On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, Andy Ross wrote:
> And you're exactly right that this can be dangerous. There was a
> Airbus that crashed in (I think) Taiwan a few years ago for exactly
> this reason. The pilot had accidentally put the autopilot into
> "go-around" mode, so it was trying to climb. He had to hold it on the
> glide path with more and more forward force. At some point he let go
> and the aircraft pitched up into a catastrophic stall. Hopefully
> someone more familiar with the accident can provide more details.
The Airbus is rather different compared to "classic" autopilots. This
accident (off the top of my head, it was a Chinese registered plane that
crashed in Japan) highlights two important lessons:
- The man-machine interface needs work (and, reality being what it is,
pilot training probably needs work in this area in the mean time).
- Don't try to outsmart the flight management system.
In this case, the pilots _knew_ what the autopilot was doing and were
trying to coerce it into doing what they wanted whilst at 500 feet. I'm
not a pilot, let alone an airliner pilot, but when I read the CVR
transcripts I was stunned that neither pilot called for a go-around.
That's a common patterns in crashes with high tech planes. If it's
broken and you need to debug it, do so at a safe altitude :-)
I've learned more about flying from the excellent "Air Disaster" series
by McArthur Job than the stack of other books I've collected over the
years. Especially for non-pilots, concepts like "pilot workload" become
clear; and studying failure modes of equipment gives a better insight
into how things work than the rather dry explanations of how things are
supposed to work.
I really came away with the idea that of all the cases where pilot error
made the difference between landing safely in the face of adversity and
loss of life, there were just two where I thought, "this could never
happen to me" (one because I don't have kids, the other was of the "what
does this button do" variety).
Is anyone working on modelling the A320 man-machine interface? I'll be
happy to summarize what I've learned about it from Air Disaster vol 3.
Cheers,
-- Bert
--
Bert Driehuis -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- +31-20-3116119
If the only tool you've got is an axe, every problem looks like fun!
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