There they go, blame the pilots and training. The Europeans with those 'Side stick flying the airplane through the autopilot' and those silly 'none moving Auto Throttles', having had billions invested already in this system philosophy, will not retract and admit to the stupidity of this Airbus concept.:mad:

Do you expect a 'logical' outcome to a legal case for damages?

One thing it could do is monetize the risk of for example, training regimes, in a way that will wake up the beancounters not only at Air France but at all airlines. But do not expect there to be any logic in the final outcome.

@Hardbutt - you're displaying as much ignorance as you are prejudice with that post. For one thing the sidesticks do not control the aircraft via the autopilot, and the thrust lever design, while originally unorthodox, has been proven safe and reliable through 25 years of service.

Dozywannabe, whose the ignorant one. The side stick inputs go to the flight control computers (same as autopilot) which will have the final say on the flight control movements. And to add to confusion, pilot on one side have absolute no clue what the other side's stick input is. And as for the non moving Auto Throttles, how many deadly crashes have we seen where the pilot tries to 'figure out' what the f@#& the auto thrust is doing. Like I said Airbus are too far down the road and will not admit they had a silly concept with which they started with. :mad:

coroner -- wtf!?
 

coroner

Obviously. every investigatory board in Europe is WAY, WAY ahead of the NTSB - we still have to rely on forensic investigators to determine whether or not pilot training played a part in a crash.

Kudos to the coroner - his "findings" will certainly help increase the safety of air transit.

LonewolfI sat through virtually the whole duration of the coroner's inquests into the deaths in the RAF Hercules that was shot down in Iraq and the Nimrod that blew up in Afghanistan. I came away with a great admiration for both coroners.

Neither had, as far as I know, any previous aviation expertise, but both had clearly done detailed research into the necessary areas. They demonstrated an impressive ability to understand the detailed technical evidence placed before them. They were able to conduct forensic cross-examination of witnesses, and I was particularly impressed by the way they could sort the wheat from the chaff.

So I suspect that the coroner in this case was probably similarly well prepared and professionally capable.

As well as having the benefit of a 200-page report from one of the longest and most thorough accident investigations in aviation history, from which all of his comments on the circumstances of the accident were drawn.

A fact that his critics on here seem determined to ignore. :ugh:

UK Judges and Coroners are no fools. You only have to sit in a courtroom and watch to realise this.

They are extremely learned and intelligent. They collect evidence and come to neutral unbiased pronouncements.



I think the real question about the recent A330 and A310 crashes is not necessarily that the Airbus is flawed any more than a Boeing is, but why any pilot would think that holding full backstick/yoke at 37,000' or aggressively pumping the rudder pedals in turbulence was an 'acceptable' thing to do to an airliner??? Both these actions would have crashed a Boeing just as it did the Airbuses.

The real investigation needed here is how do some pilots somehow get through the system with these fatal flaws in their thinking. Why weren't they checked?

This is why :

Post #5

I would assume that the real problem preventing a change to the Airbus sidestick system is an implied admission that these controls are unsafe. However AF447 can be an opportunity, as it can now be argued that the decreasing competence of normally-trained pilots mandates simpler twinned controls.

Edmund

Gentlemen(and possibly ladies),

I have been a Pruner for many years and have read with increasing irritation the inevitable descent of any thread into B vs AB rubbish. Both makes of aircraft have superb safety records but, like anything which has a human input, cannot be absolutely perfect. I have flown well over 100 airctaft types from single engined spam cans to the largest military aircraft in existence. I have also extensively operated both B and AB. In the case of AB, the FBW comes quite naturally after about an hour in the sim and the non moving throttle can be regarded as an advantage if its principles are understood. I have found it a delightful machine to fly manually. The B is equally likeable and, although I do have a favourite, there is nothing really to choose between them. The constant carping that takes place on this web site does nothing to enhance its status and merely give journos false ideas with which to titillate the public and drives the majority of readers to the more intelligent discussions in the Military section.

If that were the case, then why would Bombardier have adopted a similar system in their new C-Series airliners? More to the point there have been crashes in very similar circumstances involving a B727 and a B757, both of which have traditional controls - I suggest your argument is somewhat misplaced.

pontifex

Your argumentation does even less to enhance anything, especially safety, even if its status is admirably high it can always be enhanced. Unfortunately not with arguments like yours.

The carping happens because the industry stubbornly refuses to accept flaws in their products. The reason is simply cost and makes such refusal cynical.

Take B with the speedbrake issue, other designs being far less prone to error. Take the AB’s absence of tactile feedback, many accidents and inquiries do not directly blame it on this flaw, but any sharp reader can deduct that if it was present, there would have been a higher chance of not leading to catastrophe.
In both products a simple adaptation of the philososphy would increase resilience to incidents, and basically this refusal by pretending that it would not, brings out all the carping, because it is cynical.

It is to a certain extent understandable because of the cost involved. What I will never understand is that professionals sing the same lame song. They should demand and welcome any measure that enhances safety, or they come out to be either lobbyists or to be not that professional after all.

As an example let me cite you once more:

Any design with room for error can be regarded as advantage from a certain angel if its principles are understood, even if the advantage is only weight reduction ……
But if we want to increase safety, then we must take into account that understanding principles has its limits with the actual state of training and experience of pilots, and this state is certainly not improving! So such an argument resounds cynical, because it takes away blame from designs, from engineers, and puts it squarely onto the end-user, the pilots.
Designs can be overcomplicated or not adapted to human behaviour and such designs should be exposed.
Even small flaws can be changed, but to call professionals who expose flaws ‘carpers’ only disqualifies the caller.

In order to do so, then your "sharp reader" would have to dismiss out of hand the documented evidence showing exactly the same kind of mishaps happening to aircraft with conventional controls roughly as often (for AF447, read Birgenair 301 and NWA 6231 - and for LH in Hamburg read the recent Southwest prang at LGA). To call what is actually a design *difference* a flaw is a misnomer, because the design has not resulted in any more mishaps than the other kind, and the length of reliable service this design has given thus far clearly refutes the doom-and-gloom predictions of the naysayers.

CapetonianIn my experience, this statement can be applied to a considerable number of Western countries. After working in commerce for 35 years, across a very wide range of different types of company and internationally, the move towards 'hand-off' management is nearly complete. In large companies it is the standard.

As to 'B' following 'AB' down the same route of production materials and processes (not to mention flight deck concepts) - it has been obvious for many years that that is exactly what they are doing. Of itself, that is neither bad nor good.

It is the management of the carrier that set the mood, style, practice, tolerances, acceptable practice and the 'never-under-any-circumatances'. There will be failures down the line but the buck USED to stop with the Managing Director and the Board. In the era of the CEO, the buck gets killed long before it reaches his doormat.

Dozy,

I'm not saying the sidestick is the *cause* of anything, rather that it might need modification or adaptation to render it *better*. Must everything be set in stone?

Not at all - but a dispassionate reading of the evidence does not support the assertion that linking the controls would make the design any safer. That much should be beyond dispute.

Pax Boy

You share my views on the priorities and capabilities of much senior management today. Unable to make any judgments without reducing everything to numbers-a process fraught with errors and lack of any specialist knowledge about the operations of a company.
I wonder how many big airline CEOs could actually recognise the different aircraft types they operated let alone the inner workings of the flight deck.
More on track for this thread it is interesting to se the approach of more modern UK coroners-for years it was an open verdict on pretty much anything now we have people like this individual making a bold and serious statement and the people involved in the re analysis of the Hillsborough tragedy taking an equally forthright approach. All that's aid though I was pretty shocked that an experienced AF FO managed to get trapped into the AF447 situation -I would have expected better but I suppose that's easy to say from behind my desk rather than a lonely dark flight deck in mid atlantic turbulence.

Isn't that the rub for any system in an aircraft? ;)

Lonewolf_50, re, "Isn't that the rub for any system in an aircraft? http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...lies/wink2.gif"

Yes, it certainly is.

I've been thinking that there isn't an "automation" problem, there is a knowledge problem. It is becoming apparent that a lack of knowledge of systems is the problem - the success of thousands of pilots speaks for itself.

"What's it doing now?", offered lots of times in humour, if serious, is an easily-answered question - get the CRM going, then click, click - disconnect the AP and pull the thrust levers back out of the CLB detent and use them just like ordinary throttles/thrust levers, fly the airplane, sort out what ever it was that was temporarily confusing one, re-engage when comfortable. To me, any pilot who doesn't/can't/won't disconnect the autothrust on an Airbus is admitting that they don't know their airplane. The machine flies beautifully with everything off.

PJ2