Air France accident

[facthunter]

Autopilot mode.

 

bass, you would have to get it more precise than that. At Flt LVL 390 approx most of these aircraft have a margin of around 10 Kts between high speed buffet and low speed stall. I tried to make the point that the pilots did not overspeed or seriously underspeed the aircraft and it remained intact in a severe turbulence situation. This is pretty surprising considering the lack of reliable data that the pilots were faced with.

 

The best thing to do would be to have the plane hold an attitude that might be considered normal for the situation that you are in (or want to be in) and supply the power that is normal for that situation. Simply power + attitude will give you what you want. The attitude may be hard to determine but that is the way to go, and IF you can't do that you are up the creek. I have had plenty of experience with blocked pitot tubes (If you come from West maitland you will know what I mean unless the wasps have been made extinct), and pilots should be trained to cope with this, but you are talking about VMC in daylight. That is a pushover compared to the situation this crew was faced with .

 

One commentator says pilots are trained to trust their instruments . They surely must and systems are duplicated and sometimes triplicated and comparators give you warning of a disagreement.. I would be surprised if the training in Air France was not equal to the best in the world, and that these chaps were of a good standard. It irks me immensely when people who would have no idea, jump to conclusions that have virtually no validity . Vast resources are put into designing these flight systems, all of which are made by the same company (Honeywell) to slightly different specifications between Airbus and Boeing. The technology is basically the same. Nothing is ever perfect and the communication between man and machine will always be a challenge to designers. ie the cockpit interface.

 

My only comment is that I would try to avoid the worst of that kind of weather, because it is bloody dangerous, but maybe the fuel load was limited. (Be interesting to find out). Nev

 

 

[Guest basscheffers]

Nev, I am not trying to bag the pilots in this case. They had a hard job and ran out of time before figuring it out. What's quite obvious is that they did depart controlled flight, exactly why is unknown, but stalling it is the most likely scenario. (can't think of another one as strucural failure was ruled out.)

 

I am also not going to jump on the "training" bandwagon. Without the recorders, there is only speculation on the actions of the pilots. They may have followed correct procedure and still ended up in this mess.

 

Flying ariliners is incredibly safe, I don't think there is a need to subject the pilots to more training they get now, especially in recovering unnusual attitudes as sugested here. Like I said before: the guy who does it all day every day had trouble with recovering an upset airliner. Anyone who thinks airline pilots doing it under non-stress enviroments for a day once a year increased their chances of doing it at night in a malfunctioning aircraft in a thunderstorm over the Atlantic is a fool.

 

So is suggesting those who fly ultralights or gliders are better at dead-sticking an airliner to a safe landing. I have never heard any reference to the captain of Air Transat Flight 236 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia being a current glider pilot, yet he also glided and sideslipped an airliner to a safe dead-stick landing. Something the Gimli Glider and Sully fanbois will tell the world is something people who are "just" airline pilots are incapable of doing.

 

Airliners are still the safest way to travel. Every once in a while XXXX happens, nothing to get too excited over!

 

 

[facthunter]

Confirmation/ clarification

 

Bass, I have no difficulty with anything you have said or are saying. I made a comment about autopilot mode for your consideration. There is always a need to get across just what the crews have to cope with. They have to react in seconds and get precisely right what may take boards of investigation months to peruse and still not come to any definate conclusion with.

 

I detest the dumbing down and inappropriate use of the term "pilot error". Someone has to stick up for the crews as they are not here to defend themselves. Nev

 

 

[flying dog]

This is a long thread. I have read parts of it.

 

Some things I can say:

 

1 - I agree that pilots should probably have more time actually flying the plane and getting to know what it feels like in certain situations so they know what to do to get it out of that situation if the automatics fail.

 

2 - "Kid in the cockpit" Russina pilot lets son in cockpit and plane crashes. Reason: Son disconnects LNAV by accident and plane spirals to ground. This could have been avoided if the pilots took their hands of the "sticks" and let the plane fly itself. The planes supposedly have "Self preservation mode" in them. Yeah, well not really always good enough.

 

3 - I appreciate the reasoning behind WHY commercial pilots are told/taught power = speed, attitude = VSI. It is SO wrong. If you have lost your engine/s or thrust you have to change your mode of thinking from what you ALWAYS do, to a way with which you are NOT FAMILIAR. This causes problems. That message alone is repeated in just about every aircrash investigation show. Pilots in un-certain situations.

 

Old (no offence) pilots who used to fly the "Classic" planes have told me stories how when on long haul flights and a system would fail - like auto-throttle - they would look at the N1 gauge, the fuel flow and KNOW where to set the throttles to get the airspeed they wanted.

 

This may not be 100% correct as my memory of their EXACT words is not guaranteed to be perfect. But you get my meaning.

 

There also seems to be a big problem with CRM.

 

There are TWO People in the cockpit.

 

One should be "flying the plane" and the other should be looking at the throttles, etc. The "need" for the pilot to look at the throttle position and move them to the 85% position should have been done by the co-pilot. Meanwhile the pilot keeps the attitude and flys the plane.

 

 

[Guest basscheffers]

Old (no offence) pilots who used to fly the "Classic" planes have told me stories how when on long haul flights and a system would fail - like auto-throttle - they would look at the N1 gauge, the fuel flow and KNOW where to set the throttles to get the airspeed they wanted.

These old pilots in their simpler aircraft also crashed them way more often. So whatever modern pilots and aircraft lost in stick and rudder skills has been more than compensated for by improvements in other areas to make flying vastly more safe than it used to be!

So it's not something I would particularly worry about.

 

 

[Methusala]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,679980,00.html

 

G'day all, Try the link above for info on this tragedy.And, as usual Nev has nailed another part of the puzzle by questioning whether limited fuel was a factor! Don

 

 

[flying dog]

These old pilots in their simpler aircraft also crashed them way more often. So whatever modern pilots and aircraft lost in stick and rudder skills has been more than compensated for by improvements in other areas to make flying vastly more safe than it used to be!

 

So it's not something I would particularly worry about.

 

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That is true is you apply the old pilots to the old planes.

 

I was meaning the new pilots learn a bit of the old "stick and rudder" flying methodology.