Air France: Can you say, basic pilot skills?

A: complacency- droning around for months on end with everything working, most notably the autopilot, til it isnt

B: famous french saying-
Take a chance fly Air France

Without the luxery of time, many crews would fair no better

Jmho
 
Rex Kramer said:
The specifics are somewhat different, but the end result is the same. They all crashed perfectly flyable airplanes that had single point air data failures, whether it was blocked pitot probes or static ports. To blame the Air France pilots by saying they lacked basic pilot skills and this is somehow a fault of modern training and they are just system managers not really pilots, which is what a lot of people are doing, is short-sighted.
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I disagree. Crashing a perfectly flyable airplane with only a clogged pitot tube is a training problem.

"How can I prevent that from happening to me?"
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Training.

I'm certainly not calling them idiots. No way. This accident can be used to expose a weakness in the airplane and the training program. Alot of pilots have suggested that the airplane, with all of its complex fly-by-wire systems and different performance modes can become overwhelming. Or it can lead to complacency. Something that needs to be looked at very seriously.
 
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kontiki said:
Taking this recount at face value ->

I really have a hard time accepting that an airplane like the 757-200 with a tripple redundant pitot system could have been brought down by a flipping bug.
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One thing I haven't heard mentioned too much is that when the airplane is flown into a stall using the autopilot, when the autopilot disconnects there is still a lot of nose-up trim. The nose isn't going to fall naturally, it's going to take quite a bit of sustained forward force on the yoke while trimming nose down, all this while being confused about what is going on with the instruments. We're also not talking about 172's here, these are transport category jets which are harder to get out of a stall.
 
iNdigo wrote:
We're also not talking about 172's here, these are transport category jets which are harder to get out of a stall.
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Understood, I don't in any way believe a 757-200 handles much like a 172.

I do know that a 757 is a reasonably modern aircraft. I also expect that in the process of certifying that aircraft Boeing had to do some sort of Failure Effects Mode Analysis. It has 3 pitot tubes, they had to perform an analysis on what happens when 1, 2 and all 3 fail. Different failure modes etc. Every branch of the resulting logic was no doubt formally analyzed.

Sooner or later every machine built by man fails. It's not a question of if something will fail, it's only a question of when, and what redundancy is built in and what alternatives are available when it does.

The determination that a bug jammed up a pitot tube and that it was an event so unforseen and catastrophic that it just caught the entire industry, Boeing, and that flight crew, by surprise and caused everyone on that flight to die; just has my BS meter pegged.

When things don't add up, usually it's for a reason. I suspect that the fact that it's some vague 3rd, 4th hand wiki recount that involved data from a TV show has a lot to do with the surreal conclusion.
 
Late to the discussion, and what I know about the Airbus 330 can be written on a matchbook. But, consider being night IMC, in moderate turbulence, with a complete ADC failure (Air Data Computer provides a synthetic pitot static indications) in an airliner with an autopilot you can't turn off, with auto-throttles that don't move - they stay in a detent, so it's not obvious what the engines are being asked to do, a side stick control on each side of the cockpit that isn't physically connected - that is if one pilot pulls up, the other can't see or feel his stick move. I've been flying airliners for a long time, but I'll admit I might have been confused.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Correct. However, the overall response is typically "They're so stupid, I would've done so much better."

And then, one day, the person quoted as saying such likely ends up dead and in a ditch. And then others will say the same...
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+1.3vso.

It's really pretty interesting to see guys with "PP ASEL" in their signature attempting to Monday morning quarterback a situation that they truly do not understand.

Sure, you're a PP ASEL, congrats. However, being only a PP ASEL, you have never experienced the work load that one can come under in the cockpit of something that carries more weight in luggage than the largest aircraft you've most likely ever flown.

Sometimes, things go wrong and there is a world of "stuff" happening and until you've "been there, done that" or come even close, it's probably better to just not act like you know what you'd do if you were put in that position.

I'd bet dollars to donuts you could take EVERY SINGLE Monday morning PP ASEL quarterback in this thread, put them in a sim of even a slightly complex aircraft and get you so twisted up, so quick, you'd have a completely different view on "stall recovery, it's not just for the regionals anymore.."
 
Well said Belly. It is difficult for these type pilots to understand what must have been going on. I am sure we both agree it should not have happened. However as I said earlier, "But by the grace of God"
 
ronnieh said:
Well said Belly. It is difficult for these type pilots to understand what must have been going on. I am sure we both agree it should not have happened. However as I said earlier, "But by the grace of God"
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I agree with what Belly said too.... BUT.:confused:

You professional pilots who strap your a$$es into the drivers seat of a commercial jetliner should be screaming out loud for Scarebus Industries to rethink their artificial intelligence control system...... To take three supposably qualified airline pilots and render them incapable of rectifying that situation is sad at best and criminal at worst... Just saying....

Ben.
 
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I hope Belly will follow up on this. I know he flys a more sosphisticated aircraft than I do. Also I am pretrty sure he does sim training every 6 months where I do it every 12 months. I am not sure there is training that will guarantee a good outcome when you have multiple systems failure and conflicting info. With FS they do not give you a problem with more than two system failures. Normally a major system and a secondary. Having said that it appears that frozen pitot tubes may have started this whole mess. A case can certainly be made that, that should never happen. I am not sure what system changes needs to be made to insure that never happens again. Perhaps adaquate heat on the pitot tubes? My point in this whole thread is that certainly this situation is unacceptable. I am just not ready to throw the pilots under the bus. If you have never dealt with multiple, sophisticated systems failure while in the soup at night and in turbulence, well one needs to walk in those shoes before throwing too many rocks.
 
Actually Belly I think the last quote about throwing rocks was from me. Anyway I have posted several times on this subject with little progress. Thanks for responding so well. I can not think of anything to add to what you said. BTW, how are you doing, Belly?
 
N801BH said:
I agree with what Belly said too.... BUT.:confused:

You professional pilots who strap your a$$es into the drivers seat of a commercial jetliner should be screaming out loud for Scarebus Industries to rethink their artificial intelligence control system...... To take three supposably qualified airline pilots and render them incapable of rectifying that situation is sad at best and criminal at worst... Just saying....

Ben.
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This had little or nothing to do with the "artificial intelligence control system". These guys were handed bad airspeed indications most likely due to pitot icing (a problem known about on this model prior to the incident IIRC) while IMC, at night and in turbulence. It was a bad situation, but the "control system" responded exactly as the pilots commanded it. In fact, the aircraft remained controllable and recoverable for over four minutes in a deep stall. i figure most pilots would be screaming out loud for Airbus to design control systems for their aircraft that would make them controllable in such extreme situations.

Lack of training and/or confusion is what made them incapable of rectifying this tough situation. Would a majority of other crew have done better? Maybe, maybe not. Stall recovery training is now being emphasized more at the air carriers. The type of aircraft these guys were flying had much less to do with it.
 
ronnieh said:
Is the Air Bus a bad design? Should it be built different? I don't know. Should the pitot tubes not freeze up, for sure! The pilots did not design or build the planes nor the pitot tube heaters. My point was about blaming pilots. I am simply saying if a jet stalls in air that thin with all of the indicators giving false information it is a very bad hand to be dealt. Should the pilots have the training and skills to deal with a situation like that, I don't know. For sure this exact situation did not work out very well.
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The plane is magnificent. Structurally and aerodynamically and the flight control system. That plane flew a perfect falling leaf stall all the way to the deck. In the last minute when the right seater lost control again, the left seater was able to recover it still.

It has HORRIBLE human interface design problems. It is the biggest human interface clusterfu-k I have ever heard of. Whomever had final say and approved the human interface stuff, they should just honorably commit suicide. If you're going to automate an airliner do a proper job of it. That's where the trap doors are. Why did the plane not just switch to AP1 which had a full bank of indications? When the were stalling why didn't one of those damned screens come on with the AOA indication to give the pilot some data? Don't half ass automate and take the pilots information away.
 
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I'll tell you what. From what I saw, I bet I could have recovered from 25 seconds. Can Anyone get some sim in So Fla for me???? Pretty Pretty Pretty Please?
 
maddog52 said:
This had little or nothing to do with the "artificial intelligence control system"...[t]he type of aircraft these guys were flying had much less to do with it.
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So do Boeings have computers that turn off the stall warning at low airspeeds? And are you saying reversed stall warnings would not confuse you, even in IMC with conflicting IAS readings?
 
maddog52 said:
Would a majority of other crew have done better? Maybe, maybe not.
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I don't understand why you would ask this, since reality appears to have asked and answered this question.

Why do you and everyone else who defends these pilots assume that this was the first time that the pitot tubes iced up in an Airbus and presented a flight crew with allegedly confusing signals?

One does not need to even be a pilot to judge the Air France crew if one is shown that similar scenarios yielded a safe outcome all other times.
 
dmspilot said:
So do Boeings have computers that turn off the stall warning at low airspeeds? And are you saying reversed stall warnings would not confuse you, even in IMC with conflicting IAS readings?
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All the faults with that plane itself with the exception of the #2 pitot were inside the cockpit.

The faults were the autopilot, the stall warning system and the pilots.
I'll call the non SVT instrumentation to be an omission that could have been preventative and should be applied as a curative for the pilot issue.

The cause for all three faults was the same. Laziness, didn't want to think too hard or do to much.
 
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BellyUpFish said:
I'd bet dollars to donuts you could take EVERY SINGLE Monday morning PP ASEL quarterback in this thread, put them in a sim of even a slightly complex aircraft and get you so twisted up, so quick, you'd have a completely different view on "stall recovery, it's not just for the regionals anymore.."
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Donuts are another thread.
Haven't watched any football games for the last 15 years.
And don't care about irrelevant sim scenarios involving non-type-rated.

The question you have to answer in order to defend the Air France pilots better than you have (yours boils down to: hey, even a trained professional can make a mistake) is pointing out how and in what manner their pitot icing incident was different from those that had occurred earlier in Airbus incidents that didn't yield accidents.
 
BellyUpFish said:
I'd bet dollars to donuts you could take EVERY SINGLE Monday morning PP ASEL quarterback in this thread, put them in a sim of even a slightly complex aircraft and get you so twisted up, so quick, you'd have a completely different view on "stall recovery, it's not just for the regionals anymore.."
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Not exactly PP ASEL, but I'll take your bet if you can get me in a 330 sim down here. I'm betting on 25 seconds or less from the deck and I can fly it out.
 
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Henning, there would be one important difference. You would know what is happening. If you put me in a sim and I know the scenerio ahead of time I too could likely have a good outcome. Something tells me any of those three pilots could do the same thing. It is entirely different in a real situation if you are getting false information and you are having to sort out what is false. Sometimes it is a little difficult to remember your goal is to drain the pond whan you are up to your azz in alligators. I still think Belly's response is spot on. Just my $.02
 
ronnieh said:
Henning, there would be one important difference. You would know what is happening. If you put me in a sim and I know the scenerio ahead of time I too could likely have a good outcome. Something tells me any of those three pilots could do the same thing. It is entirely different in a real situation if you are getting false information and you are having to sort out what is false. Sometimes it is a little difficult to remember your goal is to drain the pond whan you are up to your azz in alligators. I still think Belly's response is spot on. Just my $.02
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I realize that. There have been claims I have heard that the captain had no chance of being able to recover by the time he got there. I dispute that.

This is strictly about the altitude/time it would take once recovery was initiated.
 
Henning said:
I realize that. There have been claims I have heard that the captain had no chance of being able to recover by the time he got there. I dispute that.

This is strictly about the altitude/time it would take once recovery was initiated.
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I remembe reading that the airplane was responsive to control inputs the whole way down. I took that to mean it was recoverable
 
Renjamin, take of in imc??? Planes do that all the time.

Ya'll believe what you want. Henning if you think you could have resolved that problem in 25 seconds with the exact same info they had and the exact conditions they were in and that it happened unexpectedly, good for you. I do not speak for Belly but like me he has dealt with complex system failures in a training situation and all does not always turn out good.
One boring story, then I am through. On my first recurrent to Flght Safety ( I had already been to initial the year before) we were working on engine out proceedures. I am fortunate the plane I fly is very docile on one engine and performs well. The first day the first sim lesson was on engine out proceedures. I am doing great. If the engine fails after you move the gear handle it is a non event, if everything works as advertised. Gross weight, standard day 650-700 FPM. Trim and turn the AP on if you like. We did the standard stuff including SE go arounds and all went well. Super pilot here. Remember all of this is briefed before you get in the sim. No real surprises. Just practice what you know. Second day was systems failures, engine fires and so on. During the pre take off I was told to do what I do in my plane. Well, I did not check the auto feather. On take off the auto feather armed light comes on as the torque comes up letting you know the auto feather is ready to go. I added power, all was well with the world. I did not notice the auto feather light did not come on. Just as I reached for the gear handle an engine quit. No big deal, establish blue line reach for the gear handle which I did. I was banked into the good engine and blue line plus 5 as I hit the ground about 1/2 mile from the runway!!! My right hand on the power lever getting ready to secure the bad engine and shoot the approach back to the airport. This could not happen, I done everything just as I had done the day before. My mind was on what I was expecting not what was actually happening. I can see the discussion on POA, "he**, if that had been me I could have handled it". After I saw what had happened the instructor smiled and asked me if I learned anything? This is very unlikely to happen in the real world but, it could. Auto feather is very important in some situations. Many mistakes were made on that Air France flight, some by the pilots. Again, be careful throwing rocks.
 
I agree with posters who acknowlege the AF447 problem was not so simple. Clearly there are some experienced pilots here. When something happens in-flight that is completely unexpected, well, expect the unexpected! I also agree that time in a MU-2, Jetstream or Metroliner sim, would counter some of the forum bravado. The last time I crashed a simulator was when the sadistic check airman gave me a hydraulic aileron hard over in an EMB-145. I'm not saying it was violent - but it felt like the sim moved two parking spaces after spinning wildly out of (my) control and crashing. An engine failure in a turboprop with a simultaineous NTS or autocoarsen fail almost garantees a smoking hole nearby. Don't worry about engines,: But the propeller will KILL you.

The question of 'Basic Pilot Skills' is so irrelevant when the aircraft is so layered with synthetic computer programing and fly-by-wire-can't-turn-the-autopilot-off that it's a 300,000lb computer. We all know what computers do: They crash.
 
The question of 'Basic Pilot Skills' is so irrelevant when the aircraft is so layered with synthetic computer programing and fly-by-wire-can't-turn-the-autopilot-off that it's a 300,000lb computer. We all know what computers do: They crash.
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I think Doug is right-on with this.

There are brand new airplanes in service now, that at least one operator does not take the power off for overnight stops. Because maintenence has to spend over an hour clearing known nuisance software faults every time the ship powers up.

That situation even led to the discovery of an entirely new type of fault. This is where a particular system exhibited faults that caused erratic behavior when a unit remained powered for longer than 5 days.

The unit in question meets probably exceeds all current test specifications for that type of unit. In the past there were no requirements to ensure that a computerized black box operate continuously for so long. (I expect that to change.) That one really caught every one off guard. Significant pucker factor there.

Software is one of those things. When the complexity really scales up, 1000s of programmers, over decades, and millions of lines of code, multiple companies in different countries, code that outlives bankrupt companies, it's possible to have so many variables in the equation that it is impossible to generate error free code.

I don't want to sound entirely negative here. There are sucessful strategies for fault tolerant design. People work very hard at it. There is Level A software. Ref -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178B

It's gonna sound kind of stupid, but the folks that wrote Star Trek had it right. In the original version, they never had enough power, it was always the crystal thing. In the Next Generation, it was always the software. The SciFi folks pegged it there.
 
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kontiki said:
There are brand new airplanes in service now, that at least one operator does not take the power off for overnight stops. Because maintenence has to spend over an hour clearing known nuisance software faults every time the ship powers up.
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That's the type of non-root-cause "fix" that should always be avoided unless it's documented as a temporary solution with a hard, committed, written date with monetary prnalties for a software fix for the so-called "nuisance" problems. Bugs are bugs. Fix them.

Plus, there's scenarios where aircraft can lose power in-flight. Do the flight crews also have to clear these nuisance items after a lightning strike?

The troubleshooting is faulty. The response is faulty. As seen in the results, the system was designed to be powered down.

I assume you're talking about life-critical systems. If so, this needs a champion to go hammer home the importance of fixes with the software provider.

Where's FAA on this one? I'm shocked as a system's engineer on things that *cant* kill anyone.
 
denverpilot said:
Where's FAA on this one? I'm shocked as a system's engineer on things that *cant* kill anyone.
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Right in the pockets of those who want things done their way, rather than the way things should be done.

Where is the FAA on 9 out of 10 of the other things that need changed yesterday? Rest rules?
 
BellyUpFish said:
Right in the pockets of those who want things done their way, rather than the way things should be done.

Where is the FAA on 9 out of 10 of the other things that need changed yesterday? Rest rules?
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They're busy exempting the airlines on the new rest rules.

Just like exempting the young FOs from those "they make mostly outstanding book pilots" from those "crack superior 141 academies".....sigh....
 
That's the type of non-root-cause "fix" that should always be avoided unless it's documented as a temporary solution with a hard, committed, written date with monetary prnalties for a software fix for the so-called "nuisance" problems. Bugs are bugs. Fix them.

Plus, there's scenarios where aircraft can lose power in-flight. Do the flight crews also have to clear these nuisance items after a lightning strike?

The troubleshooting is faulty. The response is faulty. As seen in the results, the system was designed to be powered down.

I assume you're talking about life-critical systems. If so, this needs a champion to go hammer home the importance of fixes with the software provider.

Where's FAA on this one? I'm shocked as a system's engineer on things that *cant* kill anyone.
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Nate,

I agree in principle with what you have said.

I'm not going to provide any specifics.

What maintenence practices maintenence departments choose as policy, isn't really an engineering issue. They tend to adjust policy to make the schedule with what ever they are given to work with.

I don't know first hand what the faults are. I don't know what the safety numbers are for total power failure on a fly buy wire aircraft. I don't know that flight critical systems are involved. I can't answer your question on lightning strikes either.

Commercial jets are hit by lightning very frequently. From memory, I believe on the average once a year (or something like that) Usually with minimal consequence.

I'm fairly certain the FAA is fully aware of everything they want to be aware of.
 
Henning said:
It has HORRIBLE human interface design problems. It is the biggest human interface clusterfu-k I have ever heard of. Whomever had final say and approved the human interface stuff, they should just honorably commit suicide......
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Ok Henninig, what in your experience flying the the Airbus specifically makes the interface such a CF and radically different from the Boeing, Lockheed, or Douglas products you've flown? These are some pretty serious pronouncements and I would like some details on why you feel this way.
 
Jim Logajan said:
I don't understand why you would ask this, since reality appears to have asked and answered this question.

Why do you and everyone else who defends these pilots assume that this was the first time that the pitot tubes iced up in an Airbus and presented a flight crew with allegedly confusing signals?

One does not need to even be a pilot to judge the Air France crew if one is shown that similar scenarios yielded a safe outcome all other times.
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I don't know of any incidents where it happened with these same set of extreme conditions. But I'd like to know if there were. I'm not defending these guys. They failed to fly the airplane when they had enough valid information to do so. But I've observed, flown as, instructed, and evaluated enough pilots on large and heavy aircraft to know that how emergencies are handled isn't always simple. Accidents like this aren't caused by any single failure or error. They're caused by a chain of events and circumstances. Placing blame solely on the pilots is wrong. I also don't place the blame mostly on the aircraft as others on this board want to do.
 
dmspilot said:
So do Boeings have computers that turn off the stall warning at low airspeeds? And are you saying reversed stall warnings would not confuse you, even in IMC with conflicting IAS readings?
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Boeings do have computers that inhibit stall warning and certain stall protections under certain circumstances. I haven't had enough time to go through all my old flight manuals to find the inhibit specifications, but I think most were an air/ground logic IIRC.

I'm saying that once I got the initial stall warning, I wouldn't have continued to hold back pressure until the aircraft got 70 or 80 knots below stall speed. And considering that they ignored the stall warning or didn't know how to recover in the first place, even if it had been working the entire time, I don't think they would have done anything different.
 
BellyUpFish said:
I've heard guys who fly the A320 series say that there are some failures the airplane will suffer and it won't even alert you until a given altitude or other parameter is met, so as to let you "continue to fly the plane." ...

You mean like the Fire Warning inhibit on take off until 400 feet RA?. The 757 767 and other Boeing products have this same feature BTW.
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maddog52 said:
You mean like the Fire Warning inhibit on take off until 400 feet RA?. The 757 767 and other Boeing products have this same feature BTW.
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Beech 1900 doesn't have that. Or didn't anyway at the time of this story below.

Wanna see 19 anxious-looking people? Break a fire loop at rotation at night, and turn around to give a big smile to the pax so they don't panic.

Or so I've heard... From a guy who had that happen one night, back when the cockpit door was just a curtain in the 1900 C models.

(Haven't been on a D yet, certainly not since all the 9/11 door stuff. I'm guessing a 1900 door is a pretty flimsy thing but they probably added the keep-rescue-workers-out steel-bar-of-death to it. :dunno: )

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding... Big bright fire T-handle illumination on the overhead.

Friend said it was the widest he'd ever seen 19 pairs of eyes get, all looking at him. :)
 
Do 1900's have doors?

We sported the Kevlar curtain post-9/11.
 
BellyUpFish said:
Do 1900's have doors?

We sported the Kevlar curtain post-9/11.
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Dunno. Teller may be along shortly to clue us in. :)

Back when this story was told, they left the curtain open most of the time. Wasn't much reason to close it.
 
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