Here is an interesting anatomy of a tragedy from Der Spiegel of last year's mysterious crash of Air Frances's Airbus A330 - The Last Four Minutes of Air France Flight 447
Thanks for posting that sir... quite an interesting read. That whole accident really leaves me scratching my head... the explanations just don't quite add up.
I've never set foot in an Airbus cockpit (and hope never to, honestly.) So I have a question. We practice loss of airspeed and altitude indications in the simulators enough to know that it's not really a big deal, as long as you have some manner of horizon SA (EADI, STBY etc..) Did the automation of the aircraft keep the pilots from regaining control? Was the jet soo over-computerized that a simple thing like switching off the A/P and A/Ts was impossible and the pilots could only struggle in vain as the a/c plummeted to the ocean? Because, if so, what the fuck!?! How can you strap into an aircraft that you know has the ultimate say over how you are going to control it? I'm not trying to start a "Boeing v. Airbus" argument here, but seriously... WTF? Quoted from the linked article: "Pitot tubes sometimes also fail on Boeing aircraft. When SPIEGEL contacted the American Federal Aviation Administration, the body which oversees civilian flight in the US, the FAA confirmed that there had been eight such incidents on a Boeing 777, three on a 767, and one each on a 757 and a Jumbo. Boeing is currently conducting a study on the safety effects of "high-altitude pitot icing on all models in its product line," says FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette. The FAA did not, however, identify "any safety issues arising" during these incidents..." Yeeeahhhh... I'll stay with Boeing.
Interesting read. That scares the hell out of me that it may have been the computer that killed everyone. My first thought on reading it through was "so the pitot tubes iced over, so what?" Bear in mind this is coming from a guy who flies an aircraft with a very rudimentary autopilot that often as not doesn't work. I didn't realize how automated Airbus makes their aircraft and how royally F-ed you are if the computer starts getting inputs that don't make sense to it. Makes me like Boeing that much more, not that there was a whole lot of love that I had for Airbus to begin with.
I was doing a check flight on a 727 after a C Check (overhaul). We figured out on rotation that our pitot system was f'ed up (both matched at 80 kts then went miles apart). Flew pwer and attitude with no problem. Not a big deal. I have friends at Hawaiian in A330 training right now. Click-click, click-click. AP & At are off and there are charts for power/attitude flying. Just like a Boeing. These Frogs got the utlimate pink sheet for airmanship.
Did any one else pick up on the "loophole" the pilot used to depart - by entering Bordeaux instead of Paris in the flight computer as the final destination so as to be able to take off without the legally mandated planned reserve? Not a good sign for the professionalism of the pilot.
Good to know that my worst fears about Airbus aren't quite so bad. Sidebar: I thought the 80kt power and airspeed check was unique to P-3s. Then again, this is from a guy who's only flown four different kinds of aircraft so I may be showing my lack of knowledges.
You're speaking out of your ass. This is a normal procedure called enroute re-dispatching. It is used all the time and is perfectly safe. We use it at Hawaiian for our Manila flight. International / overwater flying in the airlines requires a lot bigger fuel reserve than your normal FAR 91 IFR flight. When you reach your redispatch point if you do not have the required reserve fuel for your destination from that point, you land at the airport you were originally dispatched to and get more. It's not a loophole. It's safe, it's legal and it's professional.
Fair enough, but "loophole" was exactly how the article described it and didn't portray it to be common or proper practice.
The article for me raises more questions than it answers. And remember, it was written by a journalist, not an accident investigator. That is why the word "loophole" is used. Hal Pilot is correct about re-dispatching. It may seem to be a loophole, but as he said, "it's safe, it's legal and it's professional." We did it at our airline, too. With experience in both, I found you actually flew the aircraft in the Boeing, even when on autopilot and a computerized route. But with the airbus, you didn't really fly. You just monitored very many computers... every once in a great while saying, "What's it doing now?" Even though Airbus aircraft are very heavily computerized, with many backups, I still cannot understand how this accident could have happened. But then I never did understand or believe the probable causes of the number of B-737's hard-over rudders in the 80/90s, at least two of which were totally fatal. And their black boxes were recovered.
This passes the common sense test too. We routinely do something vaguely like this on training flights too. If it's gonna be a long flight and you need to practice a lot of stuff--in other words maybe stretching fuel a bit--you'd be a fool not to plan for a lot of your practice maneuvers/approaches/patterns/etc. close to your destination or at least some suitable alternate. If the gas or weather don't go like you planned then there is still a safe option, but if fuel burn does go as planned then great- and most importantly you can get a lot more accomplished... Apples vs oranges but both safe, legal, and professional.
The human factors and automation part of this story (and the informed comments by HAL Pilot, Catmando- thanks) have me scratching my head. In college (engineering) I had to write a short paper about an infamous and then-in-the-news airliner crash in Cali, Colombia (AA 965). Some of the aftermath centered around the spoilers, which on that type were not designed to automatically retract whenever the pilots went to full power (in some types of aircraft the opposite is true). This was from an engineering perspective and not an operator perspective (fair enough). My prof wasn't too happy with me that my position on the spoilers was that while sure, it was a dicked up design feature, the pilots really should have known that was how their airplane worked... And the great debate of automation and aircraft design philosophy goes on.
In the -45 we do a line speed check at the short field gear, though it sounds like the purpose is different.....our intent is to ensure that we have a good engine, though I guess it is also a good pitot static crosscheck in addition to the groundspeed readout if you know what a good engine on a hot day feels like.
AA965 was a very interesting story.Two prior AF, well trained, experienced pilots. This whole Airbus thing... just still trying to figure out the pitot heat failure - the article seems to suggest (which I kind of doubt) that the airspeed sensors are not designed to operate within the aircraft's flight limits? That just sounds like BS.
Having flown both military and commercial aircraft, some with automatically retracting speed brakes, and those without, I can definitely tell you this: I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times I have advanced the throttles, while initially forgetting to retract the non-automatically-retracting 'boards', both in the sim and aircraft. And I have witnessed many more instances from others. You can quote me to your old professor! 'Cuz I was once the best pilot in the world, even with an occasional and embarrassing, speed-brake forgetfullness.
Hehehe... lots of shaking + barely hear each other yell = Vne - 5kts lots of shaking + lots of noise = Vne - 10kts everything else = meh (especially if you're flying through a P-3 traffic pattern) ... simple! You just gotta make sure neither one of you puts his earplugs in too deep or the noise part won't be calibrated... but that's on preflight.
Funny you bring this up... In the E-6, on the rare occasion you refuse a landing and make it a touch-n-go vice a full stop, we were required to advance the throttles first so the engines wouldn't revert to ground idle (4 sec weight on wheels). The spool up time from ground idle would cause you to roll off the end of the runway short of rotate speed. Stowing the boards got you instant lift so they were second in this situation only. Conversely, if a pilot took to long easing the nose down on a touch-n-go, and the engines had time to spool down to ground idle, you were forced to abort. ...and for the Monday morning quaterbacks/ people scratching their heads... This was taught to IPs to help you battle the 3p/2p screwups if a touch-n-go was desired but they tried to initiate a full stop out of habit.
I watched this http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/crash-flight-447.html on Netflix streaming. It's a pretty interesting guess of what they thought brought the A330 down. PBS says it's premiering in Feb 2011, but I just watched it.
Interesting. A pitot static failure seemed to me like one of those emergencies that always happened to the other guy, until it didn't. Kingsville to El Paso, I'm -2 with an IP in the back. Lead has a stud up front, IP in the back as well. Leave krock in the late evening, uneventful climb to FL280 in combat spread. I notice that my altimeter is showing us 1500 ft low about an hour into the trip; we are closer to ELP by this time. Point it out to the IP and he asks lead "what gives?" Lead tells us that he shows us at FL280, imn about .8 or so. We ask ATC for a radar hit and sure enough it's us with a bad system. Execute proper NATOPS, can't get it back. Long story short, had to shoot a section approach through the weather at night into ELP. Altimeter showed us 6000 ft low on deck and the airspeed had failed to 0. The scary part about it was the way it failed. Very gradual. Had we been a single we probably wouldn't have noticed until center said something or we noticed our power setting be abnormally high. Great experience in hindsight. Can't imagine having that problem over the Atlantic.
Without getting into the specifics of the flight -- it might have been a 'short release' ... happens all the time when flyin' the 'big water' ...
The article was written by a correspondent -- one Gerald Traufetter. He doesn't have a fucking clue how to dispatch an international flight over the 'pond' from point 'A' to 'B' ... and not an international experienced pilot, I am sure ... BIG DIFFERENCE.
Your 'prof' is a theoretician ... not an operator. As such, he's clueless ... If it can 'work' ... it can fail ... If you can 'do it right' ... you can do it wrong ... Anyone can be a Blue Angel or a plumber ... just depends on what day of the week it is ... ALWAYS keep your head on a swivel & cover your '6' ... Some things don't change ...
