Air France 447 - On topic only!

[TeeVee]

No Gabriel. You're mistaken here. There was a reason. Even if they never recognized the UAS condition (they did), you are supposed to turn off the FD's when you lose the AP/AT function. That should have been one of the first actions. Of course, they probably didn't know this...



I also find the report more than a bit forgiving. While I would most definitely advocate a clear Unreliable Speeds warning on the ECAM, any pilot trained for this event would recognize the situation from the first few ECAM messages, so it isn't necessary. It also states that there is no indication of AoA. What about your pitch indication?! 12° at cruise?! The report even goes as far as stating that the lack of A330 documentation on stall buffet could be a contributing factor. AS IF! If you climb into any aircraft and you don't know what stall buffet is... man, this is getting tiring...

funny how a guy who has never flown an airplane of any type knows more about these technical details and flying than the real experts. do you really think they are being apologetic and forgiving? are they trying to save the reputations of the dead guys? they were pretty clear about having interviewed other crews who also exhibited a lack of understanding of HAL. i guess evan must be right: HAL is perfect and the humans must be done away with.

how do you know what these pilots were trained? if it should have been so frickin obvious from the first few ecam messages why did the investigators think otherwise?

again, easy for you to armchair this from the comfort of your desk, without chimes, claxons, beeps, crickets and the like going off, without the lives of 200+ people on your hands, without the benefit of being able to slowly scour through manuals and books and crap, without, wait for it...reality.

why is it that the report goes into great detail regarding startle response, fear, confusion overload--sensory and task?

[Evan]

There is NO EXCUSE for pulling up hard when the stall warning triggers, and keep pulling up hard.

The very forgiving report remarks that transient false stall warnings sometimes occur in heavy turbulence and that this might explain why they would consider the stall warnings false.

I don't buy it. They weren't in heavy turbulence and even if they were there's no excuse for pulling up into a sustained climb while the stall warning is going off continuously.

Ultimately though, after all the pussy-footing, the conclusions and findings are almost exclusively focused on training and human factors, with only a few suggestions for making the plane a bit more user-friendly (not recommended airworthiness directives).

Therefore, there should be no more speculation here as to who is at fault.

The report clearly exonerates Airbus.

[TeeVee]

This is NOT the case.
The Airbus is a plane designed to dimnish the pilot's workload in NOTMAL conditions and to prevent SOME errors WHEN the plane is working normally, AND that require PILOTS to FLY AND MONITOR IT and TO TAKE COMMAND when there is a failure.


This is at the root of the accident. As I've said, the pilots screwed it up big time. The question is why. And the above is the answer. I think that even Evan agrees here. The pilots failed at flying BECAUSE Air France falied at training them.


Only if they are proppery trained.


Again, even Evan will agree on that.


Yes, that's a very complex problem and the concern of the aviation industry worldwide nowadays.


I agree, partially.
Yes, Airbus could do more. Evidently the "computer" knew why it stopped flying the plane. A logic was met (unreliable airspeed) and I see no reason why it could have not relyed that info to the pilots.
Yes, the flight directors were a distraction. If you accept that it was expectable that the pilots wouldn't recognize the UAS event, then you accept that there was no reason for them to switch them off.
Yes, the stall warning quitting when all the speeds became too low (due to the excessive AoA making the already clean Pitots ineffective) must have added confusion, especialy to the captain that had just enetered the cockpit (the other two were already completely lost).

That said,

There is NO EXCUSE to put a plane at cruise altitude in a 12° pitch, 7000fpm climb, when they had all three attitude indicators working propperly (the absolute primmary flight instrument), all three altimeters working propperly, and all two (or three) vertical speed indicators working properly.

There is NO EXCUSE for pulling up hard when the stall warning triggers, and keep pulling up hard. The stall warning sounded uniterruptedly for 54 seconds. Several seconds BEFORE the stall warning the left airspeed become valid. 15 seconds AFTER the stall warning the standby speed became valid and agreeing with the left speed. We don't know about the right speed, so maybe they had one good reading and trwo good readings earlier than that. But in the worst case, from 15 seconds AFTER the stall warning triggered (they were still climbing by then, not falling off the sky) to 54 seconds after the stall warning triggered (when it stopped for the reason explained above), they had all the instruments (except, maybe, the right speed) and theywere NOT in an ureliable airspeed situaion anymore, YET they kept pulling up.

Please try to visualize this situation: You have a voice shouting STALL STALL STALL for 54 seconds, you have a cricket warning too (pert of teh stall warning), you see the in all the attitude indicators the nose high above the horizon, you see the climb rate first diminsh and then turn in a sink rate and then in a fall rate (with the nsoe still poining up and the stall warning still sounding), and you don't say "Hmm, maybe we are stalled and we should think of stopping this pull-up thing"??????

Sory, even lack of training in manual flight at high altitude explains that. Even any lack of training (past private pilot) explains that. It's not an airplane specific matter, or a high altitude specific matter, it is not a lack of UAS identification matter, it is not that they failed in the fine-tunning of the maneuver, it is not that they were not being able to make small corrections due to lack of practice.

THEY WERE PULLING UP WHEN THEY SHOULD MUST HAVE BEEN PUSHING DOWN.

Now how do you explain that?
I don't and I don't think that the BEA did. Unless you consider "yes, except that if it wasn't a yes, it was a no" an explanation.

Gabriel, i believe the report does discuss the possibilities of what the PF was thinking. apparently overspeed buffet is similar to approach to stall buffet and they gave this as a POSSIBLE explanation. but at the end of the day i agree that there was a total breakdown in the cockpit. frankly, i think these guys were clueless, even before the a/p disconnect. read the beginning part of the cvr transcript..they were like, "x?" "x?" "yeah, x." y? y? yeah y. er, em eh? morons...

[TeeVee]

The very forgiving report remarks that transient false stall warnings sometimes occur in heavy turbulence and that this might explain why they would consider the stall warnings false.

I don't buy it. They weren't in heavy turbulence and even if they were there's no excuse for pulling up into a sustained climb while the stall warning is going off continuously.

Ultimately though, after all the pussy-footing, the conclusions and findings are almost exclusively focused on training and human factors, with only a few suggestions for making the plane a bit more user-friendly (not recommended airworthiness directives).

Therefore, there should be no more speculation here as to who is at fault.

The report clearly exonerates Airbus.

do you REALLY believe that if HAL had said, "uh, somethings wrong. you take over. U-A-S!" that the results would have been the same? never mind about what the crew could've or should've known or deduced from flashing ecam messages. HAL knew what was wrong but wasn't programmed to tell his human pilots the very information that might have saved the day. HAL was programmed to disconnect. HAL could've and should've been programmed to disconnect and simultaneously tell us why. a single, straightforward ecam message UAS!

a few more lines of code. 10 minutes of an engineer's time...

[SYDCBRWOD]

To me the biggest indication that the crew screwed the pooch is that other Airbus A330's have had the same icing/loss of airspeed data and yet the pilots have managed to handle it. Granted these blokes were at night in a thunderstorm, but I believe other airspeed losses had occurred at night too.

To really see something scary (and at the root of the problem IMHO) is the discussion on Pprune of how most airlines PROHIBIT hand flying the aircraft unless under specific circumstances. Some of these guys have probably had decades behind a windshield without ever handflying at altitude. Flying skills are being lost to automation which would be ok if the automatic systems were redundant, however the one redundant system paid to be there (the pilot) is probably deficient in the skills required due to airline regs! Go figure.

[Evan]

Air France defended its pilots, saying they had responded to confused and conflicting information, including multiple warnings and alarms, aerodynamic noises and vibrations.

Vraiment. What more could they have done...? Er... cest la vie...

This is a travesty. The news sites are now all reporting how the aircraft was partly to blame. The NY Times reports that it was party due to a "faulty display". This is the kind of technically ignorant equivocating that Air France was counting on to deflect blame and legal consequences, and the BEA played right into it.

Those of us who understand what occurred here know that these pilots would have stalled it if it was an A330, a 777, a 767 or a DC-10.

All I see now on the online comments are the usual fear-mongering ignorance about computers and fly-by-wire...

And meanwhile Air France will wiggle out of the spotlight...

A travesty.

[mawheatley]

I still don't get it. I'm still not sure how this can be prevented from happening again.

Here's the thing: We've all followed this thread, and its predecessor, as well as numerous other sources. We all know what happened, and our assumptions have been pretty much confirmed by the report. We also all "know" that we would not have made the same mistakes. I mean, really, let's be honest, deep down in our own minds we know we'd have read the instruments correctly, performed the memory items without thinking, brought the aeroplane safely back under control and it would have been a non-event. Am I right?

Well back on May 31st, 2009, if we'd sat down with the three pilots flying that night, they too would have thought exactly the same thing. They too would have known exactly what to do. They would have laughed in the face of anyone who told them that within 24hrs they would be flying an A330 into the ocean under these circumstances. But they did.

These were not stupid people. These were men who had gone through flying school, and learned the basic fundamentals of airmanship. These were people who had practiced stalls, been checked out on numerous different aircraft types, had passed their exams, had worked their way up through the ranks and were flying for the nation's flag carrier.

Between just the two pilots on the flight deck at the time of the incident, and let's be clear about this - I use the word 'pilots' deliberately because that's what they were - both fully qualified pilots, they had thousands of hours of experience. Then the captain rejoined them while it was all going to pot and must have heard the stall warning voice, must have seen the instruments, even had the arguable advantage of coming into the situation with a fresh pair of eyes, yet he too failed to assimilate what was happening.

So getting back to my first point, why are we, the majority (I'm not going to say entirety because I can't speak for everyone) of whom are not A330 pilots, so absolutely sure that we would not make exactly the same mistakes? These three gentlemen would have been equally sure. Yet they did.

Is the only thing saving us the next time these symptoms are observed the chance that one of the people flying will suddenly think "holy crap - this is just like AF447!" and do the right thing?

[Evan]

So getting back to my first point, why are we, the majority (I'm not going to say entirety because I can't speak for everyone) of whom are not A330 pilots, so absolutely sure that we would not make exactly the same mistakes?

I can tell you with confidence that if I had been one of these pilots on that night I would very likely make the same mistakes. Why? Because of what I didn't know and what I wasn't prepared for. FIrstly, I had no training in high altitude manual flight, no training in procedure for loss of autoflight at cruise, no training for unreliable air speed, no training for stall/upset/unusual attitudes recovery and no training for CRM when flying with another F/O.

Think about that. What is so hard to understand?

[mawheatley]

I understand all of that. And I appreciate your honesty. As you said in your previous post however, AF will wiggle out of this. There is no mandate coming out of this that forces the training required. I just hope that if/when the same symptoms are experienced next time that AF447 springs into the minds of those at the helm!

[Evan]

Investigators recommended that the European Aviation Safety Agency require Airbus to review the flight director’s design and to possibly modify the software so that it either disengages permanently in the event of a stall or displays “appropriate orders” when a stall warning is set off.

Great idea. Kill the flight directors in the event of all stall? I think they meant in the event of unreliable airspeed.

Well, why just Airbus? Why not Boeing too? The procedure is the same. You MUST turn off the FD's. There's a reason for that. (I will post the QRH procedures for the 767 and 777 below)

Air France emphasized that its pilots had “acted in line with the information provided by the cockpit instruments and systems,” adding that “the reading of the various data did not enable them to apply the appropriate action.”

I will never fly with Air France again. This brutal reluctance to admit the obvious truth betrays a culture of denial and obfuscation. Not what makes a good safety culture in my opinion...

BOEING UAS PROCEDURES - FLIGHT DIRECTORS OFF:

[3WE]

Which is why the QRH procedure specifically instructs pilots to turn off the flight directors. THis is why you MUST adhere to procedure.

interesting: when the machine clearly makes a mistake, it is still the human's fault because he failed to shut the machine off. when does it ever become the machine's or its' engineers' fault?

Pointing the nose skyward and pulling up hard is a good way to stall

(wait, that's my line)

This and all the other diatribe is great. Here we are beating ourselves up, going in circles. TV blames the plane, TV blames the pilots. Evan cites the QRH and then acknowledges that it's different to be in the cockpit than
the the "reply to thread" section.

Yeah, incormpehensible that they'd pull up like they did...but then, it's such an automated plane where you might get lax in your airmanship...but how does a poor SOB react when the GD plane does something you have NEVER EVER SEEN BEFORE IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE and really, not trained for because it's not THAT common of a cause of crashes- really we need to work more on spoiler depoyment and reverse actuation since Southwest Airlines over ran midway, AA over ran Little Rock and AA over ran Jackson Hole wyoming...

Experienced pilots.

When they do fly, the flight director is followed INCREDIBLY close.

Stalls taught during the private pilot curriculum.

But the pilots work in an environment where- very correctly- YOU PROPERLY MANAGE YOUR AIRSPEED SO YOU NEVER EVER HEAR OR FEEL A STALL WARNING, AND NEVER EVER THINK IF YOU MIGHT EVER SO SLIGHTLY LOWER THE NOSE TO DEAL WITH THE FACT THAT YOUR AOA IS GETTING A LITTLE BIT CRITICAL.

Follow the flight director, be ready for an engine cut within 2 kts of V1.

Know the absolute rules about weather minumums!

That's your job!

I cannot comprehend while the guy "pulled up the whole time"....but I guess for a zillion hours- that is how you get the plane (especially the think-for-you HAL plane) to go up. The business of nose high 16 degree AOA sickly Cessna clarinet reed and shoving the nose over- just a tad has fallen from your memory banks.

And don't forget,

The manufacturer vehemently tells us DO NOT LOWER THE NOSE AS SWEPT WING AIRCRAFT CAN RAPDLY DEVELOP A HIGH SINK RATE- they designed the plane- do you think they might know a little more about it than a 100-hour private pilot?

Best wishes for us to survive all of our future airline flights (as well as the trips to and from the airports).

[Gabriel]

I mean, really, let's be honest, deep down in our own minds we know we'd have read the instruments correctly, performed the memory items without thinking, brought the aeroplane safely back under control and it would have been a non-event. Am I right?

Don't count with me for that far stretched affirmation.
Even the other crews that did survive a UAS encounter declarer being startled and overwhelmed by the situation, with some of them saying that it was extremely difficult do deal with. Of course, had they followed the UAS procedure, it would have been much more easy. But NONE of them did. Not a single one out of about a dozen registered events.

I might have not remembered the UAS procedure, or even I could have failed to identify the UAS situation to begin with, or maybe I would have lost control in spatial disorientation.

But, as you say, deep down in my mind I know two things:
I would have NOT pulled up into a 12°, 7000 fpm climb, and
I would have NOT pulled up at the onset of the stall warning.

[3WE]

But, as you say, deep down in my mind I know two things:
I would have NOT pulled up into a 12°, 7000 fpm climb, and
I would have NOT pulled up at the onset of the stall warning.

But you spend all your time posting on internet fora about stalls. [/friendly jab]

Airline pilots spend all their time- and I mean all of it- flying nowhere NEAR a stall.

It is not practiced.

It is not reveiwed.

It is not expected.

Can it be that they were truly somewhat clueless to the situation and the 3WE rule that going slow and pulling up is one of the best ways to stall...

"But I've been pulling up the whole time"

[AVION1]

I never trusted those "crystal cockpits"
I would rather fly 100% analog instruments. I would understand better an analog VSI or IVSI jumping around, or dragging than a digital screen.

[Black Ram]

This is a travesty. The news sites are now all reporting how the aircraft was partly to blame. The NY Times reports that it was party due to a "faulty display". This is the kind of technically ignorant equivocating that Air France was counting on to deflect blame and legal consequences, and the BEA played right into it

CNN seems to have gotten it right.