One thing that baffles me is how the Airbus control panel designers
could possibly have omitted an indicator to inform the pilots of the
“law” in effect: Normal, Alternate, Abnormal Alternate, or Direct.
Here they are , and they all look at lot different to this non-aviator:
The AF447 crew apparently had no idea they were ever in Alternate Law
until it was too late. That made them assume the 75 “Stall” warnings they
heard in ~15 minutes were false alarms.
My understanding is that there are several indications on the primary flight display that they are in alternate law. I posted an Airbus training oresentation in PDF showing the indications to another thread here, but am unable to search at the moment.
They didn’t. The pilots knew that alternate law was in effect. According to this link
The latter was probably “alternate law; protections lost“. That same link shows recreations of what the pilots saw on one of their screens. This includes “F/CTL ALTN LAW (PROT LOST)”
A guy I know was a gunner on a B-17 over France in 1944 and he and another crewman actually had to kick the bomb load loose from an open bay. The bomb rack mechanism had been shot out and the ship was about to ditch (in friendly territory, thankfully), and you didn’t want those bombs aboard when she ditched.
Thank you for the correction. I misread the account.
So, they were bombing a friendly territory? I wonder about the “thankfully” there.
Something else that struck me from reading the report, which was only mentioned in passing by Popular Mechanics: shortly before the captain went to rest, he and Bonin discussed the option of climbing to escape the worst of the weather. This hadn’t been possible because the REC MAX was lower than expected, and the captain told Bonin they should wait a bit. A few minutes later Bonin mentions the rising REC MAX – he seems to be eager to get into a climb as soon as possible.
So climbing may have been on Bonin’s mind when the pitot tubes iced over. I wonder whether this preoccupation may have contributed to his pulling back on the stick as soon as the AP disengaged.
It certainly couldn’t have helped that the stall warnings coincided with every partial recovery of the aircraft. The warnings occurred when the stick was allowed to move forward… this would likely only have reinforced Bonin’s pitch-up behaviour.
I’m a former student pilot who hasn’t flown since 2003. I don’t understand how the pilot could keep pulling back on the stick without understanding he could put the plane into a stall. Given that they didn’t have good visability, they would have been flying via IFR (instrument flight rules), so they should have only been relying on their instruments. With the speed indicator in question, the pilot should have focused on his altitude, vertical velocity and pitch control. Constant altitude should have been the goal.
What elevation did they have when they first got stall warnings? In other words (I am not a pilot or pilot student), how many feet did they have from beginning to ground level to think “Screw the instruments I need to nose down to get out of this stall”? How many feet elevation does a plane that size/glide ratio need before they run out of altitude and nosing down won’t help and it’s too late?
Excuse my ignorance if my terminology is terrible, I hope my question makes sense. This accident is pretty fascinating.
The real stall issue began at around 38,000’ - after the loss of airspeed indication was followed by a steep climb that resulted in a significant loss of airspeed.
They would have needed at least a few thousand feet. The situation was probably recoverable until perhaps 20-30 seconds before impact (IOW, for more than three minutes after the loss of airspeed indication).
Crazy, you would think that when their envelope of elevation to try nosing down before crashing was near, they would stop trying the same thing and nose down for their last chance. But again I admit I have no idea what I’m talking about so I’m probably missing something.
Indeed, you’d think they’d try that reasonably early in the game, given all sorts of warnings of “Stall!” and no joy from what they were doing.
But it’s clear they had little to no awareness of the plane’s true situation. And the fact that the stall warning would shut off when they were really slow, then start again on a small increase in airspeed gives a plausible - though deeply troubling - explanation for what they did and didn’t do.
There was a stall warning before this but it was a false positive caused by a bad airspeed reading. The copilots responded inappropriately and caused the “real stall” a minute or so later at 38,000 feet. Around this time the airspeed indicators began to agree again. As they descended in a stall and continued making inappropriate inputs, they alternately received warnings that were true positives and false negatives (no warning, due to high angle of attack), for a full three minutes. Apparently they ignored them.
So they had three minutes and about 30,000 feet to recover the aircraft by pitching down and gaining airspeed. Instead they pointed it up, turning it into a flightless tube, and hit the water at about 160 ft/second.
I think it doesn’t help that the sticks are independent. The more experienced co-pilot was probably not aware (or not properly aware) of the fact that the other stick was being pulled back the whole time. So he had unreliable outputs and insufficient feedback on the state of the inputs as well.
I experienced my first stall at around 20 hours and my first spin at about 20.2 hours in the same flight just so my instructor could instill in me that sometimes in flying you don’t think, you don’t rely on your instruments… you hear the horn you push on the stick and turn into the spin with opposite rudder. I have to say I was scared witless the first few times but that’s the MOST IMPORTANT TIME when you rely on training and experience.
After reading this it now scares me to think about handing my life over to what seem to be NINTENDO pilots who are now taking responsibility for the lives if the flying public.
Is he an Ass… yes, for TAKING a job like that without the required experience. I WON’T fly on the airbus 3xx series again. The plane CAN’T FLY ITSELF despite airbus’ contention and You just can’t know who’s at the controls any more.
AN ATP rating with just over 1,000 hours? what is the world coming to?
A. Renner
You should avoid flying with all airlines and all aircraft types then. None of the planes fly themselves and every company has junior pilots.
Where do you get that from? The most junior pilot had just short of 3000 hours and didn’t have an ATP yet which is not unusual as he doesn’t need it until he becomes a captain. On paper his experience is fine.