Air France 447 - On topic only!

[elaw]

Just so we're complete here- lets recall that big, swept wing airliners stall much more gently than light planes- and we have been told by numerous professionals that the stall itsef can be hard to detect.

This is the part I find most confusing about this.

Having spent a little time flying light planes (very little!), I can completely understand that in an airliner, it may be difficult to perceive a stall by "feel" or "seat of the pants" the way one might in a smaller plane.

However, airline pilots are trained to fly on instruments, so one would assume they are paying attention to said instruments. So consider that and the following scenario:
Altitude: 30,000+ feet
Pitch attitude: a bit above the horizon (normal cruise attitude)
Airspeed: very low
Vertical speed: a large and probably increasing negative number
Engine instruments and everything else normal or close to it

...what else could be inferred from the above except a stall?

The closest thing I can think of would be airspeed-indicator failure combined with a strong downdraft. But I would think typically that would be combined with considerable turbulence, and probably would not go on for several minutes?

[3WE]

Having spent a little time flying light planes...

Pitch attitude: a bit above the horizon
Airspeed: very low
Vertical speed: a large and probably increasing negative number
Engine instruments and everything else normal or close to it

...what else could be inferred from the above except a stall?

Asshat:

You have light plane experince.

That means you don't know anything.

Do not go around saying BS like if the nose is up and the speed is low and there's a stall warning that maybe....just maybe...the pilots should maybe breifly think about lowering the nose....just a little......just think about it....briefly.

Quit suggesting that pilots shove the yoke full forward to enter a steep dive!

(Gabriel, would you mind cleaning up the mess from this )

[Gabriel]

(Gabriel, would you mind cleaning up the mess from this )

I'll try.

Elaw, before you get mad with 3WE, you sholud know that he fully agrees with you.

Ok, now go get mad with him.

[KurtMc]

Regards

[Spectator]

perhaps at 13 degrees up nose to compensate in part for the aft CG in thin air.

I would expect you'd need 13 degrees nose down to compensate for an aft CoG?

[Evan]

A locked THS, when all three PRIMS said "adios" and the aircraft suddenly demanded more of these pilots -- more perhaps than every other crew who'd faced UAS previously. When HAL bailed, perhaps the plane wasn't yet stalled. It likely was was way out of trim, perhaps at 13 degrees up nose to compensate in part for the aft CG in thin air. A Swiss cheese factor, undoubtedly, was the pilot's reactions/last resort ditch efforts/late stall realization/efforts to postpone having to dive the plane out of hope that HAL would recover in time to allow them to go back on auto... and the drinks wouldn't be spilled?

But there was no HAL. Only a linear-control on a sidestick on a $30M aircraft with hundreds of lives dependent upon the pilot's ability to perceive, react, and control. With perhaps wild-sized control inputs due to lack of damping or envelope protections/adrenalin kicking in. Yet, there was vital information missing (no AoA readout? Are you kidding me???), in the dead of night, with no moon, over water, in huge storms. But, when they needed to know what was going on, HAL closed the airlock -- putting the pilots 'on stage' in the heat of crisis facing battles perhaps no previous crews of an A330 had encountered. Turbulence, downdraft, updrafts, rolling motions, in a shattered glass cockpit scenario... No airspeed data / no AoA / no PRIMS, no auto nothing.

Thanks for the Scarebus bedtime story. But now I'm lying here thinking... but there was no HAL, because there is no HAL and without autoflight or normal law, the pilots have complete control of the plane. And the THS never locked up, because the Abnormal Attitude Law never kicked in. And the THS range is 14° UP and 2° down, and it would have been UP to trim the nose UP pilot command even with an aft center of gravity. And vital information about attitude was available. And where do we see that all three PRIM's said 'adios'? I only see a PRIM 1 failure. And what modern airliner has an AoA indicator?

I don't know, but I think you're telling us a fairy tale.

[elaw]

Quit suggesting that pilots shove the yoke full forward to enter a steep dive!

Actually I was suggesting that instead of focusing on the intertial dampers going offline, they should have switched to impulse drive to arrest their decaying orbit.

Hey, that always works on TV...

[Jpmkam]

Recovery effort ends with 74 bodies missing.

The last group of bodies was brought to the surface on Friday, Philippe Vinogradoff said Wednesday.

A total of 104 bodies were recovered from the remains of the mystery crash during this year's operation, in addition to the 50 that were found in the days after the loss of the plane.

Human remains and aircraft parts are headed by ship to the Canary Islands, where they are expected to arrive Thursday, French air accident investigators said.

From there, they will be transferred to Bayonne in southwest France, investigators said.

All 228 people onboard were killed when the plane crashed in stormy weather en route to Paris from Brazil on June 1, 2009.

It took four searches over the course of nearly two years to locate the bulk of the wreckage, still containing many bodies, in a mountain range deep under the ocean.

Seventy-five bodies were recovered late last month, more than doubling the number of remains that have been found, the vice president of the French victims' association told CNN.

The remains have not yet been identified, Robert Soulas said. Soulas got the news from a French government liaison appointed to deal with victims' families, he said.

"Personally, I would have preferred to leave the bodies of our loved ones on the seafloor," he added, repeating his long-held view.

Other victims' relatives disagree.

[Deadstick]

Asshat:

You have light plane experince.

That means you don't know anything.

Do not go around saying BS like if the nose is up and the speed is low and there's a stall warning that maybe....just maybe...the pilots should maybe breifly think about lowering the nose....just a little......just think about it....briefly.

Quit suggesting that pilots shove the yoke full forward to enter a steep dive!

(Gabriel, would you mind cleaning up the mess from this )

Never mind.

[Harding]

7 June 2011 briefing

The operations on board the Ile de Sein came to an end on the afternoon of Friday 3 June. The vessel is on its way to Las Palmas (Canary Islands) for demobilisation on 9 June.
In the course of next week, it will arrive in the port of Bayonne (south-west France), from where the airplane parts will be transferred to a hangar belonging to the DGA Techniques aéronautiques in Toulouse and the human remains taken to a forensic mortuary.

http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight.af.447/info07june2011.en.php

edit:
Oh. I just noticed Jpmkam posted more or less the same thing in extended version above.

[3WE]

Never mind.

You have some thoughts on the subject?

No big deal- it's just every time us PPLs and usta-be PPLs rent a plane or do a BFR, we demonstrate this procedure where we keep pulling up but after a while this warning buzzer goes off and then the plane drops a bit, and then we go forward on the yoke a little bit...

For some reason, they feel we need to know this.

[KurtMc]

peace

[Evan]

The PF slight but consistent nose up command is a +G request to the PRIMs, the A/C feedback by means of accelerometers however results in a -G.

He lost me here. Results in a -G what? How?

[Gabriel]

He lost me here. Results in a -G what? How?

Try to command a +G command at below stall speed and then tell me what Gs you get.

[Evan]

Try to command a +G command at below stall speed and then tell me what Gs you get.

You mean he is referring to pitch commands once the plane is falling out, below stall speed, where they are no longer effective? Is he saying the -G feedback in the loop will continue increasing elevator and THS deflection to try to achieve a 1G result, up to max elevator deflection? Did that happen? We only know that the THS was at 13° UP and that is not full deflection. But what about when the order was reversed to a nose down command? Why would the THS remain in the nose-up position? Because the THS was trying for 1G in the dive and the accelerometers had -3G? Is the A330 just not designed to fall?