> Can you send me that report? I have only heard sketchy details.
I've also read it. Alfred Hitchcock never produced anything this scary.
> The situation they were in would dictate slowing to
> maneuvering/penetration speed and holding a level attitude with the
> artificial horizon. From what I heard at the time they had insufficient
> experience to recognise that and the primary pilot was absent from the
> flight deck.
There are several factors in play. One is the unfortunate design
choice by Airbus to not incorporate force-feedback and control-linking
in the side-stick controllers. The number of incidents that are
related to this are mind-boggling. I had one pilot tell me that pretty
much every pilot has run afoul with the side-stick controllers and
dual-input or jammed control from a misplaced clipboard, book or other
device at least once. It's not a matter of if, but when.
Secondly, the Airbus flight control system is designed to iron out the
wrinkles in your flying. As it is constantly correcting your commands
to stay within limits, and provide a better flying experience, you can
be hamfisted and still not jiggle the ice-cubes. This is all fine and
dandy until the sensors block up or have other issues. Again, this is
NOT a new or isolated incident. For example, there was that XL Airways
A320 acceptance flight crash caused by the iced up AOA sensor because
it was pressure-washed. (A quick bit of research revealed no less than
six similar incidents that resulted in major alitude losses, passenger
injury and temporary loss of control). It won't be until August till
we get any report on the AirAsia QZ8501 flight, but it wouldn't
surprise me to see something related.
As we're talking about a bee getting stuck in a pitot tube, this is a
concern with the Airbus and multiple redundant systems are used to
make sure the airplane's computer doesn't go bonkers. Yet, they still
do because there is always some scenario that has never been conceived
of yet and in the right conditions, combined with another seemingly
minor problem will cause a catestrophic failure or breakdown of
operation.
I have been watching the trends in flight instruction and I'm NOT
pleased with what I'm seeing. What works in the military does not
always translate well to civilian training. The accelerated training
programs are designed to get people to pass the classes and tests, but
don't teach flying. They teach driving. They teach checklist
management and computer systems interaction. Anybody can fly a
checklist. Not everybody can get their head inside the physics of what
is going on. This is how we end up with shutting down the wrong engine
even though your foot is pushing one of the peddles through the floor.
So, to the Air France crash, ANY flight crew member should have been
able to identify that something wasn't right and should have been
using secondary guages and clues to identify and address it. But when
the FO had the stick all the way back, the captain wasn't able to see
what he was doing because of the the control stick design.
Yet, they overlooked other clues: Sound, deck motion, slow, mushy
control response, deck angle, and of course, the altimeter spinning
backwards. By the time they realized what was going on, they still had
time for recovery, but then failed to really lean on basic flight
operation instincts that should have been hammered into them from
their first 8 hours of flight instruction. It's sad when a first-time
solo student pilot is better equipped to recover from this type of
attitude upset than this flight crew. The cascade of errors never
stopped.
I was really intruiged to read and learn about the Qantas Flight 32
A-380 incident where they had an uncontained engine failure that took
out most of the systems on one entire wing and caused a near
catastrophic failure of the hydros. While they were able to
successfully land the airplane without passenger injury, their
survival was always in doubt right to the point where the airplane
came to a complete stop. Getting on the ground was one thing, but
getting stopped was another!
But I mention the 380 incident because of the checklists. They had
hundreds upon hundreds of failures pop up on the EICAS. While trying
to go through one checklist, they had to jump to another, and then
another, and then another. It took quite a long time to really do a
root-cause-analysis, and the FO dedicated himself to only running the
checklists, while the captain hand flew the airplane and the other
crew members assisting in everything those two couldn't handle. It
took almost an HOUR for them to work through most of the checklists.
Even after landing and getting stopped, the emergency continued until
the fire crew was able to flood one of the engines enough to get it to
shut down. While the airline and government downplayed the severity of
the incident, it was almost on par with United Flight 232 that lost
all hydros and crash landed in Sioux City, Iowa.
What you have, here, is two distinctly different incidents and how
they played out, but an example of perfectly executed CRM with a
complete systems failure vs. an example of a total CRM failure with
minimal systems degration.
Finally, as we're talking bees, my dad and I had a bee incident one
time. It was a learning experience that I know others have also
experienced. We took off in our Cessna 172 to do some laps around the
patch. After we landed the first time and were taxiing back to do
another take off (no touch-and-goes on this specific runway because of
the trees). It was warm, so we openned up the cabin vents. In flew a
dozen wasps that had made their next inside the vent. We immediately
rolled off the runway into the grass, openned the doors, shut down and
got them out of there. Dad was stung a couple of times, and me once.
Had we openned the vent in flight, it would have been a bad situation.
Fortunately, we didn't have to roll very far--that runway is only 15
feet wide.
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
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