You’ve raised several points, and they deserve to be addressed clearly.
How do you know that doesn’t occur?
My $100 surveillance cam at home does a pretty good job at this and one can define where to look for objects as well as what type of objects. My car identifies speed limit signs. Teslas identify everything around them to self drive. Just add a system like this to a $300M plane. The question is why these systems are omitted (fuel quality, smartcams, wrong inputs) in such a plane! This technology has been available for well over 10 years.
So have pilots, and yet there are fewer loss of control incidents and accidents involving airplanes with (software-controlled) envelope protection than without.
What usually fails with age is hardware. Would be interesting to see a Sneak Circuit Analysis https://aldservice.com/What-is-Sneak-Circuit-Analysis.html of the TCMA https://patents.google.com/patent/US6704630B2/en, which can power down both engines when fed certain sensor signals. It's a far-fetched idea, but bear in mind the reported substandard maintenance practices of that airline, the known electrical glitches from a previous flight, and the environmental conditions the day of the accident. I know from experience that a circuit board can fail intermittently shutting down an engine, and then work wonderfully when tested. And if there is a way, over time the electrons will find it. They can fit in the smallest spaces and are always ready to jump at an opportunity.
There's a huge difference between a stationary camera and relatively slow-moving birds and a camera on a plane that flies at a minimum of 150 mph.
HAL was a fictional character. It didn't do anything. HAL was supposedly advanced beyond any AI we currently have. Using HAL as an example doesn't support anything at well; quite the opposite.
It depends on how the software is written. The airline pilots on this board can answer that.
That's right- no one knows what happened; certainly no one here. So these thoughts are as much speculative fiction as 2001: A Space Odyssey until we get more facts.
There are no documented cases of any of this detection tech failing/making mistakes? Would hate to have this super ubiquitous tech that has worked perfectly for the past 10 years incorrectly identify a condition and apply the wrong remediation on an airliner.
I don't know what you do about them in other situations either. Birds move in random directions. Even if you have sensors good enough to identify them what are you gonna do? Jink the airplane because the duck/goose/whatever may be headed where you're headed? Odds are, 5 seconds after the system sees it, the bird won't be where you anticipated, so maybe your jink results in hitting the bird, rather than missing it.
Better than a bengal nightmareliner on none.
We know at least a little more than that. We know the gear never came up. We know it was a full length takeoff. We know the RAT was deployed.
True. It also protects engine limits so procedure is to push the thrust levers forward to the mechanical stops. That will put you right up to the limit. In the old days, that would exceed limits, perhaps significantly.
Here's what I found.
That happens a lot. People get convinced that very unlikely scenarios are true based on a single piece of evidence.
So that’s almost verbatim for the 75/76. Point being, from V1 to 400 AGL (this a/c only made it to about 450 AGL), they might not have even known exactly what was occurring due to the inhibits. Just a “loss of thrust” as reported by the Capt. Difficult to react when you don’t know why something is happening and this may be in some respects what Himalaya (sorry can’t remember his screen name) was alluding to above. The pilots are essentially locked out until the system meets certain software laws. Granted, the engineers probably thought a dual engine failure on takeoff was so unlikely and would be catastrophic anyway and they’d rather just limit the myriad of other distractions that could occur but weren’t time critical until they’re safely configured and away from the ground.
400 feet RA seems to be a standardized number used by a lot of aircraft (not just Boeing) for various systems logic.
Which inhibited EICAS messages would have given them information that could have led to doing something that would have helped?
Because there are very few things that can cause a double engine out, and that's one of them.
We don't have any evidence to support this theory either. FWIW.
Excellent point and very likely came into play.
Larry, thanks for the information. I have not flown airline types of airplanes, but I have flown
I agree with lowering the nose if both engines fail - not many people are bringing that point up.
You don’t even have to disconnect the autothrottles. You can disconnect, or Just push em up. You can always override by just pushing them up. In some modes they’ll return to the previous setting if you let go. Takeoff should have been in thrust hold by 80 kts, meaning they would remain wherever you manually place them.
Most likely lowering the nose at that point would have given them a higher vertical and horizontal speed impact. They were just basically flaring the bird given it had no power.
You don't have to disconnect the A/T. From about 85kts, I don't know the exact logic on the 787, the A/Ts are in HOLD or ARM meaning that they don't move. They stay there until thrust reduction altitude which is generally somewhere between 800' and 1,500'--altitudes that this flight never reached.
One engine failures, too. On the 737, a normal takeoff pitches up to about 15°. If an engine fails, the initial pitch attitude drops to between 7° and 11°, depending on weight. Pitching down, with a loss of thrust, should not be something that has to be thought about.
One would hope that airline pilots already know and don't have to think about it.
Holding the nose up and stalling is not a better option.
You left out Imminent ground contact.
Wow, guess you never use cruise control in your car, God forbid an ADAS system. I'm thinking you would never try a Waymo, and might be more comfortable in an abandoned school bus in a remote region in Alaska. As a longtime semiconductor executive, I can say that well-designed automation has saved countless lives in a myriad of applications. Very few corner cases suggest otherwise. The accident avoidance has kicked in on my Audi a few times and I'm thankful for that. Sounds like a 1970 Ford Pinto with a 3-speed manual is your dream machine. Pinto's definitely preceded HAL.
Any idea if Boeings have stick pushers, and if so can they be manually overridden or are they inhibited below a certain altitude?
I didn't see a stall but I did see an increase in vv down. What would your input be and the resultant vector?
