Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Off Topic What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447?

Some of you may have already read this, but I have to say that I found this to be a compelling enough read to post about here, however Off Topic it may seem on an Audio Forum.

R.I.P.
What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447

Terrifying.

Absolutely!

Most fixed wing aircraft, given sufficient height will stabilise if one just releases all the controls.

That floored instinct to keep the stick fully back, with the stall alarm "shouting" is almost impossible to imagine.

If anyone here is connected in some way with this flight, I offer my condolences.

Regards,
Carl

As a frequent flyer I find that hard to read. It was covered also on a recent TV programme.
I wonder what the industry has learnt from it ?

Hi,

Quite amazing really... But one has to understand the philosophy of the flight control protections, I have flown (and was a training captain) on the Airbus 320/330 type. Before this accident it was believed that you could not stall the aircraft which when in normal law is correct... the flight control computers would not allow you to reach a pitch attitude (nose position) that would lead to the aircraft stalling. In fact part of the conversion course onto the Airbus, one of the exercises was to pull the control column fully back to the stop.

At a certain angle of attack, the flight control computers would stop the nose pitching any higher and automatically put full power on the engines (TOGA) thus flying at a speed just above the stall speed. Unfortunately because of the blocked pitot tubes the aircraft did not have this protection. In my opinion it seems the first officer flying the aircraft at the time did not realize this and continued to keep the stick fully back.

Very sad indeed. and yes lessons have been learned.

Roy

To know that it wasn't the plane is somewhat comforting I guess. I still am not 100% clear on why they didn't fly around the storm. I understand they were still heavy and couldn't gain altitude, but one can also go around, correct?
My understanding is that airlines set tolerances for how much a pilot can deviate from the set flight plan. It seems tough for me to believe that Air France's flight plan suggested they fly through the center of this storm, knowing they would be heavy?

I took an Korean Air flight from NY to Seoul a couple years ago on the new A380 and it was the most terrify flight of my life. I have flown across the Pacific close to 50 times in my life and nothing came close to this. It was like the pilots were looking for bad weather. I know that isn't true but the lack of reaction from the stewards on the plane suggested that it was normal. It strikes me as though other airlines would never allow such actions by their pilots, especially US ones.

Any event, it seems to me that while this seems very much pilot error due to inexperience, airlines also carry some of the burden for what they allow via pilot discretion.

I could be way off, but that is my observation.

One should always avoid bad weather... and when over populated airspace US Europe etc. It is much easier to deviate around the worst of it. You always ask Air traffic control first if you can deviate left or right... Radar control giving you info on other traffic which might affect.

Across the Atlantic or other area of limited, if no radar cover there are set down procedures for deviating around the weather. And in fact all the times I have crossed the Atlantic I have always been able to deviate the worst of the weather.

As always accidents/incidents are usually accredited to a number of things going wrong, not just the one. (The swiss cheese effect) and I'm affraid all the holes lined up that night.

Roy

Even accounting for being trained to disregard an initial stall warning, how on earth can any pilot not automatically ease up on the stick? As I recall that's almost chapter one, page one of Aviation for Dummies. My only explanation would be that the pilot was sacrificing forward velocity whilst climbing because the most efficient climb AOA would be more dangerous due to weather, in the erroneous belief that the aircraft systems would do a better job of minimising forward velocity than a human trying to not quite stall the aircraft.

Also known as the traction control fallacy.

So we have some aircraft fans in here too

I am a glider pilot and looking at accidents like that I wonder why airline training/requisites do not include some glider experience.

Remember US Airlines flight that (sea) landed in the Hudson river in NYC with no casualties? Captain was considered 'hero' but he just said he was a glider pilot too and with this background the no-power landing was not so difficult. He recommended in fact this experience/paralel training to all airline pilots... what do you think about Roy/JetBlaster? How many of your trainees had this background and how do you felt they went compared to others?

Just for the record two weeks ago I flew the Grub Twin from my club and quickly discovered (but when already on the air being towed) the anemometer was wrong... but handled it anyway and had a nice flight

Regards

I would suspect that most airline pilots are fully capable of executing an extremely low sink rate landing, if conditions are right. At what point those conditions are exceeded will probably depend more on the aircraft type and state than specific experience.

Or to put it another way, I've landed at Heathrow flying ANZ and barely felt the landing but landed at Jersey flying BA and it felt like the creaky old 737 was going to bend due to the impact!

I'm not a "fan" as such but I fly a lot. The most flights I did in one week was 10 (10 take-offs in one week)�

I'd love not to do it all after reading this thread, but can't really be avoided.

Sorry to be blunt Josep, but I'd have thought that avoiding ANY type of landing at sea and 1,000 miles from anywhere would have been utmost in their minds.

The conditions are also worth bearing in mind. It was the major storm which set in motion the chain of unfortunate events. So imagine what the Sea Swell was like during that time. 10 to 20ft Swells??.

Landing a glider on the calm Hudson is one thing, but trying to do the same on a rough sea would not be possible IMHO