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Air France 447 crash.....possibly found after 2 years

Green11

Living the dream
when i was reading around the end of the summer, what I understood was that alternate law had taken affect. The computer assumed the attitude vs airspeed was invalid and turned off the horn. The pilots attempted to put nose down inputs and the stall horn would come BACK on. I can see how that is really conflicting. In the end it stinks though because experience is supposed to trump and you think someone would say, "I'm not going to believe that because I know that if I point this nose down it works and I get airspeed. Screw that clicking thing...." But that is easy for me to sharpshoot from the armchair.

Edit: just read that PM article, yep guy just held the stick back. not much to do with alternate law, oh well.

Yet another reason Airbus should always be avoided. They tend to establish a pattern of killing people because of their computers do they not? The holding the stick back part kind of reminds me of the Buffalo Colgan flight.
 

wlawr005

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
Strange that the control system is built so that a) one pilot's inputs can't be felt through the opposite controls and b) that the computer averages the inputs of the two controls to give one single output.
 

beaverslayer

Member
pilot
Strange that the control system is built so that a) one pilot's inputs can't be felt through the opposite controls and b) that the computer averages the inputs of the two controls to give one single output.

I was thinking the same thing. I guess there has to be a breakdown of CRM to begin with for both pilots to be putting in different inputs, but it definitely would make more sense to have the controls linked.
 

wink

War Hoover NFO.
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Yet another reason Airbus should always be avoided. They tend to establish a pattern of killing people because of their computers do they not? The holding the stick back part kind of reminds me of the Buffalo Colgan flight.
I don't get the association, as the Colgan flight was a DHC-8 (or Q-whatever they call it now) and not an Airbus. Only thing similar is they both reveled training deficiencies, and possibly, just poor airmanship. Sure Airbuses are different. I can't say I agree with some of the design philosophy. But every pilot that flies one should be trained to understand and accommodate the Airbus design philosophy. If they are so trained, and there is a mishap, it is pilot error. If they aren't, it is a supervisory/training deficiency. You can't blame Airbus when everyone knows about the unique design/engineering philosophy of the aircraft, and are provided manufacturer training boilerplate. You buy the aircraft you live with it.
 

HAL Pilot

Well-Known Member
None
Contributor
Yet another reason Airbus should always be avoided. They tend to establish a pattern of killing people because of their computers do they not? The holding the stick back part kind of reminds me of the Buffalo Colgan flight.
An ignorant statement from someone who has never flown a transport category aircraft. My airline flies the A330. there is nothing inherently wrong with the aircraft. It just takes good systems knowledge and proper training so the unique characteristics of the aircraft are known.
 

Green11

Living the dream
You're right I know very little about Airbus, but it doesn't take an expert to see they've had some pretty serious design flaws. I agree that you have to have the proper systems knowledge and training for your aircraft, but it just seems like some unnecessary variables are added with Airbus. You can obviously train to fly them safely, but why would companies want to spend the extra money teaching pilots to transition to something unconventional, not mention incurring the extra risk?

As far as Colgan, the two are similar in that both pilots seemed to ignore the airplanes' warnings and the most elementary aviation knowledge by continuing to pull back.
 

usmarinemike

Solidly part of the 42%.
pilot
Contributor
You're right I know very little about Airbus, but it doesn't take an expert to see they've had some pretty serious design flaws. I agree that you have to have the proper systems knowledge and training for your aircraft, but it just seems like some unnecessary variables are added with Airbus. You can obviously train to fly them safely, but why would companies want to spend the extra money teaching pilots to transition to something unconventional, not mention incurring the extra risk?

As far as Colgan, the two are similar in that both pilots seemed to ignore the airplanes' warnings and the most elementary aviation knowledge by continuing to pull back.

Not planning to fly Harriers or F35B then? Or helicopters or anything with a tailhook. You'll get familiar with the phrase that NATOPS is written in blood. It's no different in non-tactical aircraft. Although "they" really do have most of the stuff that will kill you nailed down, the apparently preventable tragedies WILL happen on the way forward.

And for the safety nerd herd, of the 80% of mishaps that are caused by human factors, 70% of those are caused by latent organizational weakness as opposed to the individual error we all think about when we think about human factors. This is what we're talking about here, proper training on the organizational level with proper procedures in place to make the pilot smarter than the system before he ever takes it out into the real world. [/nerdout]
 

phrogpilot73

Well-Known Member
An ignorant statement from someone who has never flown a transport category aircraft. My airline flies the A330. there is nothing inherently wrong with the aircraft. It just takes good systems knowledge and proper training so the unique characteristics of the aircraft are known.
I agree with you, although I'm curious... Are there any FBW wide bodies that the control yokes don't move independent of each other? I only ask, because it seems as though if they did move together, it would be something to add to the crew's CRM decision making process... You know, "dude, the yoke is pushing against my belly, why don't you push it forward dumb ass?"
 

Catmando

Keep your knots up.
pilot
Super Moderator
Contributor
You're right I know very little about Airbus, but it doesn't take an expert to see they've had some pretty serious design flaws. ... .

Damn! Where were you when I needed you?

I have flown a couple models of Airbus over two decades, although not the A-330. Nevertheless they all are very similar in design, operation and procedures.

Too bad you couldn't have told me about those "pretty serious design flaws" sooner!"
Wow! I never knew. Otherwise I would never have risked my millions of passengers' lives over those many years!
 

wink

War Hoover NFO.
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
You're right I know very little about Airbus, but it doesn't take an expert to see they've had some pretty serious design flaws. I agree that you have to have the proper systems knowledge and training for your aircraft, but it just seems like some unnecessary variables are added with Airbus. You can obviously train to fly them safely, but why would companies want to spend the extra money teaching pilots to transition to something unconventional, not mention incurring the extra risk?
Add to the very little you know, how many mishaps may have been avoided because you what you call "design flaws." Some of the systems that can confound in rare and stressful circumstances, prevent far more incidents and mishaps in routine operations where distraction, neglect and poor monkey skills are present. You don't read about the third world airline flight NOT flying into the ground or NOT stalling at cruise altitude because of the Airbus design philosophy. The sad truth is that many Airbus aircraft are flown by third world flight crews that are far less well trained and have a fraction of a US or EU crew's experience or training support.

As far as Colgan, the two are similar in that both pilots seemed to ignore the airplanes' warnings and the most elementary aviation knowledge by continuing to pull back.
As I pointed out, not a design philosophy thing, Airbus or otherwise. But even to your point, they are not that similar in that the cues the Colgan crew were getting were pretty straight forward and unambiguous to a well trained crew. The Air France incident was far different in that there were conflicting cues and alerts, let alone other factors such as the high altitude, Capt on crew break, etc.
 

Sapper!

Excuse the BS...
The article says the word stall was blared by the computer 76 times. From the audio transcripts it was said that the cricket/clicker (whatchamacallit, I dunno) turned off during the conflict (alternate law). Does that mean the verbal stall warning was off as well? I'd guess it would because of the way it was programmed to discount the attitude and airspeed as a factor in the stall, but I was just curious. Thinking that because the decent took somewhere around 3 minutes that "stall" would be repeated probably once a second or so. That means the verbal alarm was off as well (sorry dunno what the voice alarm is called)? Trying to convey some humility cause lord knows that poor SOB just got flamed....
 

HAL Pilot

Well-Known Member
None
Contributor
I agree with you, although I'm curious... Are there any FBW wide bodies that the control yokes don't move independent of each other? I only ask, because it seems as though if they did move together, it would be something to add to the crew's CRM decision making process... You know, "dude, the yoke is pushing against my belly, why don't you push it forward dumb ass?"
From what I've seen, everything with a yoke/control column has both sides moving together. The A330 is the only Airbus cockpit I've been in with a side controller/joystick. No cross movement in it. There are other Airbuses with joysticks but I don't know how they interact. I think they are the same as the A330 but that is just a WAG.

Any Air Force guys on here know how it is in the C-17 or dual cockpit F-16s?

And like Wink said - as much as I personally don't like some of the design philosophies of Airbus, they have probably prevented a bunch of accidents at 3rd world airlines that have pilots with training that is no where near the standards of the U.S. or ither major industrial countries.
 
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