AF447 stalled but crew maintained nose-up attitude

[rogwar]

Definitely interesting read. Reminds me of tape over the static port on that Peruvian 757 several years ago. And flying such an electric plane as well.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/05/27/357307/af447-stalled-but-crew-maintained-nose-up-attitude.html

[Shuffler]

Straight down stall.... looks like it hit tail first at 107 kt ground speed.

[SFRT - Frenchy]

I had a pitot freeze on approach, in the middle of a snow storm. Speed decreased rapidly, so I starting droping the nose more and more thinking I was caught in a nasty downdraft. After a couple of seconds nothing made sense with my instruments, but I figured out that if my airspeed was really 80kts, I'd be already stalked big time so I decided to ignore my speedo and resume my approach at a power settingthat I knew would work and go from there.
I fly steam gauges, so I'm used to troubleshoot yet got disoriented for a couple of secs till I could make sense of it. On a full glass cockpit, I think it could be way worse because you naturally trust computers more.

[saggs]

Sounds like PBS and NOVA nailed it with their documentary last year, even without the data recorders they pieced it together from the ACARS data.  Only "new" bit of info is that the Captain wasn't on the flight deck when it all started going bad.  Pitots froze, autothrust shut down, pilot failed to follow SOP (5° nose up, 85% throttle) for no airspeed data, and was confused by conflicting data, plane climbed into a stall.  

What's baffling now is it seems like the pilot in control never realized they where in a stall condition, as he kept fighting to keep the nose up instead of pushing over, the report says he even set the horizontal stab to 13° UP?   

[FireDrgn]

maybe he "felt" the loss in altitude and thought it was from loss of elevator input not stall.

[Maverick]

In real IFR conditions it is easy to lose the physical sense of flying the bird. Pilots are hammered time and time again to trust the instruments when IFR because your inner ear can and will often betray you. Vertigo will tell the pilot one thing and they are trained to trust the instruments anytime there is a conflict between the way they feel and the instruments.

In VFR it's easy to see the instruments are lying to you. In IFR with no vision of the horizon to orient yourself the pilots will rely on training. It's very easy to criticise the flight crew from the ground and safety of the keyboard. It's another thing to have experienced vertigo in flight.

[Shuffler]

Same happened to Kenedy.

[Penguin]

In real IFR conditions it is easy to lose the physical sense of flying the bird. Pilots are hammered time and time again to trust the instruments when IFR because your inner ear can and will often betray you. Vertigo will tell the pilot one thing and they are trained to trust the instruments anytime there is a conflict between the way they feel and the instruments.

In VFR it's easy to see the instruments are lying to you. In IFR with no vision of the horizon to orient yourself the pilots will rely on training. It's very easy to criticise the flight crew from the ground and safety of the keyboard. It's another thing to have experienced vertigo in flight.

What do IFR and VFR mean?

-Penguin

[Reaper90]

In real IFR conditions it is easy to lose the physical sense of flying the bird. Pilots are hammered time and time again to trust the instruments when IFR because your inner ear can and will often betray you. Vertigo will tell the pilot one thing and they are trained to trust the instruments anytime there is a conflict between the way they feel and the instruments.

In VFR it's easy to see the instruments are lying to you. In IFR with no vision of the horizon to orient yourself the pilots will rely on training. It's very easy to criticise the flight crew from the ground and safety of the keyboard. It's another thing to have experienced vertigo in flight.

Bingo. I'm no grizzly seasoned veteran pilot but I spent enough time under the hood doing IFR training to know that what the seat of the pants "feeling" is telling you may, and often is, totally different from what's actually going on.

[Shuffler]

IFR Instrument Flight Rules

VFR Visual Flight Rules

[Reaper90]

What do IFR and VFR mean?

-Penguin

IFR - Instrument Flight Rules, where there is little or no visibilty outside of the cockpit (fog, clouds, rain, etc), you fly and navigate by instruments

VFR - Visual Flight Rules - you can see outside, you fly and navigate primarily by visual reference

[Penguin]

Oh, I see.  Why does your inner ear often 'lie', though?  Is it because of changing cabin pressure or perhaps a lack of sensitivity? 

-Penguin

[tmetal]

Your inner ear can be fooled into telling your sense of balance you are doing things that are not really happening.  Just think how those arcade rollercosters work. They tilt you a few degrees to the left and stop but your inner ear combined with the image you see on a tv screen are telling you that you are doing a full barrel roll to the left.  The five senses are more powerful than a lot of people think, if they weren't you wouldn't hear stories on these forums about guys getting motion sick sitting at their computer desks flying AH while using TrackIR.

[dedalos]

Not a pilot, but the first reports always blame the pilots.  The truth comes out latter.  I don;t buy that two pilots could not figure out they were in a stall especially after the alarms went off.  Nor that they never tried nose down since nose up was not working.  Easier to blame the dead man than having to deal with the consequences of a faulty design, computer, maintenance, etc

[Stoney]

Not a pilot, but the first reports always blame the pilots.  The truth comes out latter.  I don;t buy that two pilots could not figure out they were in a stall especially after the alarms went off.  Nor that they never tried nose down since nose up was not working.  Easier to blame the dead man than having to deal with the consequences of a faulty design, computer, maintenance, etc

Except that all of this data is taken directly from the black boxes.  The only thing the black boxes don't tell you is why those control inputs were made--i.e. what were the humans thinking?  So, perhaps its ok, just this once, to keep the conspiracy theories out of this one.