The rest – well I’m not going to bother parading my qualifications on here – but for this discussion, they are comfortably more than sufficient.

But I am not commenting on this based on my personal experience as a pilot. I’m doing it in my professional capacity as an engineer.

So how does this even remotely qualify you to comment on what was happening in the air & what it was like for the crew up there? It doesn’t.

You actually saying the gyros used for modern AHs are screwed by a bit of turbulence? :confused:

Of course not, I am saying that in even persistent moderate turbulence, your ability to read the instruments clearly is downgraded, the instrumentation could be displaying whatever the hell it likes, but it doesn’t mean you’re in a position to read it.

The what happened is very well understood – the telemetry traces show exactly what happened. The why and how is less well understood.

Nuff said, and this is why you shouldn’t be so ignorant, arrogant & unqualified to pass judgement.

They had a “visual reference” – its called the artificial horizon. They chose to ignore it and chase after airspeed readings instead (incidentally completely ignoring altitude). If they’d paid heed to it, they wouldn’t have stalled – unfortunately it is more or less that simple.

I’m afraid it isn’t that simple. Again, you weren’t up there. If you read the recorder transcript that you say is so damning then you should know not everything is as black and white as it seems.
If the pitots blocked with ice, which they clearly did, you’ll get an IAS Mismatch, this will disconnect the AP & AThr (as the report said). But what you now have is conflicting airspeed readings, they were clearly nearing the edge of “Coffin Corner” (you do know what this is? Don’t you?) and were unable to climb to their optimum altitude due to the turbulence which could have sent them into this small window. You now have blocked pitots, and the very likely scenario here is that they are over reading, and the speed is pushing them close to coffin corner (but not in reality). So what they did was pitch the aircraft up in order to slow it down (no idea why they didn’t try reducing power, but I wasn’t there), all this did was cause the airspeed to increase further because you now have a pitot system that is acting like an altimeter (static element available – maybe), so they pitched even further. Then you have the stall warning go off. How confusing do you think that is for anyone flying in those conditions? If you think that is black and white then you are very much mistaken. What the report also said was that they climbed to a maximum altitude of 37,900ft from 35,000ft. Their rate of climb was 6,900fpm. I am sure you are good at maths, so you do the calculations, that’s 25 seconds to reach the stated altitude. A long time in the grand scheme of things? You bet it isn’t. 25 seconds, that’s all. The report, and your good self makes no reference to this at all, and make out like they had all the time in the world, but they didn’t. Also lets not forget the severe icing conditions. Do you know what an accretion of severe ice does to your stall speed? Do you know how this will affect the aerodynamic capability of the aircraft at that altitude?

I don’t think anyone has ever said the crew weren’t at fault. I am not saying that either. I am saying who are we, well, who are you to judge them when you weren’t even in the aircraft to know what was going on that night, who are you to judge them when you have no idea what was presented to them that night? A decaying airspeed then a subsequent pitch up? I don’t think so somehow.

– luckily the AH and throttle are relatively reliable sensor suites

Not in Severe turbulence they’re not.

Anyway I think we are going waaaaaay off topic with this one. Amiga, you are failing to answer any of the queries posted to you in page 2 of this discussion, and are using the series of so called “technical discussions” to dissuade the attention away from your original, and nonsensical outburst which damned the crew of AF447 with you knowing very, very little of what you are talking about. So come on, answer the queries with some substance and stick to the topic in hand, which is “Pilots Rusty Because Of Automation”.

VeeOne’s comment in that quote does not even remotely suggest she’d rather do without computer systems and technology on board, she is merely saying that when things go wrong she’d rather have a human up there to sort it out, probably a sentiment shared by 99.99% of the paying public who fly.
You seemed to have arbitrarily plucked a system out of the sky (pardon the pun) for the sake of it.

Ok I’ll bite.

I don’t give a damn about rubbish like “what it was like”.

What qualifies you to make statements like calling what I say as rubbish? I’ll tell you what – nothing.

Here are a bunch of people, paid obscene amounts of money – yet they cannot perform even the most basic of functions – namely keeping the damn even approximately thing straight and level.

How arrogant.This has to be the most ill informed, naive, ignorant & nonsensical statement I have ever read on an internet forum. You weren’t onboard, nor was I. How do you know what went on and how hard it was to fly that plane that night? Have you flown into a thunderstorm? I have in France, and it was only relatively small. All hell broke loose, you cannot even see the instruments let alone try and keep it straight and level. Goodness knows how bad it was for them in a mother of all storms, severe icing (ever experienced this? Didn’t think so), severe turbulence and failing instruments, and yet you, in your wee little armchair, sipping tea with the heating on are pretending to be some kind of expert when in reality you know absolutely nothing about it.

Its like the driver of a car forgetting to turn the steering wheel to go around a corner. Ridiculous.

Is it? How do you know that?

The litany of excuses surrounding the whole episode is pathetic.

What’s pathetic is your statements backed up by a complete and utter lack of knowledge on your part.

Oh, no. They know. They definitely know.

But due to “politics” they cannot come out and say it.

You seem to know more than anyone on this subject, can you back it up with firm evidence that this is the case? Or is this just your hunch?

Ignoring a stall warning for a full minute?

Catch yourselves on. The pilots screwed up – big time.

When you have severe icing and a pitot ices up you get a series of warnings that are not that easy to decipher what the actual issue is. Firstly you’ll get an IAS Mismatch warning, when you get this it is not abundantly clear which one, or both is iced up. Do you know what happens to airspeed in a blocked pitot case on a modern airliner? You can have one that is over reading, and one that reads correctly, but which one is it? You could have an overspeed warning, and or a stall warning, which one is right? Couple this with severe and unadulterated turbulence and your situation now becomes very grave in a matter of seconds. The autopilot is disconnected during an IAS Mismatch event, this takes one pilot completely out the loop and is down to one to diagnose a problem in said turbulence and conditions. Trying to read an ECL item is nigh on impossible. The other pilot is battling with the aircraft, is having to deal with the said turbulence, and is having to deal with the problems that have arisen, and is having to try and diagnose the problems too because his colleague is struggling with checklists under the stress of the turbulence and icing. Things might be black and white on Planet Zorg where you come from Amiga, but here on the realities of earth things can be alot different.

Altitude is an inferred reading and airspeed is an inferred reading – both susceptible to external effects on the aircraft.

Aircraft pitch and throttle/thrust are not

Reaaaaally? You’ll have to talk me through that one.

If they aren’t sure of keeping their stall margin due to altitude – then the solution is simple – put the nose down and accept the loss in altitude. Its a long way down from 35,000 ft.

You’re not getting it are you, you’re just not getting it. Naive.
You’ll do well to listen to Arthur, but in the meantime when you’re qualified to make an informed contribution then please come back and see us.

:rolleyes:

I wouldn’t even go that far.

Glorified administrators.

I kinda resent that comment somewhat, are you just being facetious? :rolleyes:

I don’t think some of you are being fair to pilots in general. Do you know what amount of work it takes to be allowed to sit in the front of one of these things? I mean, do you “really” know the amount of work? Whilst a few “below par” pilots might get through the system, on the whole most are very well trained and can indeed (believe it or not) cope when the AP drops out and you go partial panel.
The perceived problem in flying today is that pilots are governed, not by what they want to do, not fly how they want to fly, but by company SOPs. Most of the restrictive SOPs is insurance company driven. SOPs and automation has made flying as safe as it is today. With 85% of all airline accidents still being attributed to pilot error or human interaction the advent of CRM, which is evolving all the time has made flying safer too as planes become more and more reliable. Automation does have it’s inherent risks, but it needs great understanding from it’s users and it’s users need to understand it’s limitations, for example, the aircraft I fly, if we shut an engine down (for an engine fire) whilst it approaches “Alt Capture” mode you are in a whole world of sh**.
That said, there is a time and a place for taking the autopilot out, and in the busy London TMA with a series of step climbs on departure is not one of them. It’s a sad and simple fact that having the autopilot engaged is far safer than having the pilot manually fly for a whole host of reasons. Namely, most, if not all airliners and most private jets are two crew aircraft, and if one is hand flying it then you take one of the pilots directly out of the loop, this is not inherently (there’s that word again, I hate it) safe. Modern airliners are not meant to be hand flown, they are designed to be flown on autopilot. Personally I try and hand fly wherever possible, be it a departure from my local field (away from the London TMA) to the top of climb, or a raw data ILS or visual approach (try the B&Q approach into Exeter Rwy 08 😉 ). I try and do this at least once a day but alot of the time it just isn’t possible.

Then we talk about the Air France crash. I cannot believe how many armchair experts we have around. Nobody can really criticise the crew for their actions, purely because nobody else was there, you weren’t in the flightdeck so how can you pass judgement on what it was really like? Even the investigators base their findings on alot of “circumstantial” evidence that might not have even occurred. They also weren’t there, but unfortunately they are paid to pass judgement. I have been in the middle of the mother of all storms, with nowhere to go apart from through it in the middle of Greece, and it is not a nice situation to be in. All hell must’ve broken loose in that Airbus that night, and whilst the crew were ultimately responsible for it’s demise we can in no way pass judgement on them because we have no idea what it was like for them up there.

The time to learn the essence of flying – Power + Attitude = Performance is not at the controls of a multi million dollar airliner, the time to learn this is in the very early stages of your flying career. When you see the market flooded with 70hr MPL pilots then I will start to worry. But in the meantime one thing is for certain, so long as humans have any interaction with aeroplanes there’ll always be accidents.

Safe flying up there.

Dean

If we need some new mods for any forum this will be instigated by the current mods & the webmaster. Thread closed.

I am not privy to what has gone on with Nashio’s banning, and so it seems nor are some of you above.

Scott, there is always more to these things than meets the eye, so don’t judge unless you know the facts.

On that note, Muttley & Scott, if you are not happy then do as Lance says and take it up with the webmaster. Any more threads opened on this subject will be deleted without recourse.

Dean

tornado64, please have a read of this thread, and in particular guideline 1. Thanks 😉