Thanks Mike Both really good articles on the crash and reasoning behind it. Though they do reinforce my view that if the pilots were trained to recognise and correct a stall situation the accident would not have occurred.
Clearly " Full power stick forward isn't what was being taught in airline stall recovery training."!! That's why they crashed. I am reminded of the old Boeing joke about future Airbus crews being a dog and a pilot. The pilot's job is to feed the dog and the dog is there to bite the pilot if he touches anything in the cockpit. AF447 certainly needed that dog. ROSS From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Borgelt Sent: Monday, 13 May 2013 9:49 AM To: Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia. Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] Air France A330 Flight 447 Here's a professional take and more detail on what happened: http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/in-focus-after-af447-what-now-3774 33/ and another view: http://www.flyingmag.com/technique/accidents/predicament-air-france-447 Full power stick forward isn't what was being taught in airline stall recovery training. Add power and fly out was the method. If you assume that the stall is going to happen at low altitude where it is vital to minimise altitude loss during recovery, perhaps not so bad. However it turned out that nobody knew where this came from. Nobody could remember. Seems it was likely from back in the 50s with piston airliners where adding power will immediately increase lift on the wing and it won't cause much pitch up unlike the case with underslung jet engines. Both Boeing and Airbus test pilots said that wasn't what they did. It is a good idea to examine assumptions and doctrine (aka "standard procedures") occasionally. Now AF447 wasn't good but it was at night with a heavy aircraft close to the corner where the speed range between Mach buffet and stall wasn't high and they were encountering tops of thunderstorms. There are questions about cockpit displays and Airbus ergonomic design as well as crew training and actions. Just displaying AoA should have helped. There's really no post stall airline training and simulators don't do it well. These things are being addressed but don't bet that Airbus will be forced to redesign their cockpits. Too much money and politics involved. As for your examples of people who can fly who pulled off dire emergencies, the first thing is that they were all very lucky. Sullenberger had a large enough, calm, stretch of river to land in. There was nowhere else to go. I doubt his glider training had anything to do with it. In fact he hit the water at twice the recommended maximum sink rate for a ditching due to having flared too early and lost energy. DeCrespigny had a severe systems management problem which fortunately was recoverable, just, with what he had to work with. The guy in the Gimli glider had a different systems management problem. All did more than adequate jobs. With the carnage rate in gliding, I doubt gliding has much to offer. Some basic stick and rudder skills while day VFR. Judgement, not so much. Even the basic stick and rudder skills, stall and spin training don't seem to prevent stall spin accidents. In the Tocumwal accident on Dec 23rd 2012 I wonder if the tre got in the way vertically between the glider and the ground. Unfortunately we'll never know. Mike At 10:53 PM 12/05/2013, you wrote: Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_006C_01CE4F63.8D2D35B0" Content-Language: en-au Just saw the 60 Minutes program on the Air France A330 crash in the Atlantic a few years ago. Unbelievable. The aircraft is in cruise on Auto pilot, flying through storms over the Equator at around 35,00ft. Three of the Pitot's ice up momentarily and the Auto pilot shuts off. PIC takes manual control and pulls the stick fully aft..... we don't know why. Obvious result, the aircraft climbs and at 40,000ft with full PAX and heavy fuel load the Airbus stalls. Aural warning "Stall Stall Stall" So what do you think the pilot did? Obviously full power, stick forward, recover to level flight, reduce power right? Uh Uh. He maintains full aft stick and current power setting. Try's to figure out why the computer has got it all so wrong. While the PIC maintains full aft stick, the aircraft is fully stalled and dropping like a stone until at 4,000ft P2 takes over, at which point the Ground Proximity Warning sounds, "Pull Up, Pull Up", so he , yes you guessed it, pulled back on the stick. End of the flight. As glider pilots we are trained to recognise and correct an aerodynamic stall, if you are pushing things in a tight and gnarly thermal stalling is a constant issue and we deal with it automatically. Stall and spin recovery training is a fundamental of our flight training. It is therefore staggering to me that the people who are trained to fly these incredibly complex aircraft such as the A330 do not actually know how to fly..... Well, not universally true, Tom knows how to fly, WPP knows how to fly, Capt Sullenberg, Peter De Crespigny and the guy who landed the "Gimli Glider" know how to fly, but guess what they were/are all glider pilots. So next time you get into an airliner cross your fingers the guy up front learnt to fly gliders first!! ROSS _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring Borgelt Instruments - design & manufacture of quality soaring instrumentation since 1978 www.borgeltinstruments.com <http://www.borgeltinstruments.com/> tel: 07 4635 5784 overseas: int+61-7-4635 5784 mob: 042835 5784 : int+61-42835 5784 P O Box 4607, Toowoomba East, QLD 4350, Australia
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