Would be curious to know what the status of the standby pitots and statics were in the Air France flight (if such information is possible to ascertain from the data recorders).
Assuming there was enough electricity to the standby unit, I guess the only useful standby instrument would've been the Artificial Horizon if the standby statics and pitots were malfunctioning (hence the backup altimeter and ASI would have also been in error). An alternate static source is not useful in a pressurised cockpit! Hopefully all will be revealed after the investigation. As an aside, interesting human factors exercise: I did my AFR recently in a Partenavia (P68C) with a SAGEM glass cockpit. First time I have flown with a glass cockpit, quite a culture shock. The standby instruments (Steam gauge ASI and Altimeter, electrically powered AH) were discretely at the top middle of the instrument panel. I had familiarised myself with the set-up on the ground in the week before and felt reasonably confident about dealing with it. The instructor told me that it was common for people to focus on the displays and not lookout, so I was prepared for that too. Nevertheless, early on in the flight, I found myself with head down in cockpit staring at the speed tapes and engine instruments with lookout suffering, much to my embarrassment. Certainly the novelty factor was very strong and should not be under estimated. >From then on, I really had to focus the work cycle on keeping head out of cockpit with occasional glances at the pretty displays. The difficulty was that familiar information was presented in unfamiliar ways (for example in the steam gauge version the engine manifold pressure gauge is above the tachometer, whereas on the electronic PFD, the tachometer was the top gauge and the manifold pressure the bottom gauge. So I had to read "in" to tell me it was a manifold pressure gauge, and read "RPM" for the tacho). I also seemed to look at the standby instruments more often, because I was familiar with them and I could the required information at a glance. It made me think of the increasing instrumentation used in gliders and how that might distract pilots from looking out. I note that some pilots have a big sticker on the instrument panel that says "LOOKOUT" Certainly food for thought. _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
