance, mainly caused by a sudden fall in temperature), but the aural warning (cavalry charge) was delayed because the CRC and a TCAS warning took priority. 10 seconds after the Master Warning, an up-gust briefly increased the AoA towards alpha-prot. That resulted in a phase-advanced engagement of AoA (protection) Law, after which the EFCS was tasked to reach and maintain alpha-prot, a much higher AoA than desired. That started the pitch-up, and after (roughly) a further 8 seconds the aircraft started climbing in earnest. After that, it was about 10 seconds until the first sidestick input.

So I presume your 17 seconds is the crucial period between engagement of AoA Law (+ Pitch-up) and the first (rather tentative) sidestick movement? This was less than half down, and it is unclear if it was sustained for the period of more than one second that was required to disengage AoA Law. The first application of more than half down-stick (which would disengage AoA Law instantly) started about 5 seconds later. It is only then that the a/c starts to pitch down rapidly, i.e., 22 seconds after the engagement of AoA Law.


RetiredF4 and DonH have identified the likely reason for the lack of sidestick action by either pilot. To be a bit more more specific, one or both pilots were probably trying to re-engage one of the two APs, possibly trying them both alternately. Many of us have seen this kind of behaviour: priority given to re-engaging the automatics, rather than flying the aeroplane.

This zoom climb involved an error of omission by the PF; AF447's an error of commission.

As I wrote a few days ago:
"The common factor this incident had with the much later AF447 accident is that of the unexpected transition from automatics to "manual": specifically from AP to FBW, in a pitch law other than Normal. In this AIRPROX case, the FBW system forced the a/c into an undesired zoom-climb which needed positive crew intervention to counter. In AF447, the FBW made no such input; the PF forcing the a/c into a zoom-climb by inappropriate sidestick inputs."

In both cases, there were extenuating circumstances - if only minor ones.

Most of us are in agreement that, had the AF447 PF sat on his hands for a while, the A330 would have maintained a good pitch attitude at least. In the A340 AIRPROX case, however, we are all (myself included) chiding him/her for failing to prevent the EFCS (FBW) from pitching the aircraft into a zoom-climb which - in the absence of any collision - would have become an embarrassing phugoid. So although the initial parts of the "zoom climbs" are rather similar, their causes are very different.

In this case, at least two unusual met phenomena and the logic of the EFCS conspired in such a way that PF inactivity was not an option - if flight separation was to be assured. The AAIB avoids censorship, as follows:
"Such was the vigour of the A340’s climb in AoA law, the aircraft could well have climbed through FL 363 (thus provoking a TCAS RA with revised software version 7.0) in a very short time, even if the crew had applied nose-down sidestick as soon as they heard the (delayed) autopilot disconnect warning."

Thank you Chris.

OK:
That leaves me more confused than before. :(

I appreciate the mind set of "let's not be hasty."

It's hard to argue with a word like "whilst". If somebody says "while", it's no big deal, but once they throw "whilst" into the discussion, the opponents pretty well clam up. Another such word is "fraught". If somebody says something is dangerous, it's not that big a deal, but once it's "fraught with danger", the party is over.

Kudos to Wally for excellent rhetoric skills.

Quote from Lonewolf_50:
That leaves me more confused than before.

Thanks? Not sure if you were referring to the piece from OK465, or mine! :uhoh:

Coincidentally, I was just labouring heavily to improve (edit) my post while you and flybyike were posting yours. So let me know what you think - if you've the stamina to re-read it...

You're not the Lone Ranger, Lone Wolf. That AAIB narrative has a number of confusing statements and has me scratching my head.


Here's the first two:

.

.

Confusing to me because I would think a 5000+ hour on type Captain ought to know that 'alpha lock' is not displayed on the PFD and is slat/flap related.

And a 5000+ hour on type Captain ought to know the autopilot cannot be re-engaged below VLS.

Next taken together confusing statements 3, 4 & 5:

.

.

A TCAS DESCEND RA evidently WAS indeed provoked within 1 second of A/P disengagement, but for 18 seconds the 340 remained within 200 feet of FL360 (the 330 encountered a 200 foot altimeter drop), so what's the point to be made with the 'climb vigour' and 'could well have climbed thru FL363' statement. RA occurred without either of these. Time to do some pilot stuff with the SS.

And here's the kicker (board statement):

Read A33Zab's previous post on these functionalities (alpha lock 'pulses' bright/dim on the EWD slat/flap display, alpha floor is a PFD FMA steady indication) and you can see why I'm confused. Of course I don't have 5000+ hours on type. :}

And as Chris Scott alludes to, the DFDR traces are almost worthless....it would be interesting to see a TLA trace, 'cause the whole thing is screwy IMO.

I'd say they identified a *possible* reason, and acknowledged this at the time. To say it's a "likely" reason is objectively inaccurate - as we have no corroborating evidence to support the assertion, and subjectively unfair - as it assumes a degree of automation dependency on the part of the crew on the basis of anecdotal reporting (i.e. "Many of us have seen this kind of behaviour").

I'm sure the anecdotal reporting is correct, but at the same time I think it's wrong-headed to try and squeeze this particular incident into a "...Magenta"-shaped mould without any real evidence to back it up. Finding repeatable patterns in a series of mishaps can be something of a double-edged sword, because while spotting and working to eliminate that behaviour will help, it won't help in the case of those incidents where, while outwardly similar in nature, that pattern wasn't involved - and can mask other problems that can be equally as dangerous.

Better Late than Never?
 

FAA unveils pilot training to avoid stalling airliners


FAA unveils pilot training to avoid stalling airliners

I would have added the Birgenair 757 to that list....

A340 AIRPROX - Delay in use of sidestick
 

Quote from me:
"RetiredF4 and DonH have identified the likely reason for the lack of sidestick action by either pilot. To be a bit more more specific, one or both pilots were probably trying to re-engage one of the two APs, possibly trying them both alternately. Many of us have seen this kind of behaviour: priority given to re-engaging the automatics, rather than flying the aeroplane."

Quote from DozyWannabe:
"I'd say they identified a *possible* reason, and acknowledged this at the time. To say it's a "likely" reason is objectively inaccurate - as we have no corroborating evidence to support the assertion, and subjectively unfair - as it assumes a degree of automation dependency on the part of the crew on the basis of anecdotal reporting (i.e. "Many of us have seen this kind of behaviour")."

From the AAIB Bulletin:
"The A340 commander's report
"...Shortly before the AIRPROX event he experienced moderate turbulence and noticed outside air temperature changes. Suddenly the aircraft began to climb, the Master warning soundedand the autopilot self-disengaged as the aircraft exceeded the speed limit of 0.86 Mach. The indicated airspeed dropped below VLS (the lowest selectable) as the aircraft climbed and the commander took manual control of the aircraft because neither autopilot would engage. The crew subsequently reported the incident to Shanwick on HF radio and, using their TCAS, they descended back to FL 360 in a safe area...
"The commander could not remember the sequence of warnings but he did recall being unable to re-engage either autopilot which prompted him to make manual inputs. He also remembered seeing an 'Alpha Lock' warning displayed on his Primary Flying Display."

My use of the word "likely", rather than "possible", was to specify my opinion. I cannot think of any other legitimate activity to explain the delay that we are discussing. It was not necessarily to imply what Dozy describes as "dependency"; rather that the crew prioritised re-engaging the AP during a period of time when the pitch attitude and flight profile were becoming abnormal, and clearly compromising the safety of the flight.

I would have definitively removed USAir 427 from the list - putting it up there with Colgan, Pinnacle and AF447 is so terribly wrong. Given dr. Wiener's track record, this just has to be something misheard.

Chris, I put two replies into one post.

My thanks to you was for you clearing a bit of the fog out of the air.

My response to OK465, which I simply addressed to OK, was to show that even with a bit clearer air, my brain is still fogged with not getting it. His further explanation makes me feel a bit better about my own lack of seeing how it went down, given the testimony of one of the crew. Glad it all worked out, all said and done.

Sorry if I added to confusion by using OK, which may have come across as other than a reference to his PPRuNe nomme de post.

Agreed - although it's the second recent press release on the subject that referenced the USAir 427. After the first I actually Googled it to make sure it was the same crash that I was thinking about.

Hi Dozy, Re, "I'm sure the anecdotal reporting is correct, but at the same time I think it's wrong-headed to try and squeeze this particular incident into a "...Magenta"-shaped mould without any real evidence to back it up. Finding repeatable patterns in a series of mishaps can be something of a double-edged sword, because while spotting and working to eliminate that behaviour will help, it won't help in the case of those incidents where, while outwardly similar in nature, that pattern wasn't involved - and can mask other problems that can be equally as dangerous. "

I too, would use Chris Scott's term, "likely" to describe what happened. This isn't jamming behaviour into the magenta-mold, it is recognizing factors that I, and probably Chris, (don't want to speak for you!), really do know about from having done too many simulator sessions! ;-) where that very phenomenon occurs.

Each sim session's script usually has a few very busy moments where "all hell is breaking loose" with a serious system failure, sometimes combined with a go-around from a low-vis approach.

The single chime and Master Caution are going off constantly, (and one is constantly resetting it), as the ECAM catches up with the FWC messages being displayed and re-prioritized, there may be warnings that the autoflight system has disconnected, perhaps voice-audio warnings, (such as the TCAS warnings) are occurring depending upon the scripted failure(s) - lots of times this usually occurs at/just-after takeoff or, far busier, the go-around, when one is making sure the gear is up, (if no one calls "positive rate", almost invariable the gear is left down while concentrating on other things!), the climb-thrust is set and so on.

The procedures are set out and well-trained as you will know from reading previous threads, but one is working hard, maintaining concentration, anticipating the next step while remembering/executing the drills in sequence. It is a very, very busy airplane when something major goes wrong or one is in cruise and all of a sudden the cautions and warnings come.

As I've mentioned previously, there are perhaps two, possibly three times when decisive, timely actions are required of the pilot-flying or the captain; they are the rejected takeoff, (captain only - and I do know this is controversial in some circles), stall, TCAS, EGPWS warnings and the go-around. All the other times, including engine failure-fire-damage one can & must take one's time, and by that, (it's been mentioned before), I mean 4, 5 or more seconds, to do nothing but collect one's thoughts and communicate with the PNF calling the failure and calling for the ECAM actions, etc. while taking the radios.

To your point, I would be quite certain that the A330/A340 event wasn't a "magenta-line" matter, nor is it startle; I would characterize it as re-grouping & otherwise marshaling one's resources which heretofore had been "at rest" so to speak, and while only partly due to the maintenance of cockpit discipline before launching, is an adjustment of focus while dealing with the inevitable surprise, (none of which is startle - startle is the result of a "comfortable unexpectedness" and perhaps a knowledge-complacency where "relaxed-but-ready" is that which is borne of thorough training, an abiding passion for the books and discussions and a desire to "read" in one's chosen profession which means reading accident reports, studies on current topics as well as staying in the books and knowing one's airplane....going beyond the minimum required to build depth and resourcefullness which can be called upon even once or perhaps twice in one's career and not waiting for, or complaining that one's airline isn't teaching one!

Automation is fabulous and I loved it but if that's all that one knows, one is at risk of being quickly overwhelmed, (startled) by the airplane.

I like this newbie "Don". Good thots.

@ Doze

Well, as most here know, I am in the latter grope of pilots. Got my engineering stuff from USAFA and was always a curious type. I even looked into the code for the A-7D computers and then the Viper's. Got the charts and block diagrams for the Viper FLCS and had to instruct the first few folks back in 1979 and 1980. Ya gotta know your plane, and it's a poor craftsman that blames his tools for a botched approach or incident.

I was and still am a proponent of using Otto to reduce workload and to provide some time to hit the head or eat a sandwich or... Otoo also helps after a missed approach and divert to a new field, especially when in a single seater and no "PNF".

But what bugs me is the seeming over dependence upon Otto for things that the pilot in command should be on top of. I think Asiana. I think of my buddy in the Cali crash. And I think of at least one Viper pilot friend that died because the altitude hold function had a lower AoA protection than the "normal" law. But he wasn't a child of the magenta line, he was trying to get his act together after aborting a low level route.

I am confused about the alpha protect laws and implementation. My documents show that the jet won't let you go above a certain AoA except in sub-law 2 (b) iii part three ( sarc off). So the zoom climb in the other 'bus plane is confusing if the pilot(s) did not command a climb.

DonH throws in some good thought. I'd still like to contest some.

Well, procedures might be set out, but they do not cover every situation. Therefore to put it right at the beginning of an argument seems to imply this. We need to be careful and vigilant that the same over reliance to automation is not aped with procedures. We definitely need procedures, but as with automation and sops, if there starts to be a religious thirst for all these things to replace basic skills and common sense, then we end up full backstick at FL350.

To pretend that procedures are well trained is somewhat preposterous. We all know how the bean counters cut back on anything they can in training, we all know how the operations bosses limit anything outside hand-cuffing sops, to invalidate such arguments. By simply reading the training syllabus of most airlines, you will discover that it rarely goes one little step beyond the bare minimum set up by regulators under pressure from the managers lobby.

Well put. However todays sops from industry and airlines and especially todays freshmen TRI/Es go the other way. The pandemic of "memory items" and additional "procedures" is creeping up even more after every incident. Just look at some airlines who want UAS to be a memory item, a procedure (see above) that should be well trained (see above) and readily dispatchable by a brain under sudden fire. In sim sessions i regularly, and by that i mean regularly, see UAS, rapid descents and severe damage assessments and memory items badly screwed up. Why? Because there is way too much emphasis on memory items and wording. When a brain is utterly stressed, it does not perform well. To put it under even more stress with the above is purely and simply counterproductive. I have seen newbees completely blocked because they could not recall the correct name for a checklist or stuttered for seconds to produce the correct pronunciation or term for an item. The TREs were taking notes like wild and elaborated for hours in the debrief of how important it was to know that kind of stuff. Maybe the poor AF-FO was torturing his mind to find the right wording, memory item or "absolutely correct procedure" and by doing that he was blocked-cramped pulling.
Checklist have been introduced to counter such phenomenons and to counter blockage, to give a straw to cling to. I once reverted to the checklist for a emergency descent, becasue i was really surprised in that sim session, just to be marked down for that.

On the other hand there are times where the only thing that is left is your rear side. For a few seconds, after that you have to go back to the marvels of modern aviation, because your bird has become mainly digital.

I contest the statement that todays pilots are still able to do that.
They are NOT well trained enough and NOT free enough from the limiting constraints of over reliance on automation, procedures and sops.

The moment we admit to that we can start working with these wonderful birds A and AB give us.

A similar incident: Air France A340-313, over the North-Atlantic on 22 july 2011

Thanks for that link to the BEA Report into this "Serious Incident", HN39.

Judging from the Synopsis, this incident had elements in common with both AF447 and the A340 AIRPROX. It promises to make for shocking reading.

Better to take the dogs out first, methinks...

Don't let the dogs see it, Chris....................

A quick scan through that report leaves me very puzzled as to who was PF and who was PNF and exactly what were they playing at?

Sadly again absolutely no credit to AF, selection, training and abilities in that incident. I cannot relate to the timeline portrayed in this report.

3 minutes from 'Overspeed' before ANY action is taken - then by PNF?
After 4 minutes the 'Overspeed' ceased and they were practically back at cruise Mach BUT at 6 minutes 'someone' decides to select a slower speed? AND
at 7 minutes extend the speedbrakes when almost at cruise Mach?
At 8 minutes after the 'event' they are still almost 'level' (+200')

Speedbrakes come in after 13 minutes, so I guess they had power against speedbrake for 6 minutes?

Either the world has gone mad or the report has been corrupted in translation. Look what they 'missed':mad:

Nose-up attitude, which had reached 12° pitch up,
ˆ High vertical speed, which had reached 5,700 ft/min,
ˆˆThe flashing frame around the altitude display on the PFD when the altitude
passed 35,200 ft,
ˆˆThe position of the FD cross bars,
ˆˆAltitude until it reached more than 38,000 ft,
ˆˆThe “AP1” display which had disappeared from the FMA strip,
ˆˆThe amber ECAM “AP OFF” message which remained displayed for 9 seconds after the AP disengagement.

The report also says 'Because of the absence of CVR recording, it was not possible to evaluate CRM in order to explain the lack of monitoring of the basic parameters and the flight path.' - Do we really need that?:ugh:

All this AFTER 447.

Hi BOAC,
I think you are misreading minutes instead of seconds.

"At 1 h 00 min 27 (point n°2), ......., the PNF manually disengaged the AP by pressing the
takeover pushbutton on the side-stick. A pitch-up input on the PNF’s side-stick going as far as ¾ to stop was recorded for 6 seconds.

At 1 h 02 min 06 (point n°9),...... the aeroplane descended past 36,520 ft. The PF then became aware of the disengagement of the AP and made a pitch-down input on his sidestick."

The total amount of time between AP disconnect and PF (Captain) actually taking control was "only" 1 min 39 secs.

Is it the ergonomic design of the Airbus flight deck or AF crews?

On previous AC types, we had large red letters on the PFD telling whether the AP was engaged "CMD" or only the Flight Directors "FD" in addition to all the other alarms, bells and whistles.
Airbus simply removes "AP(1)(2)" from the top right hand corner of the PFD - it is easier to miss.

Hello BOAC,

Re. the BEA Report on the AF A340 Serious Incident of 2011, should your time values be in seconds, rather than minutes?

Aso, you write:
Either the world has gone mad or the report has been corrupted in translation. Look what they 'missed'http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...s/censored.gif

You then go on to quote what the BEA has written on Page 14. Are you merely remarking that the crew may have gone mad, or perhaps you can explain what has been "corrupted in the translation"? At a superficial glance, their script seems to be in line with the DFDR traces in the Appendix.

Re PF vs PNF, I am inferring that the PF is the pilot (in this case, the captain) who was nominated as such at the beginning of the flight. it's always been a potential source of confusion (particularly in an airline like BEA/BA, which switches PFs for the "monitored approach"). Airbus itself used to add the terms CM1 and CM2 to avoid the ambiguity. In this case, the copilot seems to have remained the PNF (i.e., as far as we know there was no formal handover of control), but made sidestick inputs - whether intentionally or not.