French passenger jet gone missing from radar screens........
Discussion
Mojocvh said:
el stovey said:
MercScot said:
Whatever anyone says, it does seem obvious this was serious pilot error, did they face any more of a challenge than Eric Moody? Somehow I doubt it.
(For those of you who are much younger than me and have no idea who Eric Moody is, Google his name and/or BA flight 9)
(For those of you who are much younger than me and have no idea who Eric Moody is, Google his name and/or BA flight 9)
Moody's (not that he was even in the flight deck when the engines stopped) situation was much more straight forward. All the crew had to do was descend at a safe speed and keep trying to relight the engines.
The air france crash was a much more confusing situation. They had an aircraft in bad weather with unreliable instruments and stall warning systems telling the pilots conflicting information that couldn't clearly indicate to them whether the aircraft was stalled or not. What's the point in a warning system if THREE pilots can't easily understand what's going on? That's very poor design.
Then when the speed got really low the stall warning stopped as the aircraft thought it was on the ground. The pilots reasonably thought it was now un-stalled. Then when the speed increased, the stall warning started all over again again. As I said before, that's a very very poor design. It's prime purpose is to alert the crew the aircraft has stalled but two, possibly three trained and qualified experienced pilots were unable to understand quickly and clearly what was going on.
I've practiced this event in a simulator and it was horrendous. That's being wide awake during the day and knowing in advance we were going to do it. Add night time some convective weather and it's very nasty indeed.
The pilots certainly made mistakes but It seems odd to me that you appear to be very intent on blaming them. It's not the sort of viewpoint I would expect a casual observer to have enough background knowledge to enable him/her to do. You must be fairly knowledgeable about these aircraft and their operation to be confident in arguing your point. In particular your assertions about Air France's pilots and their training. Do you have (or have ever had) any connection to airbus or EADS?
The more I read about this and other accidents the more I think it comes down to two combinations - aircraft that have more and more technology combined with pilots that perhaps don't actually have that much experience flying using the stick.
I've no experience or knowledge of aircraft beyond documentaries, but it just seems that there is too much going on sometimes to just fly the plane when the s
t hits the fan.
I've no experience or knowledge of aircraft beyond documentaries, but it just seems that there is too much going on sometimes to just fly the plane when the s
t hits the fan.ALawson said:
mybrainhurts said:
That was covered on TV ages ago. Nothing new there.
Didn't see it, sobering none the less, that a pilot can forget the basics.modern commercial pilots are trained to rely on their instruments completely... Flying by instinct is pretty much bred out as a "bad habit"
jbi said:
ALawson said:
mybrainhurts said:
That was covered on TV ages ago. Nothing new there.
Didn't see it, sobering none the less, that a pilot can forget the basics.modern commercial pilots are trained to rely on their instruments completely... Flying by instinct is pretty much bred out as a "bad habit"
At present the industry is in a mess in Europe, North America and some regions of the Pacific Rim. Beyond that you take your life in your own hands!
IMO, surely people should be asking "why did the damn pitot tubes fail?" - what a crap system...
If all it takes is some bloody ice (which is ultimately responsible) for one of the worlds most advanced passenger jets coming down then we need to think about that FIRST...Everything (pilot error etc) was a result of THAT failure....?
If all it takes is some bloody ice (which is ultimately responsible) for one of the worlds most advanced passenger jets coming down then we need to think about that FIRST...Everything (pilot error etc) was a result of THAT failure....?
Murcielago_Boy said:
IMO, surely people should be asking "why did the damn pitot tubes fail?" - what a crap system...
If all it takes is some bloody ice (which is ultimately responsible) for one of the worlds most advanced passenger jets coming down then we need to think about that FIRST...Everything (pilot error etc) was a result of THAT failure....?
That has been rectified as I understand it. Iced pitot tubes do not make a plane fall out of the sky though. If all it takes is some bloody ice (which is ultimately responsible) for one of the worlds most advanced passenger jets coming down then we need to think about that FIRST...Everything (pilot error etc) was a result of THAT failure....?
harry010 said:
Ready that makes me feel queasy 
davepoth said:
Murcielago_Boy said:
IMO, surely people should be asking "why did the damn pitot tubes fail?" - what a crap system...
If all it takes is some bloody ice (which is ultimately responsible) for one of the worlds most advanced passenger jets coming down then we need to think about that FIRST...Everything (pilot error etc) was a result of THAT failure....?
That has been rectified as I understand it. Iced pitot tubes do not make a plane fall out of the sky though. If all it takes is some bloody ice (which is ultimately responsible) for one of the worlds most advanced passenger jets coming down then we need to think about that FIRST...Everything (pilot error etc) was a result of THAT failure....?
The 'holes' here are design faults in the airbus warning systems, the weather, the time of day, the pitot tube heat, AF training and probably numerous others. Any one of them if rectified would have stopped that crash. All of them happening at the same time led to a crash.
Certainly if the probes hadn't iced up there wouldn't have been a crash.
As somebody who has followed the investigation and this thread with great interest, but as a complete layperson with regards to aviation, the one thing that has me really puzzled is the failure to acknowledge the falling altitude. The captain makes an observation at 10,000ft but this doesn't appear to have concerned them greatly. Everyone is saying that they were confused about air speed, angle of attack, etc. and I accept they were completely disorientated, but how did they manage to miss the fact that they were plummeting out of the sky until the very last minute? Apologies to the qualified amongst us if I have misunderstood something obvious. As somebody who already posessed a completely irrational fear of flying I find this accident deeply unsettling.
theboss said:
As somebody who has followed the investigation and this thread with great interest, but as a complete layperson with regards to aviation, the one thing that has me really puzzled is the failure to acknowledge the falling altitude. The captain makes an observation at 10,000ft but this doesn't appear to have concerned them greatly. Everyone is saying that they were confused about air speed, angle of attack, etc. and I accept they were completely disorientated, but how did they manage to miss the fact that they were plummeting out of the sky until the very last minute? Apologies to the qualified amongst us if I have misunderstood something obvious. As somebody who already posessed a completely irrational fear of flying I find this accident deeply unsettling.
If they thought the pitots were completely fubar, they could have believed they were getting erroneous altitude indications, similar to that of AeroPeru 603Tiggsy said:
Is the question above more like "did the plane not feel like it was crashing" - I wondered what the onboard sensation would be to fall that fast or would they not notice? In my mind all the passengers are stuck to the ceiling like a cartoon lift but i suppose its not like that!
I would guess that once it's started to drop, it'll at pretty much a uniform speed, so the passengers would not feel the descent, as there's no acceleration (not after the first few seconds anyway)Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff