Dozy,
IIRC my " new Britannia Captain" had come to us from flying Caravelles. Perhaps HE needed to be reminded that turbines' reaction to a demand for an increase of power needs some time, " thinking time ?", even if there is a propeller fitted to the front ( He did not stay for long.)

Even as trainees we had been taught to use a powered approach on Oxfords and Ansons, to be ready for a low overshoot.

( Later, at the gliding Centre to the east of Toulouse it was possible to do a low overshoot in a glider - the main strip was along a ridge, so one could turn over the side of the ridge and gained height or landed in a field at the bottom.)

Back to the subject at hand after this - promise, but:

Well, Caravelles were famous for their excellent gliding characteristics, Britannias - not so much.

I bet that was a case of serious brown trousers the first time and brilliant fun thereafter. :ok:

Regarding stall warning and stall, the differences are indeed not that big.

In clean configuration, level flight at low altitude with idle thrust, Jaques Rosay would have decelerated at about 1.2 to 1.3 kt/sec.

AF447 decelerated at about 1.7 to 1.8 kt/sec which is somewhat faster, but OTOH the margin between stall warning and stall is greater.

The point that Rosay is making, that selecting TOGA in response to stall warning doesn't keep you out of a stall, applies equally to AF447.

Indeed - which is why one of the big factors to come out of the investigation was that the industry's approach to recurrent training around stall warnings at the time - i.e. stall avoidance only - was insufficient. But we've already covered this aspect several times over, have we not? ;)

As said previously, go into Politics dozy, you're dishonest enough to succeed.

Yes, we have indeed.

Didn't the changes in the industry's approach to recurrent training around stall warnings come out of the Airplane Upset Recovery Training Aid?

EDIT: Rosay's paper is dated January 2011, F-GZCP's wreckage was found in April 2011.

It could have been part of it, I'm not sure. I was thinking more of the joint Boeing-Airbus effort leading up to the event mentioned in this article:

Stall training still constrained by limits of knowledge

According to the FSF's website page here:
Airplane Upset Recovery Training Aid | Flight Safety Foundation

Revision 2 of the Airplane Upset Recovery Training Aid was published in November 2008.

@CONF iture - I stated that I felt some posters were less concerned with safety issues regarding AF447 than they were dredging up AF296, then you replied in the affirmative. If that was a mis-statement on your part then that's fine, but I used both our words verbatim - how is that dishonest?

Dishonest to the point to not admit you're the very one to bring up AF296 on this thread.
Stop mentioning a topic if you don't want to be confronted on it.

Politics, Policy &//Or The Law
 

Quote:
"As said previously, go into Politics dozy, you're dishonest enough to succeed."

Or, go to law school.

Show me just where in the hell I've been dishonest. Bet you can't.

Dozy #324 ish,

That gliding centre was unusual in that it WAS possible to do a low over-shoot in a glider. The other six or more that I had used were on flattish airfields. I had seen others using that technique, so my Instructor did not have a scared pupil - and he spoke in Franglais to me. ( Their Met man and I used the plotting symbols for a restricted conversation ... A common language of sorts ?)

The Report on AF296 stated that " TOGA is applied at 12.45.35. Four seconds later, the aircraft begins striking the tree tops."

Being now 15 degrees NU and at 122 kts... While the engines operated to specification, they did not have very long to have their effect on the aircraft.

THAT is why I would like to count aloud the number of seconds to get power from Flight Idle to TOGA ( On a sim, of course !)

LT

Pitot heat
 

I'm sure this must have been covered in one of the threads but I can't find the reference.

I would have thought that in those conditions the pitot heat would have been on as standard. Has that been commented on?

If you review the first two or three AF447 threads, you'll find considerable discussion of pitot tubes, and pitot heat, and the phenomenon the flight encountered.

If you go to the first page of this thread, john tullamarine provides a nice template for using the search function to look into those threads with any term you insert. If you use pitot heat, I think you'll get to see how the discussion went.

You can try

pitot af447 site:http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/
or
pitot heat af447 site:http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/

and see how many posts commenting on the system there are. Then pick and choose from those.

Pitot heat
 

Many thanks, Lonewolf

BBC : Air France 447 crash pilots not emergency-trained, says coroner
 

The next few pages are merged from an R&N thread discussing a Coronial finding in respect of the mishap.


Pilots at the controls of a jet that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 people were not adequately trained for the emergency, a coroner has said.

Michael Oakley, North Yorkshire coroner, was speaking at the inquest into the deaths of two British men in the Air France jet disaster, in 2009.

Arthur Coakley, 61, of Whitby and Neil Warrier, 48, from London, both died.

The crash, during a Brazil-to-France flight, was blamed on technical failure and pilot errors.

Recording a narrative verdict on the men, who both died from multiple injuries, Mr Oakley said there had been a series of "systematic failures".

BBC News - Air France crash pilots not emergency-trained, says coroner

And that's how things get misunderstood. The crash hasn't been "blamed" on anything, because the court case hasn't even started yet. The crash investigators' report was a finding of fact, nothing more.

I think you will find a Coronor's court is a court.

Correct, this is a legal finding. The report later says:

""The air disaster highlights serious public concern of whether pilots are overly dependent on technology and are not retaining the skills required to properly fly complex commercial aircraft.""

That is actually not a bad summary of what was being said on the AF447 thread here.

Whatever the findings are, the underlying cause will be the poor and distant management at Air France and the culture of arrogance and buck-passing which pervades French companies.

Yes, but this was a UK-based inquest into the deaths of two British citizens who died in the crash, not the proceedings in France where I suspect the feathers will really fly.

Anyway, all I was saying was that the article seems to be implying that the investigators' report apportioned responsibility, which it did not.

Coroners Inquest and Criminal Proceedings
 

The Coroner's narrative verdict is worth reading in full. Civil proceedings are unlikely in most cases since they have been settled by the majority of the families. The other legal activity is the French Criminal Investigation, into involuntary homicide. The investigation proceeds and the Judge has yet to even consider whether charges will be made.

According to today's Times, it was the aircraft's "pathfinding" pitot tubes that froze.:ugh:

Coroner's report seems fair, lucid and balanced..
 

This recently-retired old-stager has, during recent years, been involved in simulator-assessment of prospective pilot candidates. Two issues were patently clear almost every day...

1 Candidates with considerable glass-cockpit/advanced-automation equipment very frequently lacked the necessary limited-panel skills... often taking far too long to identify and master system failures.

2 Candidates fresh from ab-initio schools normally fared much better when faced with a requirement to fly limited-panel.. particularly if they were relatively current on limited-panel recovery by reference to clockwork instruments.

This appeared to be a cultural/national issue however.. substantially confined to certain nations.. but not including US,UK, Oz or NZ candidates who generally performed well under limited-panel conditions.

All these computer-laws and nanny-systems can be wonderful things IF they are mounted atop a sound foundation of solid, oft-practiced basic airmanship procedures. IMHO of course.

French corporate attitudes
 

Well said, Capetonian. Completely justified in the light of this sorry saga (and others).

Basic flying skills
 

Again, well said, talkpedlar. It's the need to be able to fly on not just basic but sub-basic (ie, limited panel) information which seems to be in danger of being lost in these automated days.

Just...
 

It has been argued for years: the responsibility of those who cause accidents. Whether in the streets, in the depths of the sea or in the heights of heaven. We've all seen that we try to make the best (each in their own way), yet we continue to fail. I think it's time to take decisions about these problems as soon as possible. In regard to aviation, it is my personal opinion that trying to automate extremely complex systems for our understanding is a risk that must be assumed. And it is very easy to point to a colleague .. After the failure ... IMHO...

As one Boeing 787 simulator instructor in Seattle was told by one of the designing team "We have designed the 787 on the basis it will be flown by incompetent pilots - hence the emphasis on automation. :confused:

Please tell me the B787 is not going into the same hole as Airbus did.

You can bet your bottom dollars the share holders will make sure they damn well do. These days, everything is about $$$ - and those who have it care very little about integrity or preservation of the ideals which got us where we are.

Clayne, agree entirely.

This is the new world.

You have to put your arguments in terms that these people understand, Talk about 'integrity' and 'preservation of ideals' and you will see their eyes glaze over. You have to put things in terms of monetary risk if you can't they are not interested - despite mouthing all the platitudes about safety being first priority etc., if you can't put your argument into dollars they will not be even listen.

What a coroner knows about aviation, and aviation safety, strikes me as a valid question regarding this report and its credibility.

I have a question:
did he have access to the training records and quals for all three pilots?
If so, did Air France make them available to him?

Just wondering.

There are a million and one ways in which people can die. If a coroner was expected to be an expert in every one of them, I doubt that there would be anyone qualified for the role.

Exactly. He is perfectly qualified to suggest that they died due to traumatic impact with the ocean. How the hell is he supposed to know if a pilot has been trained in stall recoveries without access to training records.

Reasonable to assume that at least one of the pilots had once held a ppl, and therefore must have been trained in stall recovery. ( and recognition of the condition)

I would guess that is extremely unlikely. AF would not be likely to hand over the records voluntarily, and UK coroner would have had to go through French courts to sub-poena them.

The coroner did not make any judgement on the training of the crew or their ability to recognise/recover from a stall, other than referring to the findings in the Final Report on the BEA accident investigation - which he was perfectly entitled to do.

Thank you Dave.
I must then ask why it is that the coroner's report goes into areas where he knows BFA.
If the BEA report is the ref, well ... it's already been done.
I guess one must follow protocol when one holds the job.

It appears the Boeing 787 was designed by incompetent designers - hence all the problems....:D