News French plane lost over Atlantic

[ex-orbinaut]

The side mirror heaters of my car need 2 minutes to get from "covered in 3 mm ice caused by supercooled rain" via "dense local fog" to "clean and dry" - and these have hardly the power input of the de-icing systems of an aircraft.

:lol: You are an anomaly, Urwumpe; congruent with the implications of a reply on another recent post on the Random Comments thread regarding LEDs instead of light bulbs...

A German with a sense of humor, which is why I love you! :bighug:

 

[Urwumpe]

A German with a sense of humor, which is why I love you! :bighug:

Creepy...

I need to visit my therapist. :facepalm:

 

[C3PO]

No. I rather think that its a "simpit pilots" view that the other guy simply didn't follow the right procedures. Its easy to come to that conclusion if you are used to sit alone in your simpit, and never in a real big airliner cockpit. All of the active crew didn't follow CRM standards - that made the situation go wrong. In an absolutely non-standard situation human communication simply failed.

Making decisions without any real consequences in front of a desk is very different from what these guys faced. After the AP disconnect they flew into a thunderstorm with alarms blaring at them. When the pitots cleared and they got the IAS back they were already overwhelmed by the situation. It looks like they distrusted the IAS because they saw it fail, but when the captain entered the cockpit he figured out that they were in fact in a deep stall. Sadly it was too late.

Communication break-down in such a situation is understandable. Training does help, but there is no way to simulate threat to your life. Some people react correctly and some people don't. There is no way of telling who does what until it happens. Experience can be helpful but it's not a guarantee.

And before you start blaming the guy on the right, take a look at [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airtours_Flight_28M"]British Airtours Flight 28M[/ame]
Some of the passengers were waiting in the aisle waiting for others to gather their luggage while the cabin was engulfed in flames and toxic smoke. They did what they were used to do when leaving a plane, despite the obvious threat to their lives.

 

[kamaz]

I have decided to check what the A330 manual says.

First, yes, there is a pretty obvious indicator that the plane is in Alt law. It is displayed on the speed indicator.

Second, control in Alt-1 law is the same as in Normal law. The plane will revert to a Cessna-like mode (in pitch) only when it goes into Direct law.

Third, stall recovery is described in the manual as follows:

This makes a pretty clear recommendation: stall warning -- stick forward.

Fourth, it appears that the pilot was attempting to recover by triggering Alpha Floor protection, which would automatically increase thrust:

And which obviously did not work because the plane was in Alt law. However, I don't get the impression from the manual that you should be knowingly triggering Alpha Floor! Quite the contrary, Alpha Floor is described as an abnormal situation which should be addressed:

 

[ADSWNJ]

FYI: http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm Just look at the complexity!!

There is definitely multiple indications of non-Normal Law (e.g. ECAS and PFD), but Alternate has 2 modes with different behaviors and Direct is different again. It must be a really tough thing for that stick to behave in a different manner right at the most scary point (with all the noise and crisis on the flight desk).

I think every crash forces engineers and designers to reevaluate decisions. It's always for the better: those that perish cause aviation (and spaceflight) to be safer for those that go after them.

 

[Urwumpe]

FYI: http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm Just look at the complexity!!

There is definitely multiple indications of non-Normal Law (e.g. ECAS and PFD), but Alternate has 2 modes with different behaviors and Direct is different again. It must be a really tough thing for that stick to behave in a different manner right at the most scary point (with all the noise and crisis on the flight desk).

I think every crash forces engineers and designers to reevaluate decisions. It's always for the better: those that perish cause aviation (and spaceflight) to be safer for those that go after them.

It isn't that complex, if you read why every flight law exists. Every protection needs sensor input, and if this sensor input is gone you can't provide the protection. The laws are sure simpler there than a gradual degradation with every protection individually disabling on sensor confusion. That ALT2 results in direct roll control was sure part of the problem on AF447, because the aircraft suddenly banked at high speed and high altitude, resulting in an extremely challenging flight behaviour: without the protection at that altitude, bank, yaw and pitch are all related and just correcting bank can result in further pitch up - and that's the same for all aircraft in that altitude.

And remember: In many more accidents and near-accidents, these flight laws helped saving lives - we are talking about millions of flights in total and only maybe 15-20 accidents in which the flight laws had been part of the problem.

 

[ADSWNJ]

And remember: In many more accidents and near-accidents, these flight laws helped saving lives - we are talking about millions of flights in total and only maybe 15-20 accidents in which the flight laws had been part of the problem.

I completely agree. The protections that Airbus has engineered are amazing, and have no doubt saved thousands of lives over the years. In my view, this incident highlighted that more can be done with the human-computer interface and of course with the training and in-flight use of manual control occasionally.

 

[Urwumpe]

I completely agree. The protections that Airbus has engineered are amazing, and have no doubt saved thousands of lives over the years. In my view, this incident highlighted that more can be done with the human-computer interface and of course with the training and in-flight use of manual control occasionally.

You can't do it all - the BIOS of your brain, as you might call it, is 250,000,000 years old and never really bothered about those modern hypes like intelligence and rational thinking.

Once you get into stressful situations, your brain will switch into primordial autopilot and you will react the same. Regardless if the stress is because of your boss or because a tyrannosaurus is hunting you.

The only option you really have is what a military drill does: You train something so often in artificially stressful situations that your primordial autopilot is programmed to do something useful in such situations, that your first action that you automatically want to do when you have no time to decide, is the best option to get time for thinking.

But you can't drill everything the same and not every human brain survives a drill intact because of the iceberg problem.