Trying to catch up the various ideas since my last post …
Attitude indicator. All airliners have 3. 2 primary & a backup. In modern electronic airplanes like the A330 they’re pictures on LCD screens rather than mechanical gizmos. The current term of art for the LCD-screen style is “PFD” meaning Primary Flight Display. In addition to the raw “Which way is up?” horizon display PFDs will typically also have airspeed, altitude, rate of climb/descent, navigation error values, & a couple other parameters displyed all in one nice easy to interpret schematic.
So assuming no failures of those instruments, the pilots knew whether they were pointed nose up, down, or rolled one wing down or the other. The BEA interim report includes a bunch of values at various times for these parameters. The fact the data recorder was recording reasonable values gives support to the idea that the pilots were probably being shown valid data. If there had been a loss of attitude data displayed to the pilots we’d expect a) they’d say something about it, and b) the BEA interim report would have mentioned them saying something about it.
Language: English is the “official” language of aviation worldwide. But … In most non-English speaking countries most local aviation radio comunication is conducted in the local language.
When local ATC deals with any foriegners, English is the common lingua franca. E.g. When Air France is departing Brazil English is used. So both the pilots & ATC need to speak “Aviation English.” There is a lot of formally internationally standardized terminology to ensure folks understand each other correctly.
This system is far from perfect. It can often be hard to understand a pilot or ATC person whose native language isn’t English. Native English speakers can forget to use textbook perfect phraseology, speak slowly, & enunciate carefully when dealing with non-native speakers. A lot of valuable understanding of the air traffic situation around you can be gleaned from hearing & understanding all the radio chatter directed at planes other than your own. Much of that is lost if multiple languages are spoken. Finally, there have been systemic failures where either the pilots or controllers only knew “Phrasebook English” and had no way to effectively communicate a non-standard message.
I don’t have personal first hand knowledge of this, but everything I’ve ever read indicates most cockpit conversation, including formal things like checklists, is done in the pilot’s local language.
It gets very interesting if the *crew *is not all common language speakers. From the 60s on, much of East Asia big jet flying was done by expat Americans, Brits, Aussies, etc. mixed in with local Japanese, Chinese, or Arab crews. I know a few guys who did that. English was the official cockit language, but … Between the culture gap & the language gap, you can imagine the potential for challenges once things become non-routine.
Having said that, I often fly to the major airports of Mexico. As such I’ve learned to speak carefully, listen carefully, and to understand at least the gist of most of what I hear in Spanish directed at somebody else. I’d fail utterly at trying to speak aviation Spanish though. I bet most of my *compadres *are similarly situated.
As to a “perfectly good” airplane “falling out of the sky”. Not really. Or at least that interpretation hides more than it reveals. I’ve already talked about the fact that a 100% mechanically healthy airplane can be flown *into * several distinct situations it can’t be flown back out of. The one and only cure for these risks is to avoid flying into those situations. Focussing solely on the machine’s mechanical state while ignoring its dynamic state is silly. It takes both to fly.
These guys flew into one of those traps. We know the initiating trigger was loss of all airspeed indications. From the BEA interim report we have some parameters for what happened next. Which gives a lot of partly-informed folks with soap boxes (including me) a basis to say a few things about the big picture of *what *happened. But not the details of *what *nor much of anything about why.
What (IMO) we can say now is that once all the airspeed (& apparently AOA) data became defective, then some as-yet unknown combination of bad luck, bad instant decision making, bad hands-on skill, weather induced turbulence, administrative error on the ground, airplane computer “helping” by actively making things worse, other mechanical issues, etc. caused them to drive, in the space of 15-30 seconds, past the point of no return.
Cabin experience. I have never personally stalled or gotten close to stalling a big jet. But I did talk, not 3 months ago, to one of our pilots who had been through a big jet near-stall while riding as a passenger. This was not on an Airbus, but the general picture will probably apply to an A330.
For whatever combination of reasons, the pilots got slow enough at altitude that the aircraft *almost *stalled. They were in smooth air, not in clouds and it was daytime.
From everything appearing completely normal, there was suddenly agressive short sharp banging turbulence. And mild wing-rock, 10-15 degrees each way. Wing rock doesn’t feel like just a mild S-turn. More like a juddering slap off to the left. Then to the right. etc. For the first few seconds there was gasping from the crowd. About the third time a wing dropped, a few people screamed. At each successive rock the screaming got louder & involved more people.
The aircraft was in a recoverable situation when the problem started and the pilots did the recovery correctly. After about 30 seconds of the above experience and (WAG) 8000 feet of altitude loss (including ears popping a bit), the ride was over.
There was no doubt in my co-worker’s mind that a sizeable fraction of the pax were in fear for their lives. This was a domestic US flight. There was lots of screaming of Jesus! & Oh God! etc.
He said his own reaction was a mixture of “I know what’s going on”, “I know how badly this can end”, “I know these guys ought to be able to recover” and “But if they goofed up enough to get into this situation, how much can I beleive they’ll get back out?” He was real concerned at first (ironically before most of the pax had gotten excited) but as he felt the right pilot reactions happening he became optimistic it would come out OK, even as the rocking got worse.
They changed an awful lot of seat cushions in that airplane. Many people had soiled themselves.
Was the A330 accident exactly like this? Beats me. But I bet it was pretty similar; just 7 or 8 times longer and at night in the weather. Whether the night & weather made it scarier or better since there was nothing to see outside to measure the motion against is an open question.
But I’d bet a paycheck nobody was sound asleep or reading their magazine by the time the ocean arrived. And I only get paid once a month.