Yesterday, i chanced upon a video i’d forgotten i had!!- its from about 1990 and its a programme about Fly by Wire specifically in regards to the A320 (its a bit of a hatchet job, frankly) and has details of the infamous Alsheim airshow incident but also mentions an incident in which an Air India aircraft came in short of the runway killing all on board, at the time, Air India had blamed software problems, grounded the fleet, and refused any more deliveries and Airbus were saying it was pilot error-so things were left unresolved- can anyone supply further details??
By: wysiwyg - 21st February 2008 at 15:32
Also agree fully. Having seen first hand Nigerian pilots trying to get to grips with a big bus’ you can see why older Boeings work much better in certain parts of the world. This also is as much true from an engineering perspective as a piloting one.
By: sekant - 19th February 2008 at 08:11
That seems to sum things up all right.
I always thought that if there was one instance where an accident could possibly be directly attributed to a defect in the new A320 systems, it was the crash of the AirInter at Mont Saint-Otilde (ie coming down to Strasburg).
And certainly not this case in India.
By: Oxcart - 19th February 2008 at 00:01
So, for those of us who don’t get to fly anything, the short answer is it was pilot error then!!!:)
By: TwinAisle - 18th February 2008 at 17:26
Happy to stand corrected. I was at Airbus at the time, and saw a much simplified view of the thing…
By: exmpa - 18th February 2008 at 15:42
The aircraft was instructed to descend at a given rate on the autopilot, the aircraft did that, and since no-one cancelled that command (CRM issues were implicated), the systems achieved the structural necessary impact with the ground, with the empirically fatal consequences…. the fact that the aircraft was fly-by-wire matters not a jot. I have flown a PA28 with an autopilot in which I could do exactly the same trick…
No, the autopilot was not engaged, the aircraft was being flown manually. The cause of the accident was similar to the Mulhouse accident in so far as it was due to “Mode Confusion”. The aircraft was in “Open Descent” mode, that means that a thrust idle descent is commanded and the speed will vary as the attitude is adjusted. They needed to be in a “Vertical Speed” mode where the V/S would be adjusted by changing the attitude, but crucially, the Autothrust would vary the thrust to maintain the selected speed.To cut a long story short, if the had looked at the Flight Mode Annunciator (FMA) at the top of thePrimary Flight Display (PFD) they would have seen in the Thrust Window “Thr Idle”. They needed to see “Speed” at this stage of the approach. If they had switched off both of the Flight Directors (FD) [FD2 remained on and prevented reversion to Speed mode] when things started to go wrong; The normal configuration for a visual approach should have been FDs off or Trk/FPA all would have been well. They didn’t, they ignored the FMA and took no action until it was too late, the rest is history.
exmpa
By: sekant - 18th February 2008 at 14:34
Sorry, I meant to say that Indian Airlines operates 50+ A320s (or family).
By: TwinAisle - 18th February 2008 at 14:31
A couple of fact checks….
The Air France incident took place at Mulhouse-Habsheim in France.
The Indian incident was not an Air India aircraft, but an Indian Airlines aircraft. The aircraft was instructed to descend at a given rate on the autopilot, the aircraft did that, and since no-one cancelled that command (CRM issues were implicated), the systems achieved the structural necessary impact with the ground, with the empirically fatal consequences…. the fact that the aircraft was fly-by-wire matters not a jot. I have flown a PA28 with an autopilot in which I could do exactly the same trick…
TA
By: sekant - 18th February 2008 at 13:56
Well, there was an official report on the accident:
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19900214-2&lang=en
PROBABLE CAUSE: “Failure of the pilots to realize the gravity of the situation and respond immediately towards proper action of moving the throttles, even after the radio altitude call-outs of “Four hundred”, “Three hundred” and “Two hundred” feet, in spite of knowing that the plane was in idle/open descent mode. However, identification of the cause for the engagement of idle/open descent mode in short final approach during the crucial period of the flight is not possible.”
This hardly qualifies as an indictment of the A320. The problem was much more one of training than the plane itself.
I can recall all the noise that was made about the induction of the A320. There was even a call by the French union to have the plane banned because it was not healthy to give so much responsibility to a computer (the problem being that it cut the crew from 3 to 2 persons).
Thing is, though, as a passenger, I am much more willing to trust my like to a computer than to a pilot. You can check and again, computers have been responsible for far fewer deaths than pilots.
And, as far as I know, Air India flies more than 50 A320s.
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February 18, 2008 at 12:32 pm