Air France 447 "What really happened"

[Golfer]

At the onset of the problem they had unreliable speed indications. As the event continued they never let go of the stick much less pushed forward to break the stall condition and simply fly out of it. Contributing to the confusion is from the pilot seats you can't see what inputs the other is making. From the jumpseat you have a better view but that doesn't help you keep in the loop with what the flying pilot is doing as you would with a yoke.

There are bigger training and culture issues at play which contributed to this accident and took hundreds of people to their deaths with what should have been capable pilots in the least risky phase of flight. It should be noted that as the captain got plugged into the situation the aircraft could well have been recovered with a little extra maneuvering room.

The attitude indicators never had any issues. Excessive pitch wouldn't have been an issue as with electronic displays as you exceed 30-40 degrees of pitch you'll get big arrows/chevrons pointing back to the horizon. I'm a Honeywell baby having only flown Primus 1000 and Epic systems. I can't speak for Collins or Airbii systems but I can't imagine they'd be hugely different with such a basic display function.

This accident is fascinating because it never ever ever ever should have happened the way it did.

[Tupac]

It sounds like the captain was correcting the problem, but the FO didnt realize what the captain was doing and kept the yoke held back and exacerbated it.

[Golfer]

The plane was falling. He did the only thing his panicking human brain told him to do. Pull the damn stick. It's night, you're bored and something like that happen. They both went brain dead. Cost many lives. I never flew on a night flight. I'll try to stay the hell away from them...scary thing. If he had seen outside he may have realized what was going on before it was too late.

While that might be more accurate than I'd care to admit, Air France and their training culture did not prepare these pilots for this situation. While it can be argued they probably shouldn't have to the Swiss cheese really lined up in what was thought an "impossible" way.  This has everything to do with how these pilots "recovered" from stalls in training and lack of exposure to the edges of the flight envelope when in anything other than normal law.  

[FTJR]

There are a lot of hints of inexperience amongst other things in there.

The junior FO didn't know what St Elmo's fire was, the senior FO came in and found that the radar is incorrectly set, the result of which led them into the tradgedy, and the fact that the senior let the junior continue to fly, just makes it worse.

A very bad, and chilling story, hopefully the community will learn from it.

[clerick]

there were myriad warnings and faults sent back via satalite that indicate that the pito tube,all of them, had fouled due to super cooled water coming into contact with them.

the conclusion seems to be that they ignored their training... Very sad.

[Golfer]

There are a lot of hints of inexperience amongst other things in there.

The junior FO didn't know what St Elmo's fire was, the senior FO came in and found that the radar is incorrectly set, the result of which led them into the tradgedy, and the fact that the senior let the junior continue to fly, just makes it worse.

A very bad, and chilling story, hopefully the community will learn from it.

One could write a thesis on this accident and then write another one without repeating themselves.

To paraphrase; it's a disservice to ones self to experience one hour a thousand times versus having a thousand hours of experience. Or something like that.

Fatigue. Goodnight.

[Golfer]

the conclusion seems to be that they ignored their training... Very sad.

I disagree with this part. It seems to me that he reacted just the same way he did in every other stall situation. Yank back on the stick and let the airplane sort it out.  Doesn't work in alternate law.

Training and culture failed the pilots and ultimately the passengers.

[Tupac]

I disagree with this part. It seems to me that he reacted just the same way he did in every other stall situation. Yank back on the stick and let the airplane sort it out.  Doesn't work in alternate law.

Training and culture failed the pilots and ultimately the passengers.

So they are taught to yank back on the yoke in a stall? Do they not have a little button or something somewhere that said they were in alternate law?

[Golfer]

So they are taught to yank back on the yoke in a stall? Do they not have a little button or something somewhere that said they were in alternate law?

Sort of. In normal law (99.9999% of the time) you can apply full back pressure and the aircraft will not allow you to enter a full aerodynamic stall. In alternate law, that AoA protection no longer exists. Task saturation and information overload plays hell with your ability to sort things out as it's very confusing especially with the external stimuli bombarding your senses as you're trying to figure out what to believe.

The stall recovery (in actuality stall avoidance) training performed in simulators lacks. Not because it isn't important but because how the initial and recurrent training/checking events are constructed based on the requirements for each to be accomplished with a finite amount of training time. There are so many boxes to check you just can't cover everything. Stalls in cruise flight when in alternate law with instrumentation faults doesn't make the list.

[FTJR]

So they are taught to yank back on the yoke in a stall? Do they not have a little button or something somewhere that said they were in alternate law?

No button, just a little message on the Primary Flight Display where you can see it, but in the stress of the moment see through it. And the message does not say "alternate law" it says "use man pitch" and its amber for Alternate, red for Direct.

It all comes down to training, time available, items to be covered. $$$

[colmbo]

It sounds like the captain was correcting the problem, but the FO didnt realize what the captain was doing and kept the yoke held back and exacerbated it.

A friend of mine is FO on Airbus 320s.  He told me the Captains stick will override the FO stick.  He related an incident where he was the pilot flying, they got a TCAS (I think it was) warning advising a climb. Don said he pulled the stick back and nothing happened.  WTF!?!?  He's looking around trying to figure things out and realizes the Captain has overridden his input. (The captain had visual on the traffic and deemed it was no factor).

I wonder which seat these guys were in, was the junior guy in the left seat?

[bagrat]

robert had to tell bonin to give him the controls. It says when bonin yields control they finally get the nose down, and that before the plane was giving a response to both pilots pushing and pulling opposite direction, the half control was not enough to get the nose down.
bonin again began pulling back on the stick again without telling anybody
So that bonin guy was never handing over control and stalled the plane to the ground.

[clerick]

I disagree with this part. It seems to me that he reacted just the same way he did in every other stall situation. Yank back on the stick and let the airplane sort it out.  Doesn't work in alternate law.

Training and culture failed the pilots and ultimately the passengers.

It's my understand that in a situation where you have no speed indicators that the pilots are taught to apply a predetermined pitch and power (or some such). They aren't taught to "yank back" as you say.

[FTJR]

A friend of mine is FO on Airbus 320s.  He told me the Captains stick will override the FO stick.  He related an incident where he was the pilot flying, they got a TCAS (I think it was) warning advising a climb. Don said he pulled the stick back and nothing happened.  WTF!?!?  He's looking around trying to figure things out and realizes the Captain has overridden his input. (The captain had visual on the traffic and deemed it was no factor).

I wonder which seat these guys were in, was the junior guy in the left seat?

In the airbus regardless of what model it is, 320,330 etc, if both pilots put pressure on the sidestick, a loud voice, and I mean loud, shouts "dual input" if you need to override the other guy, you push a button on your stick and it locks the other guy out of the system.

[clerick]

http://www.zshare.net/videoplayer/player.php?SID=dl028&FID=76720262&FN=Lost%20-%20The%20Mystery%20of%20Flight%20447%20_30%20May%202010__PDTV_XviD__.avi.flv&iframewidth=648&iframeheight=415&width=640&height=370&H=767202621d6953ef

This was a good film, made before the black-boxes were found.  So far most of what they hypothesized has been proven true.  Keep in mind they did this all before they had cockpit data.  They were going almost solely on what the plane was reporting back to Air France via satellite.