Air France Flt 447 Crash

[Brett327]

Woah, woah, woah....the P-3 community has standards to maintain and they have nothing to do with flying. This was one of my crusades as an IP...you can judge my success by my current duty assignment.

Then I'd say you did pretty well. Paradise awaits you.

 

[scoolbubba]

If the AOA isn't pegged at 19 units while on deck, at rotate, at max range a/s, and at max endurance, maybe it'd get a little more love. Some birds have an accurate gauge, and some are retardedly wrong.

I reference it regularly, and constantly piss off maintenance writing up AOA gripes.

 

[BusyBee604]

Then I'd say you did pretty well. Paradise awaits you.

How many VIRGINS? No Virgins.....hiss, boo
BzB

 

[Brett327]

How many VIRGINS? No Virgins.....hiss, boo
BzB

Where he's going, there aren't any virgins.

 

[Treetop Flyer]

Where we're going, we don't need roads

 

[Swanee]

What cool-aid man is alluding to is that in the Hornet the AOA is measured in actual degrees using the aircraft waterline, rather than some artificially-derived "units" like in most other aircraft. I think on-speed in the T-45 was something like 19 or 20 "units," correct? I also remember hearing rumors that the onspeed for the goshawk was intentionally made a little faster to add in a safety margin to prevent stalls.

17 on speed. It's been explained to us studs that it was 19, but there wasn't enough visibility over the nose for shorter people...

 

[Catmando]

Yes, and those rough A/S - gr. wt. calcs had to be pretty much committed to memory. The kneeboard calc. chart card is unusable on a single seat night approach. A good LSO was also invaluable. ALL of my "Paddles" were the best!
BzB

Hey BzB... OT, but is the below video how you learned to CQ back in the day? Hehehe

 

[BusyBee604]

Hey BzB... OT, but is the below video how you learned to CQ back in the day? Hehehe

Hey, funny...but true! All my initial FCLP @ Barin & day CarQuals on ANTIETAM were conducted w/ paddles only, as they had no mirror system yet. My TraRon LSO, LT Lloyd Burris was a fine Instructor, very patient & fun to work with.

Your video is great, the cartoons of crunched S-2 Trackers reminded me of the accident above, a Preflight buddy of mine had in an S-2, on the USS WASP (CV-18), back in '62. Night approach, landed on a foul deck, smashed into tractors & parked A/C. My friend was critically injured & lost a leg, but survived. Crash resulted from miscommunication between AirOps, PriFly & LSO. "Green Deck, Helo" was given, and was mistaken for just "Green Deck"! An error in just one little word, made things pretty ugly.
BzB

 

[Pugs]

Since this is punlic record I thought OK to publish content vice just a link from the French report at http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601.en/pdf/f-cp090601.en.pdf .


The French Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses just published its final report on AF 447. There are no big surprises from earlier reports, it focuses on crew training and responses. While the news media is putting its own spin on it, here are some excerpts from the actual report.

The report found the accident resulted from the following events:

• Temporary inconsistency between the airspeed measurements, likely following the obstruction of the Pitot probes by ice crystals that, in particular, caused the autopilot disconnection and the reconfiguration to alternate law;
• Inappropriate control inputs that destabilized the flight path;
• The lack of any link by the crew between the loss of indicated speeds called out and the appropriate procedure;
• The late identification by the PNF of the deviation from the flight path and the insufficient correction applied by the PF;
• The crew not identifying the approach to stall, their lack of immediate response and the exit from the flight envelope;
• The crew’s failure to diagnose the stall situation and consequently a lack of inputs that would have made it possible to recover from it.

These events can be explained by a combination of the following factors:

• ˆˆ The feedback mechanisms on the part of all those involved that made it impossible:
  • To identify the repeated non-application of the loss of airspeed information procedure and to remedy this,
  • To ensure that the risk model for crews in cruise included icing of the Pitot probes and its consequences;
• ˆˆThe absence of any training, at high altitude, in manual aeroplane handling and in the procedure for “Vol avec IAS douteuse (unreliable)”ˆˆ
• Task-sharing that was weakened by:
  • Incomprehension of the situation when the autopilot disconnection occurred,
  • Poor management of the startle effect that generated a highly charged emotional factor for the two copilots
• The lack of a clear display in the cockpit of the airspeed inconsistencies identified by the computers;
• The crew not taking into account the stall warning, which could have been due to:
  • A failure to identify the aural warning, due to low exposure time in training to stall phenomena, stall warnings and buffet,
  • The appearance at the beginning of the event of transient warnings that could be considered as spurious,
  • The absence of any visual information to confirm the approach-to-stall after the loss of the limit speeds,
  • The possible confusion with an overspeed situation in which buffet is also considered as a symptom,
  • Flight Director indications that may led the crew to believe that their actions were appropriate, even though they were not,
  • The difficulty in recognizing and understanding the implications of a reconfiguration in alternate law with no angle of attack protection.

"The aeroplane went into a sustained stall, signaled by the stall warning and strong buffet. Despite these persistent symptoms, the crew never understood that they were stalling and consequently never applied a recovery manoeuvre. The combination of the ergonomics of the warning design, the conditions in which airline pilots are trained and exposed to stalls during their professional training and the process of recurrent training does not generate the expected behaviour in any acceptable reliable way."

The report has lots of other interesting information too, such as: "A failure to detect an error in the formatting of a flight plan in the Eurocat system made it impossible for the crew to establish a satellite connection with a view to a position report by ADS-C, or exchanges by CPDLC. This ambiguous use of a non-operational system in a control room encouraged the creation of a representation of flight AF 447 in the Dakar centre with no connection with its real position. This situation distanced the controller from monitoring his traffic. However, a simulation of the flight that was undertaken in the context of the investigation showed that ADS-C connection would likely have alerted the controller as soon as there was a loss of altitude generated by the loss of Mach (330 feet). "

The BEA also recommended improving underwater locator beacon (ULB) transmission time to 90 days, having ULBs transmit on VHF and HF frequencies, and study the real-time inflight reporting of basic flight parameters.

BEA AF447 Final Report (English): http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601.en/pdf/f-cp090601.en.pdf

 

[pourts]

Has there been any evidence to change the previous conclusion that one of the pilots held full back stick for (excuse me, I dont remember exactly) for something like 2 minutes while the other pilots had no idea of his inputs? In my un-educated with aerobus jets opinion, that behavior is absolutely indefensible for anyone who hopes to call themself a pilot. I dont care what the auto-pilot/ alternate law/ whatever is supposed to do, thats just ridiculous.

I havent flown that many planes, but i cant think of any situation when i would hear a stall warning, see loss of altitude, and still hold full backstick. Unless you are in the SR-71, you cant hold full back stick for 2 minutes at 30K and not expect to crash.

 

[Pugs]

Has there been any evidence to change the previous conclusion that one of the pilots held full back stick for (excuse me, I dont remember exactly) for something like 2 minutes while the other pilots had no idea of his inputs? .

Nope - pretty much agreed through analysis that one of the pilots held the stick back for a 38,000 foot fall and the other pilot was not aware of the stick position.