Air Asia Black Box info
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RotorAndWing
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Rotor&Wing
There can be vicious updrafts in a thunderstorm.
AdamZ
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Adam Zucker
Thanks for the clarification.
TedR3
Pre-takeoff checklist
Report now says experienced rudder fault, turned off AP and stalled:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34972263
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34972263
Katamarino
Pattern Altitude
Entered a stall from which they could not recover, opposing control inputs...it brings to mind the idiots who were in the cockpit of AF447.
NoHeat
En-Route
The report, by the Indonesian board, is here:
http://kemhubri.dephub.go.id/knkt/ntsc_home/ntsc.htm
I paste an excerpt below. To summarize a few points before the excerpt:
The plane had a history of frequent problems with a bad solder joint on a "rudder travel limiter," and the pilots had to deal with several fault annunciations related to this failure. The second in command was the pilot flying.
At 2316:44 UTC, the sixth Master Caution triggered by AUTO FLT FAC 1 + 2 FAULT and followed by FDR signature of alteration of parameters of components controlled by FAC 2 such as RTLU 2, Windshear Detection 2 and Rudder Travel Limiter Actuator 2. The Auto Pilot (A/P) and the Auto-thrust (A/THR) disengaged. Flight control law reverted from Normal Law to Alternate Law. The aircraft started to roll to the left up to 54° angle of bank.
Nine seconds after the autopilot disengaged, the right side-stick activated. The aircraft roll angle reduced to 9° left and then rolled back to 53° left. The input on the right side-stick was mostly pitch up and the aircraft climbed up to approximately 38,000 feet with a climb rate of up to 11,000 feet per minute. At 2317:18 UTC, the stall warning activated and at 2317:22 UTC stopped for 1 second then continued until the end of recording. The first left side stick input was at 2317:03 UTC for 2 seconds and at 2317:15 UTC another input for 2 seconds, then since 2317:29 UTC the input continued until the end of the recording. The right side stick input was mostly at maximum pitch up until the end of recording. The lowest ISIS speed recorded was 55 knots. The ISIS speed recorded fluctuated at an average of 140 knots until the end of the recording. At 2317:41 UTC the aircraft reached the highest ISIS altitude of 38,500 feet and the largest roll angle of 104° to the left. The aircraft then lost altitude with a descent rate of up to 20,000 feet per minute.
At approximately 29,000 feet the aircraft attitude was wings level with pitch and roll angles of approximately zero with the airspeed varied between 100 and 160 knots. The Angle of Attack (AOA)5 was almost constant at approximately 40° up and the stall warning continued until the end of recording. The aircraft then lost altitude with an average rate of 12,000 feet per minute until the end of the recording.
http://kemhubri.dephub.go.id/knkt/ntsc_home/ntsc.htm
I paste an excerpt below. To summarize a few points before the excerpt:
The plane had a history of frequent problems with a bad solder joint on a "rudder travel limiter," and the pilots had to deal with several fault annunciations related to this failure. The second in command was the pilot flying.
At 2316:44 UTC, the sixth Master Caution triggered by AUTO FLT FAC 1 + 2 FAULT and followed by FDR signature of alteration of parameters of components controlled by FAC 2 such as RTLU 2, Windshear Detection 2 and Rudder Travel Limiter Actuator 2. The Auto Pilot (A/P) and the Auto-thrust (A/THR) disengaged. Flight control law reverted from Normal Law to Alternate Law. The aircraft started to roll to the left up to 54° angle of bank.
Nine seconds after the autopilot disengaged, the right side-stick activated. The aircraft roll angle reduced to 9° left and then rolled back to 53° left. The input on the right side-stick was mostly pitch up and the aircraft climbed up to approximately 38,000 feet with a climb rate of up to 11,000 feet per minute. At 2317:18 UTC, the stall warning activated and at 2317:22 UTC stopped for 1 second then continued until the end of recording. The first left side stick input was at 2317:03 UTC for 2 seconds and at 2317:15 UTC another input for 2 seconds, then since 2317:29 UTC the input continued until the end of the recording. The right side stick input was mostly at maximum pitch up until the end of recording. The lowest ISIS speed recorded was 55 knots. The ISIS speed recorded fluctuated at an average of 140 knots until the end of the recording. At 2317:41 UTC the aircraft reached the highest ISIS altitude of 38,500 feet and the largest roll angle of 104° to the left. The aircraft then lost altitude with a descent rate of up to 20,000 feet per minute.
At approximately 29,000 feet the aircraft attitude was wings level with pitch and roll angles of approximately zero with the airspeed varied between 100 and 160 knots. The Angle of Attack (AOA)5 was almost constant at approximately 40° up and the stall warning continued until the end of recording. The aircraft then lost altitude with an average rate of 12,000 feet per minute until the end of the recording.
Except they could have recovered to nearly the last moment if they had just tried.
Katamarino
Pattern Altitude
My wording was careful...from which *they* could not recover. Any actually competent pilot could have recovered easily, like you say!
So sad, sounds like this is a similar situation with him holding the stick pinned back.
NoHeat
En-Route
They didn't know how to hand-fly the plane in the "alternate law." They didn't know how to recover from stalls and unusual attitudes. They also didn't have any decent CRM during an emergency.
That's what I got out of reading the report.
There were some very unusual attitudes. An AOA of 48 degrees, bank of 53 degrees.
Excerpts from the report re training:
"The pilot training was exercise to approach to stall which means that the aircraft has not entered stall condition. The condition of stall on this accident flight might have not been recognized by the pilot."
The aircraft operator advised the KNKT that the flight crew had not been trained for the upset recovery training on Airbus A320, and this referred to FCTM Operational Philosophy: “The effectiveness of fly-by-wire architecture, and the existence of control laws, eliminates the need for upset recovery maneuvers to be trained on protected Airbus”.
"The pilot training for stall was intended to introduce the indications of approach to stall condition and recover it. While the aircraft system designed to prevent the stall by providing early warning. The pilot training and the aircraft system were intended to avoid stall.
The condition of AOA 40° as recorded on the FDR was beyond any airline pilot training competency as they never been trained or experienced."
That's what I got out of reading the report.
There were some very unusual attitudes. An AOA of 48 degrees, bank of 53 degrees.
Excerpts from the report re training:
"The pilot training was exercise to approach to stall which means that the aircraft has not entered stall condition. The condition of stall on this accident flight might have not been recognized by the pilot."
The aircraft operator advised the KNKT that the flight crew had not been trained for the upset recovery training on Airbus A320, and this referred to FCTM Operational Philosophy: “The effectiveness of fly-by-wire architecture, and the existence of control laws, eliminates the need for upset recovery maneuvers to be trained on protected Airbus”.
"The pilot training for stall was intended to introduce the indications of approach to stall condition and recover it. While the aircraft system designed to prevent the stall by providing early warning. The pilot training and the aircraft system were intended to avoid stall.
The condition of AOA 40° as recorded on the FDR was beyond any airline pilot training competency as they never been trained or experienced."
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Pilawt
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Pilawt
It would seem that the era of pilotless airliners is already here. There are people on the flight deck, but they do not know how to fly.
You're not so far from the truth, and the general public won't be too hard to sell given the ratio of pilot saves to pilot losses. Not too difficult to convince people their chances are better with an extra level of automation and tied all together for autonomous logic processes. The technology is rapidly progressing even on the combat machines; comparatively air carrier ops is a piece of cake.
petrolero
Pattern Altitude
People never know the number of times pilots intervene when a machine gets something wrong. But people know when an airplane crashes.
It's very hard to point to statistics about accidents that never happened so people should be careful about ushering pilots out of the cockpit.
It's very hard to point to statistics about accidents that never happened so people should be careful about ushering pilots out of the cockpit.
Pilawt
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Pilawt
Has anyone looked into the statistics of air carrier loss-of-control accidents, comparing ab-initio-trained crews vs. those with extensive prior G.A. or military experience?
Not sure if anyone has done a major analysis, but when you look, as military trained pilots started providing a smaller and smaller portion of air carrier accidents, the accidents representing gross handling errors has gone up. My suspicion is that more people whose reaction to emergencies is to disconnect are making it into air carrier cockpits. If they go through military training, there is a good chance in that career they were already tested and either washed out or died if they disconnected.
In an emergency what you know and all your training does not even come into play if your brain disconnects and fails to process the situation.
Scrabo
Pattern Altitude
Too much relying on automation these days, hand flying of the big iron seems to be a lost art.
Automation can be good but there are times common sense should prevail.
That's the whole problem, you can't truly screen for pilot reaction without risking their life. Therefor there is no assurance that the pilot will maintain the ability to apply common sense or training. When the human disconnects in a fatal situation, then the situation will become fatal.
Scrabo
Pattern Altitude
Thought that what simulators were for ? Cant these types of scenarios be programmed into them ?
Gubbins
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Thanks for the link to the actual report.
Something that I just cannot come to grips with, is how is it possible for this to happen TWICE, where an airbus crew stalled it all the way from the 300's down to the surface after the AP went into alternate law (which I guess means you actually get the fly the plane yourself without a nanny)? Besides this being the most basic training we all get, surely what happened to AF447 is discussed even more intensely by airbus crews as a case study? And reading the report, WTF is with the PIC telling the SIC four times to "pull down"? Pull down?
Something that I just cannot come to grips with, is how is it possible for this to happen TWICE, where an airbus crew stalled it all the way from the 300's down to the surface after the AP went into alternate law (which I guess means you actually get the fly the plane yourself without a nanny)? Besides this being the most basic training we all get, surely what happened to AF447 is discussed even more intensely by airbus crews as a case study? And reading the report, WTF is with the PIC telling the SIC four times to "pull down"? Pull down?
You can program whatever you want, but until the mind perceives the risk as a true 'fight or flight' and either accelerates or detaches, you can't know.
Can you develop a protocol to trigger this in a class D sim? Maybe, but it's not being researched or considered at present.
TK211X
Pre-takeoff checklist
petrolero
Pattern Altitude
petrolero
Pattern Altitude
The full report is in Indonesian and the English press release was difficult to read as it was not the best translation. But the sense I got was that they had a fault in the RTLU which they had cleared 3 times using the suggestion from the ECAM system but the fault kept occurring (as it turns out because the RTLU had failed). But the airplane was flying along in normal law during all this, ap engaged, happy as a clam.
On the 4th attempt, they pulled the circuit breaker for the FAC and that disengaged the ap and auto throttles and the airplane reverted to alternate law. At that point all hell broke loose. Apparently the rudder deflect 2 degrees and that caused a 54 deg roll. Apparently there was a 9-second delay before any action was taken. This is the egregious part to me. They weren't even paying attention! After that they apparently climbed it at 6000 fpm, stalled it, and then held it in a stall/spin condition to impact.
At the moment they pulled the CB on the FAC was there no one on the controls actually flying the airplane? All the PF would have had to do was maintain straight and level. But it seems neither pilot was actually flying the airplane or they would have noticed the roll immediately and corrected it and, I dare say, none of the subsequent stall/upset business would have happened.
This one is especially shocking because all instruments and flight controls were working normally and yet these pilots managed to crash a perfectly operable airplane.
On the 4th attempt, they pulled the circuit breaker for the FAC and that disengaged the ap and auto throttles and the airplane reverted to alternate law. At that point all hell broke loose. Apparently the rudder deflect 2 degrees and that caused a 54 deg roll. Apparently there was a 9-second delay before any action was taken. This is the egregious part to me. They weren't even paying attention! After that they apparently climbed it at 6000 fpm, stalled it, and then held it in a stall/spin condition to impact.
At the moment they pulled the CB on the FAC was there no one on the controls actually flying the airplane? All the PF would have had to do was maintain straight and level. But it seems neither pilot was actually flying the airplane or they would have noticed the roll immediately and corrected it and, I dare say, none of the subsequent stall/upset business would have happened.
This one is especially shocking because all instruments and flight controls were working normally and yet these pilots managed to crash a perfectly operable airplane.
BigBadLou
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Lou
Not shocking to me as much. Looking back at AF447, Asiana at KSFO etc, it seems to me (feel free to criticize my thoughts) like kids pushing buttons and tugging on joysticks, playing a videogame and when sh*t goes wrong, the one call that is missing from the CVR is "Moooooooooommmmmm?"
Call me callous but that's my take on it.
Now to offer a fix: wouldn't a few VFR hours in a C150 every few months help these guys "get the feel" for how to actually fly an airplane? I am not suggesting putting them through the whole basic PPL training in a 150 but take them back to the basics of flight once in a while to refresh their senses and reflects.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
There is probably more to it than that. I didn't see any CVR transcripts where anyone said, "I have the airplane".
petrolero
Pattern Altitude
While perhaps true-ish, that's not the problem I was getting at. I don't think he was even "ready" - as in not even looking at the instruments. Sorry, anyone with an ATP has the skills to hold any plane - including an Airbus in straight and level cruise - straight and level when there is nothing whatsoever wrong with the flight controls or instrumentation.
I can say that because I am a private pilot and I have done that and much more in a full-blown class-whatever Airbus simulator at the United training center in Denver. So have people without any license - including my wife. Straight and level. Maybe you don't maintain perfect altitude but neither do you crash wildly into the sea.
They weren't even scanning the instruments when they pulled the CB. They did nothing for 9 seconds while the airplane entered an unusual attitude. Maybe the Child of the Magenta Line failed the recovery, but the point is that there needn't have been a recovery in the first place if he'd been on the controls and watching his PFD. That's what is so egregious to me.
Speaking of game controllers, my kids' xbox controller vibrates in certain situations. Why not simply have the airbus stick vibrate if the other side is providing opposite input?
Gubbins
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Well what blows me away is in both this accidents, the two pilots are doing two separate sets of actions (one pushing and the other pulling at various times). I get that the airbus is technologically advanced, and all that, but what kind of idiotic design allows the two pilots to do separate actions without proper feedback on what the other is doing??? It makes me scared as a passenger to be on an airbus. Retarded design if you ask my opinion (which I know you're not but I'm offering it anyway
).
petrolero
Pattern Altitude
Well what blows me away is in both this accidents, the two pilots are doing two separate sets of actions (one pushing and the other pulling at various times). I get that the airbus is technologically advanced, and all that, but what kind of idiotic design allows the two pilots to do separate actions without proper feedback on what the other is doing??? It makes me scared as a passenger to be on an airbus. Retarded design if you ask my opinion (which I know you're not but I'm offering it anyway
True. And agreed. But they apparently did absolutely nothing for 9 seconds right after pulling the CB. That's not opposite controls, that's just two pilots together in a cockpit and neither one is flying the airplane.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
That's why I think it isn't so much that the design allows opposite controls that's the main problem. The bigger problem seems to be there was no one in command.
FIFY.
petrolero
Pattern Altitude
orange
Line Up and Wait
+1
I read something a while back that says that the path to becoming an airline pilot in "developing" countries is not the same as the US. In the US, you first learn on a single piston Cessna or Piper and build hours and go into faster/bigger planes, and at each level you build hours and get the experience, until you get to the point of applying for the airlines.
In poor countries, the availability of flights training, planes, fuel, etc to the general public is very low and cost prohibitive. Therefore airline pilots are recruited from universities. They do their "training" from PPL to ATP in a very short period of time with almost no actual flight experience. There have been instances in Asia where the airline pilots' first flight in a real plane (any airplane) is the airliner with passengers aboard. WTF!!!!! No wonder they can break a stall, they don't know how to if it can't be done with a press of a button.
BigBadLou
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Lou
That's exactly what I was driving at, thanks.
acrophile
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acrophile
That would certainly be disturbing. Do you have a source for that information? I'd like to learn more.
If stall recovery is included in simulator training (which apparently is not always the case), there's no reason for even a simulator-trained pilot to be unable to recover from a stall. Real-world experience may be vital for other aspects of flying, but not that one.
But somehow both the Air France and this crew couldnt recover from a stall???
exncsurfer
Pattern Altitude
All that tech and no audible voice warning 'push, AOA, push, AOA, push' like some of the GA add-ons that i've seen on the you tubes?
but then they'd be looking for the AOA button
??
but then they'd be looking for the AOA button
??
Right, because none of them could think under pressure. As less and less pilots come from military, check hauling, and other jobs that culled the 'disassociative' personalities with regular emergencies, more and more get through the path to an airliner without ever being tested. The majority of Asian pilots get trained here in the US, the only thing that washes you out is running out of money. All training is focused on staying well within the envelope.
petrolero
Pattern Altitude
That's what really gets me... they never needed to depart the envelope in this scenario. When they pulled the CB there was no one home (meaning actively scanning with hand near the sidestick) at all for 9 seconds as the airplane entered that 54 deg bank unusual attitude.
If someone's eye had been on the PFD and their hand on the sidestick it never would have gotten 'unusual' and they wouldn't have been faced with that most death-defying of aerobatic maneuvers... the stall recovery!
9 seconds! One Mississippi... two Mississippi...
I know I'm repeating myself now but it's just that incredible to me.
