Children of the Flight Director

narchee

narchee

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Long Blinker
I was just reading an article on the Air France disaster that put forward the idea that the PF was mindlessly following the Flight Director that was commanding him to pitch up because it was trying to get him back up to the set altitude without any regard to stalling.


http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-n...ishly-followed-flight-director-pitch-commands

I'm personally not really a big fan of using Flight Directors mainly because I never really have and it kind of seems more like a mindless computer game to be trying to do exactly what it tells you to do. But last week I did an IPC and the CFII I flew with absolutely insisted that I use it throughout. I gave it a good shot and admit that it has its good points as well as bad points. So I get that it simplifies the scan since once you've set it up you're really got your eyes fixed on only one area but I couldn't help but feel that I prefer to do a full scan myself and that it can be too easy to follow idiotic instructions like this Air France pilot did if you rely too much on that stuff.

How many of you use the Flight Director if you have it? I've always just turned it off myself almost immediately.
 
Flight Director is basically an autopilot with carbon-based servos.
 
I am a big fan of FD but clearly you must always understand what it is doing and how the modes are set up, as everything else on the aircraft it is subject to garbage-in, garbage-out rule. If you have a tunnel vision and follow FD like a slave with no regard what else is happening - you should not use it, you should probably also stop flying IFR.

Want to see a real benefit of FD - try to fly ILS to minimums and compare with using raw signals alone and tell me which one is easier.
 
narchee said:
I was just reading an article on the Air France disaster that put forward the idea that the PF was mindlessly following the Flight Director that was commanding him to pitch up because it was trying to get him back up to the set altitude without any regard to stalling.


http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-n...ishly-followed-flight-director-pitch-commands

I'm personally not really a big fan of using Flight Directors mainly because I never really have and it kind of seems more like a mindless computer game to be trying to do exactly what it tells you to do. But last week I did an IPC and the CFII I flew with absolutely insisted that I use it throughout. I gave it a good shot and admit that it has its good points as well as bad points. So I get that it simplifies the scan since once you've set it up you're really got your eyes fixed on only one area but I couldn't help but feel that I prefer to do a full scan myself and that it can be too easy to follow idiotic instructions like this Air France pilot did if you rely too much on that stuff.

How many of you use the Flight Director if you have it? I've always just turned it off myself almost immediately.
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I fly a plane with a FD for work, you just have to understand how it work, what it does and doesn't do.

Our FD could careless about a stall, it's a simple navigator, "pilot dude, you need to go left, and climb to get back on the yellow brick road".

I have a couple nice buttons on my yoke that will terminate all that automation in a second, when **** gets real, kill the automation and fly the plane.

In ice I'll also kill the automation (minus the FD) and feel the plane.

Again, the FD is just a navigator, understand that and those bars will just be a workload reducer, nothing more.
 
James331 said:
I fly a plane with a FD for work, you just have to understand how it work, what it does and doesn't do.

Our FD could careless about a stall, it's a simple navigator, "pilot dude, you need to go left, and climb to get back on the yellow brick road".

I have a couple nice buttons on my yoke that will terminate all that automation in a second, when **** gets real, kill the automation and fly the plane.

In ice I'll also kill the automation (minus the FD) and feel the plane.

Again, the FD is just a navigator, understand that and those bars will just be a workload reducer, nothing more.
Click to expand...

This is pretty much the bottom line. The FD is a tool, just like anything else, and in no way is it there to replace any part of your scan.
 
kayoh190 said:
This is pretty much the bottom line. The FD is a tool, just like anything else, and in no way is it there to replace any part of your scan.
Click to expand...

Plus in most planes with FDs, you'll have buzzers, stick shakers, stick pushers, AOAs, all yelling at you if you start to stall.
 
James331 said:
Plus in most planes with FDs, you'll have buzzers, stick shakers, stick pushers, AOAs, all yelling at you if you start to stall.
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You mean like C182s?

Once 182 I fly, G1000 with the GFC700 autopilot, has a flight director integrated.
 
To me a FD is a lot like an HSI, you don't know how good it is to have one, until you've had one! :D Then you really miss it when it's gone! :mad2:
 
Bobanna said:
This sounds like a reactive approach to controlled flight, rather than an established and stabilized profile supported by an active scan. By the time the warning systems activate, the profile has become dangerous and requires aggressive corrections. I would fail any examinee who ever got close to letting systems "yell" and prompt corrections in a critical phase of flight.
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What I was saying was to fly the bars into a stall your have to be ignoring most of your other instruments, the horns, shaker, then pusher. That would be some hardcore fixation on the FD.
 
When I was flying the Cheyenne and the Commander, the boss insisted I use the FD. I could see its benefits, but I didn't find it to be all that great. What I saw as the primary trap with it was that you could very easily just fly that and ignore everything else.
 
narchee said:
I was just reading an article on the Air France disaster that put forward the idea that the PF was mindlessly following the Flight Director that was commanding him to pitch up because it was trying to get him back up to the set altitude without any regard to stalling.
Click to expand...

Isn't that what happened with the Colgan crash? Plane stalled and captain pulled the nose up even when the stick-shaker went berserk?
 
narchee said:
I was just reading an article on the Air France disaster that put forward the idea that the PF was mindlessly following the Flight Director that was commanding him to pitch up because it was trying to get him back up to the set altitude without any regard to stalling.
Click to expand...
I don't know the specifics of the Airbus, I've flown Douglas, Boeing and Bombardier, On AF447 the autopilot disconnected due to the loss of valid airspeed data to the air-data computer (ADC). In the airplanes that I've flown, the loss of valid ADC data would also disconnect the flight director (FD) as the FD works from the same data inputs as the AP.

Unless the report says otherwise, I would assume that they had only raw data--no FD--after the AP disconnected.
 
warthog1984 said:
Isn't that what happened with the Colgan crash? Plane stalled and captain pulled the nose up even when the stick-shaker went berserk?
Click to expand...
Nowhere in the final report there is a hint that pilot kept pulling the nose in response to the Flight Director commands.
 
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