Globe Cargo

Thanks! very interesting! It is hard to believe they did not realize that they were in a steep stall... Did other instruments fail or give wrong info? I hope that we'll eventually get the full and true picture... I hope...

Luc

chevol wrote:Thanks! very interesting! It is hard to believe they did not realize that they were in a steep stall... Did other instruments fail or give wrong info? I hope that we'll eventually get the full and true picture... I hope...

Luc

My own thoughts exactly Luc, the Pitch of the Plane should have given them a clue,considering their experience, but as someone said "they got too involved in System Management and forgot to fly the Plane" poor buggers

Absolutely shocking,
Think i also read somewhere that as airbus claim there new aircraft are unstallable,AirFrance dont teach there pilots stall recovery techniques in the simulator.Bet that changes .

still you would think one of them would have pushed the stick forward at some point,maybe they thought they were already nose down,
To many computer messages to deal with i suppose and like john points out they forgot the basics,

RIP GUYS
Lesson here dont fly AIRBUS or AIRFRANCE ever again,both companies should be disbanded as off today IHMO

Terry

raa57 wrote:Absolutely shocking,
Think i also read somewhere that as airbus claim there new aircraft are unstallable,AirFrance dont teach there pilots stall recovery techniques in the simulator.Bet that changes .
Terry

No OEM or company teaches their pilots proper stall recovery techniques (i.e. manage angle of attack and push the nose forward). This is nothing specific to Air France or Airbus. The stall recovery training Air France does is the exact same type of training every other worldwide airline and business aviation pilot goes through. Yes, we are trying to change that, but there is of course a lot more involved than people realize.

To someones other point, if all systems are working properly than you cannot stall the Airbus; as the auto-throttles and autopilot automatically kick on and fly the airplane out of the edge of the envelope. That was obviously not the case with AF447, as the numerous instrument errors forced the aircraft into Alternate Law.

OK Greg,i didnt realise that was the case,
thanks for heads up ,still shocking though

regards terry

Well said Greg

I think, right from the beginning, those in the know were saying there was too much automation going into aircraft, especially on the Airbus series with their "fly-by-wire" system. This all relies on computers running the show and we all know what they can be like.

The computers are also dependant on the input from the various sensors on the aircraft to tell them what it is doing. and they decide what it should be doing, - like the mentioned stall avoidance systems. If, however, the sensors or even some of them, are iced up or full of water or something, they are sending wrong or no messages and the computers tend to throw their hands up in the air and say, - "we give up," - and put up a whole lot of error messages on the EICAS. The pilots then tend to try to decipher and correct these supposed faults, instead of flying the aircraft.

They learnt a lot about erroneous error messages from that Qantas A380 engine problem out of Singapore .

Remember....... Aviate...... Navigate...... Communicate...... - in that order, when something goes wrong.

In the late 80s, I had a few goes on the 737, 767 and A320 simulator at Ansett Airlines in Melbourne, these were the real airline full motion ones, and were supposed to feel like the real thing, I loved the Boeings, but the Airbus controls felt very "detached" from the aircraft. The real pilots said the same thing.

These poor AF pilots sitting in their seats 30 odd thousand feet in the air with no outside visibility, did not have a clue what was going on, and don't forget, the computers also decide what the controls are going to do when you move the stick.

John

John Khan wrote:Well said Greg

Whats that meant to mean??

chevol wrote:Thanks! very interesting! It is hard to believe they did not realize that they were in a steep stall... Did other instruments fail or give wrong info? I hope that we'll eventually get the full and true picture... I hope...

Luc

If you're 30,000' in the air; in the middle of the ocean; flying at night and in the middle of a t-storm; and you're instruments give way, you're not going to know which way is up, and which way is down.

Indeed! but based on the first report, they had, at least, the altimeter since one of the pilots called FL100, 1 mn before the crash. It must have been spinning like a windmill with a vertical speed of -11,000 ft/mn... I discussed this with an Air France pilot friend who claims that the trim was blocked in a full nose up position and therefore they could not recover. You must understand that it is now full war between Air France and Airbus in view of the millions or rather billions at stake ! Airbus is, say, legally very well advised! On previous occasions (A320 crashes of Habsheim and Mt Ste Odile) the blame was put on pilots despite some very strange findings to say the least! I am anxious to learn more from the french BEA, full report to come in Summer.

They have to blame the Pilots, imagine the cost to the Airbus Programme if the fault was a Generic one

As Kevin said, in those circumstances it would be virtually impossible to determine which way was up. The best they could have done was to touch nothing, leave controls and thrust where they were and ride it out. If the crew or the computers changed anything then that trick wouldn't work either. I don't know anything about airbus systems and my wonderment is what happened to the standby instruments? Are they displaying too much computer augmented data to the point that they also failed? Does the airbus even have standby instruments? (proves my lack of airbus systems knowledge )

Regarding stall training, it's impractical. The problem is that even the best simulators are still programmed by humans and based on observed or theoretical data from or derived out of the real airplane. At some point, at or near the full stall stage all of the data programmed into the simulator is theoretical. An engineers educated guess on how the planes handling characteristics will be. The pilots could receive negative training if this was a standard practice. Simulators aren't as magical and realistic and most perceive them to be. And, it's simply not safe to full stall a real transport category aircraft. Cessnas and Pipers, sure because they are designed to recover from such an event and that's where a pilots real stall training is to be accomplished.

nwadc10 wrote: Regarding stall training, it's impractical. The problem is that even the best simulators are still programmed by humans and based on observed or theoretical data from or derived out of the real airplane. At some point, at or near the full stall stage all of the data programmed into the simulator is theoretical. An engineers educated guess on how the planes handling characteristics will be. The pilots could receive negative training if this was a standard practice. Simulators aren't as magical and realistic and most perceive them to be. And, it's simply not safe to full stall a real transport category aircraft. Cessnas and Pipers, sure because they are designed to recover from such an event and that's where a pilots real stall training is to be accomplished.

Bingo. Essentially, and to elaborate on what Justin said, is that OEMs only provide us FSTD OEMs with flight data in the operating envelope. In other words, anything past a stick-pusher is not provided to us and is essentially computer code written by engineers, as well as input provided from flight test pilots, on the way they believe the airplane would behave in such configuration. In addition, there is no regulatory framework that requires such OEM to provide us with the flight data beyond the edge of the envelope. This is also the same reason why unusual or upset attitude recovery training cannot be done in FSTDs, as anything beyond 30 degrees of pitch or 60 degrees of bank is also not provided to us. From an OEM perspective, they don't want to touch that flight data because of the massive liability concerns that is associated along with making this data available. At the same time, at what point does/should the regulator step in and intervene? Unfortunately, like all other NAA rules and regulations, is that it will take more human lives to force these changes. To the other side, from an FSTD OEM and Pilot Training Supplier, at what point do we cry uncle and attempt to lobby NAAs all over the world that this is a massively critical pilot training issue that will save countless amounts of human lives? These are the positions we are put in at this very moment.

To give you an idea of how much these FSTD data packages can cost, the company for which I work is the entitlement pilot training & FSTD supplier for a very popular (yet to be released) Boeing airplane. We paid somewhere in the realm of $13 million for the operating envelope flight test data, and that doesn't include the operating or manufacturing cost of building the FSTD itself.

Very good discussion. I've been a private pilot for over 15 years and had no idea what difficulties exist for unusual attitude training aids for ATPs. Scary.