RE: AF447. I’m still completely dumbfounded that the co-pilot’s first action when the airspeed indication was lost was to pull back on the side stick and keep it firmly there for just about the entire 4 minutes of the crisis. I believe that action alone doomed the aircraft.

+1

First priority – give yourself time to diagnose and sort the situation. If your at 35 kft – then enter a 2 degree dive.

That’ll give you a few minutes of controlled flight as well as bring your probes into warmer air.

I’m surprised it isn’t standard procedure – it is blindingly obvious. Station keeping is irrelevant when control of the aircraft is at stake. One is a far higher priority than the other.

Who’d want to be the government or local authority stopping thousands of well paid jobs coming into their country/region right now?

I would think the red tape would very quickly go away if Boeing came knocking!

I know our bunch of local fukkwits (aka politicians) would get the finger out – for fear the electorate would effectively give them the finger next election time.

The idea is to have the plane literally not allow the pilot to crash into terrain or other planes.

No – don’t like that.

There are niche cases when you have to crash into the ground/ditch on water (landing gear failure or birdstrike for instance).

In those instances, I’d probably prefer the pilot to have final control with advice coming from the computer.

The AF447 picture that you described would actually be impossible because of the main issue: unreliable data provided to the ADIRU via the pitot probes.

Hmmm.

You are right. But you are also wrong.

If flight warning system triggered alerts when the ground is ‘coming up’ at a rate of more than say, 1000 ft/min*, then the pilots would immediately know that they are in a steep descent. Furthermore, work in the 1970s indicated that groundspeed could be calculated using radar with an error of ~1%.

If flight probe data are compromised, it would be an extremely good fall-back – if only for the purposes of keeping the aircraft in the air for a further 5 minutes to allow the crew to get control of the situation.

*If the flight is in the descent phase anyway, then the warning could trigger at 2000 ft/min.

2 months is nothing. I thought you were talking years.

Boeing would have a list of (any!) perishable (i.e. need use for lubrication) seals – they’d need inspecting/replacing.

Obviously the full diagnostics would be run, but beyond that, not much I’d think (as long as the aircraft was stored with a view to a sale within a few months). Ryanair have a rake of 737s sat at Birmingham, probably haven’t moved in a few months – a day or two would probably put them right for flight-line (basically checking all systems work).

You take the engines off (or start removing systems) and things extrapolate in cost.

Definitely a step ahead for the US Aerospace industry and maybe a step ahead for the western commercial aerospace industry in general.

Good stuff.

I’m sure I speak for nearly every engineer that ever existed when I say f**k the lawyers! 😀

It’s quite irrelevant what it is supposed to do.

Actually, what it is supposed to do is key to how requirements are drawn up. I assume from this you have never drawn up requirements for any technical solution before? :confused:

What is relevant is what it can do given this additional capability, and whether that additional capability is worth the effort.

(a)No – not if it is outside the requirements.
(b)If that additional capability is not needed, then the added cost is always waste.

Doesn’t seem to be the case, either in proven combat history of the past, or the existing technology.

It is the case.

Please don’t try and use the Falklands as an example.

Unless you are seriously going to try and argue the UK were better off with Harriers off Hermes/Invincible than F-4 phantoms operating off the old Eagle/Ark Royal?