On Fri, 8 Feb 2002 20:13:31 -0600, "Jon S. Berndt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> > Wrong. It was an A320 where the display pilot (some time after >> > 'first flight') switched off major protective modes of the FCS. >> > He did this to show that he could fly the A320 'party trick' of >> > a low, slow, high alpha pass with safety (due to FCS protection) >> > manually. He couldn't > >Here is a report on the crash, though I have no idea about its accuracy: > >http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af296.shtml > >and the alleged transcript: > >http://www.aviationcrashes.com/cvr/af296tr.html > Interesting case. My info on the pilot seems to be wrong: the 'Alpha Floor' protection had to be cut due the altitude at which the pass was made. I retract the bit about wanting to 'hand fly' it unreservedly. What puzzles me about the coverage above is; a) That the pilot affirmed that the altimeter told him he was at 100ft (he was actually at 30ft) when the CVR transcript (not in dispute) shows the altimeter 'reading back' heights below 100ft, bottoming out at... 30ft! b) The statements that the FDR was changed when there seems to be no dispute over the _tape_ being original. In fact when I look at the two photos supposedly showing different stripes I see the same thing (although one photo is particularly fuzzy). c) The statement that the tape should have been read back 'just like a cassette' when it was broken in two places. d) The concentration on the breaks in the tape being sinister when the issue of whether the engines spooled up as commanded can be decided from: FDR data either side of the break, audio from the CVR and audio from at least one witnesses video camera. e) Why it is a _defence_ to say that you got worried about the functioning of the FCS so you _closed_the_throttles_ at what you believed to be 100ft (and was actually 30ft) and close to the stall. The fact that you hit the ground even though you opened them again is supposed to surprise us! f) Why it is material _to_this_acident_ that there was a known problem with the A320 pressure altimeter when the radio altimeter can be heard operating correctly on the CVR tape. g) Why it is material _to_this_acident_ that a problem with occasional slow spool up at low level (which the pilot allegedly didn't know about) had been identified when there is clear evidence of correct spool up on the CVR, video and (limited) FDR. BTW, whilst I could find no info online about the correct spool up I had this from several people (both aircrew and engineer) in the flight test world who ought to know about such things. I also remember references in 'Flight' and on TV. The picture I get is of; a) A Pilot Error accident b) Panic from the French authorities which led to gross irregularities in the investigation. c) Lawyers obfuscating the issues in the interests of their client. There have been subsequent A320 accidents, of which two were related to the nature of the cockpit environment. IIRC one was primarily a training issue - the crew didn't understand how the sircraft would behave as FCS modes changed, and the other an ergonomics issue (which IIRC was not unique to Airbus). The problem is that there is now a tendency from the press to scream 'ANOTHER A320 ACCIDENT!!!' (or AIRBUS ACCIDENT) in the same way as they do with the 737 (which has had a fair number, because a lot of them were built). Rick -- David Farrent and Dougie O'Hara on the Cold War role of the ROC: 'What a world of sorrow is hidden in those few words - "[Post attack] crew changes would have been based on crew availability."' _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
