Not if they were trained to use it, Piers.
AoA guages are a way to set the correct speed for approach, for cruise, for
climb and for safety. In the Jaguar it was an essential part of the
manoeuvring kit, with variable levels of warning available (with different
tones and colours on the head-down display). It's a single unit to get right;
all fast jets land with an AoA as reference. In the Tornado GR1/4 pilot and
nav agreed the approach speed before turning finals, but it was only a
cross-check of the AoA, in case of a probe failure or display freeze (which
never happened to me).
I am really quite surprised that Airbus aircraft didn't have the readout
available, if that is the case. An aircraft with powered controls has little
feel, which is why you have things like stick-shakers to indicate the approach
of the stall. But a stick-shaker is a pretty drastic way to warn someone when
AoA would do it more elegantly and perhaps safely.
Chris
On 26 Aug 2011, at 11:19, Piers Hemy wrote:
>
> But, back to human factors, I wonder whether the [dis]information overload
> the crew clearly suffered would have made an AoA indication superfluous? If
> it is clear (after the event) to a layman what was going wrong, there must
> be other factors at play to have hidden the reality from experienced
> aviators (even though insufficiently experienced in the prevailing
> conditions).
--
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