Seems most unlikely, given that there were multiple instruments (altimeters, vertical speed indicator) indicating a rapid descent. There’s also the Captain’s statement: “Putain, on va taper… C’est pas vrai!” ("Damn, we’re going to crash… This can’t be real! ")
This seems badly wrong. In addition to the instrument mentioned above, the angle-of-attack indicator would have been far from normal. And the pilots were saying (in alarmed voices) “What the hell is happening?”, “We’ve totally lost control of the airplane!”, etc.
How is pulling back on the stick an appropriate reaction to a stall warning?
(I agree that a person who knows little about flying could be excused for thinking that if a certain action - in this case, relaxing back pressure - causes an alarm to sound, it might be correct to countermand that action.)
Well, that pilot at one point said “But I’ve had the stick back the whole time!”.
Do you feel it’s appropriate to place in quotes something I never said?
Though spectacularly wrong, it may not be as bizarre as it seems.
According to an A330 pilot I spoke to, when the plane is in “normal law” (full autopilot mode), holding the stick full back causes the plane to climb to and then cruise at the maximum altitude it can safely reach while maintaining proper engine thrust and a safe angle of attack. This is known as “alpha floor”.
This protection is not available in “alternate law”, which is the autopilot mode that AF447 went to when the pitot problem happened. This change of modes was announced to the pilots, and they were (obviously) supposed to know what it meant. But Bonin plausibly didn’t understand, and thus may have thought that his “hold the stick full back” scheme would produce a good result.
It’s deeply strange that he would persist with this, when it clearly was not producing anything like the desired result.
Can I just say how bizarre it is, the advice given at several points in this thread, boiling down to “Why be scared? There’s nothing you can do about it anyway.”
Uh, total helplessness coupled with complete uncertainty is, like, probably one of the best reasons to be scared.
Va is the speed below which you can apply one single full control input as rapidly as you like, to the stop, in one direction only, and then release the control input back to neutral and you won’t stress the aircraft. So rudder only, aileron only, or elevator only. If you are applying more than one control at the same time even if it is all of one and a little bit of another, you are not protected by Va. If you apply one control rapidly in opposite directions you are not protected by Va. All this means is if you are going to do stuff that is not protected by Va then be smooth and use only what you have to, after all, everything you do at speeds above Va is obviously not protected by Va but we can stay within the design limits by being gentle and having a bit of feeling for the aeroplane. I’d be willing to bet that the Gimli Glider pilot was only using one control, if any, to maximum deflection (the rudder) and that he did it smoothly and didn’t waggle the heck out of the controls.
Yes I suppose if you are used to using rudder to help pick up a wing in an unusual attitude/jet upset then it may be a hard habit to break, but it is the job of the pilot to fly properly and their trainer to train them properly. We get paid pretty good money so that we don’t break aeroplanes.
As I said before, the control movement was restricted by design and the Va speed was appropriate. The pilot simply did things that were not protected by Va and would not be protected by Va in any aeroplane.
By using alternating rudder inputs, the sideslip angle and associated stress on the fin was increased with each successive input so that while the initial rudder application only produced a sideslip angle of 4-5º, by the last rudder application it had increased to 11-12º. The alternating rudder inputs were able to produce a much greater stress on the fin than the single rudder input that Va gives protection against.
Something that I hadn’t touched on yet was that he was also simultaneously using full control wheel deflections in sync with the rudder. So full left rudder and aileron followed by full right rudder and aileron, then left, and right again.
Well again, it’s not the rapid rudder movement that caused the problem. The aeroplane was perfectly capable of handling a single application of full ruder while below Va. It was the series of alternating inputs that ultimately overloaded the aeroplane.
An engine failure is quite different. It is the actual failure of the engine that produces the initial yaw and failure of an engine can’t produce a swing anywhere near as abrupt as application of rudder. After the engine has failed, you use rudder to straighten the aeroplane up and relieve the stress from the sideslip angle (and more importantly reduce drag and improve your climb performance.) So the engine failure scenario does not involve a “tremendous amount of stress” because, for one the swing due to a failure is not as great as the swing caused by application of rudder, and once rudder is used to correct the swing, the stresses are mainly gone. It is not the constant rudder angle that causes the stress it is the sideslip angle causing a side load on the fin, so if you use enough rudder to get the aeroplane flying straight then the side loads on the fin are minimal.
Another factor is that the faster you are going, the more of a stabilising effect the fin itself has so the engine failure causes even less yaw and the rudder needed to correct it is less. The only time you need full application of rudder is when you are very slow with a very high power setting such as just after take-off. At this time you are well away from your Va speed.
Thanks. I find the response by some of the piloting community to this accident a bit annoying because there is a tendency, particularly among American pilots who have a bit of a Boeing bias, to lay the blame solely at the manufacturers feet. In doing this they miss the very important lesson that we didn’t understand Va properly and that any aeroplane mishandled in this way could fall apart.
All I want is for the piloting community to learn the lessons of this accident. Don’t use full alternating control inputs at any speed, and don’t use simultaneous full control inputs from more than one control, regardless of what aeroplane you are in. If all you take away from it is “don’t fly in an A300-600” then you’ve missed the point.
If you think about it, the way we misunderstood Va, we should have thought that a snap roll would be an acceptable manoeuvre in a passenger jet from a structural point of view. A snap roll involves full application of rudder and back elevator at the same time which induces a high speed stall coupled with rotation around the longitudinal axis. We didn’t think that because although we misunderstood Va we recognised that taking it to it’s full conclusion would be ridiculous. But what about light aircraft? The truth is that unless your aircraft is specifically approved for aerobatic maneouvres like that, the Va speed does not protect you and they are not safe to perform.
Of course some aircraft may have a larger structural margin over the design requirements and you may get away with inducing greater stresses than it was designed for, but even so you become a test pilot if you choose to explore outside the design envelope. If things go wrong you or your friends and family can’t point the finger at the designer, you are on your own.
Since most of post #84’s complaint about American pilots (IMO) is aimed at me I want to again ask why the training of new pilots is so inadequate & misinformed?
I make no claims about how to fly big iron.
Richard P, where were you trained for your first flying rating if it is not too personal? Most importantly, when were you first told about the limits of VA?
Why was I not taught that? A failure by the FAA guide lines?
Superior training by other countries?
Not being a jerk here, I want to know where & when this is taught.
I would also ask again how long does long does it take to retrain your strongest, oldest fright reaction so that in as near a ‘zero time to think’, situation can be changed?
An example for non pilots:
I grew up on standard transmissions and drove them for maybe 90% of the time for 15-20 years before I drove more automatics on a daily basis. It has taken me almost 40 years to learn to refrain from trying to press the clutch pedal in a zero time to think incident.
To this day, I bet I would hit the non-extant clutch pedal 50% of the time under those conditions.
Of course I know it is not life or death if I do that. But in say, multi-engine takeoff training, if you are past the point of no return, I was never in a real incident afforded the time to think, “My, how strange, what ever shall I do now?” I had to have that response drilled into my head, that plan in my pocket, ready to go instantly or I & my passengers, if any would die without immediate & correct responses on my part.
So, how should I gain the proper habits for each plane that I fly, sometimes 3 different types in one day, and have that much ability in all three for just that day? Who is going to pay for that much flight or simulator time.
Due to this opinion of mine, either all pilot training should be revamped NOW or the lessons we have learned about human reactions & abilities that have been built into systems like airline cockpits should not be so different from the training received.
Remember Cessna’s bo bo with the 175 when it first came out?
Switching the positions of the carb heat & mixture controls did not workout so well.
What about pilots trained in small twins other than Beech Barons and after hundreds of hours of multi-time in other twins they need to fly the Baron. If things get hinky in the first hours, those ingrained habits can cause a lot of grief. ( switched engine controls )
Maybe you can make those transitions but I could not do it in the first flights. Now I know that you don’t just hop around in types in the big iron business as much but in most aircraft flying that is not military or airline, most cannot affords the time & expense of the luxury in training & time to relearn that you get in your job.
So, since the aircraft makers do not have any responsibility to build aircraft that have do not have inputs possible that will break them, then why are they, the governments, the instructors not making serious changes to the training programs.
IMO, making a aircraft that is different from all others in the manner that the Beech Baron is, is irresponsible. There is no physical reason to do so.
A totally safe aircraft can not be made, I know that but the ease at which big aircraft can be destroyed by actions that not are trained from a pilots first introduction to aircraft control is a big fail by someone.
Even when I got my instructors rating, I never heard of this. That is just wrong. This VA definition MUST be known world wide & so taught.
To say that it is the pilots responsibility, ( although that is the cost of being pilot in command which is one of the pluses in my book, no way to pass the buck, ) why is the whole industry not working to fix this problem?
Control sticks not connected & the system & averages & the stick positions which are hard to see & no feed back; but hey we have this little light over here out of the way that will tell you if this MAJOR problem is going on.
I personally would not say that missing that in an 1 in a million situation was all about poor piloting or training.
I wonder how pilot training would improve or get worst if, ( Can’t have an actual crash as the penalty for ‘oops’ but if there was an actual physical pain price that would last say for 24 hours, each time they crash the aircraft in a situation that they SHOULD handle. Maybe simulator time would do much better at making pilots that really want to get it right every time. )
Ya, Ya, I know but we have to make the pilots better because we are not making the planes better for the pilot, just more complicated & confusing. Just like Ford & Chevy, they won’t even make the number of lug nuts the same. This attitude does not serve the public in any meaningful way that I can see.
You are teaching this old pilot some new ‘to me’ stuff so please continue explaining these things to me, because I do care about pilots & aviation & don’t want to be a dumb ass. Other things, not so much, I know lots of wrong stuff. Just don’t want to about flying.
Thanks for any & all replies.
You won’t hurt my feelings. ( well, unless you go all snarky on me. )
As RP pointed out, jet airliners are not the same as small aircraft. I have a center spar/post in my vertical stabilizer. Looking at videos of how large aircraft are built I’m seeing variations of the same design as the A300. They’re basically bolted on the fuselage.
Well it wasn’t aimed specifically at you but you probably fall into the group. I was trained at a little flight school in New Zealand called Mainland Air, but I learned the incorrect version of Va as well. My gripe isn’t that Americans don’t know what Va really is, it’s that once there was an accident and it comes out that Va has been taught incorrectly around the world, there seems to persist a fairly large group of pilots who blame the aircraft in total and who feel it wouldn’t happen in a Boeing while Boeing themselves admit this isn’t correct.
As an example, there was a recent thread over on PPRuNe bemoaning the fact that the FAA had redefined Va in light of the AA587 accident. The originating post is below:
Various other pilots chime in with very similar misunderstandings to what Magiver had, ie that the rudder travel wasn’t limited at higher speed and that a single hard application of rudder was enough to break the aeroplane. There was at least one who didn’t even believe the pilot could’ve waggled the rudder because if he had the captain would have stopped him, it was all a big conspiracy. They were outnumbered, but some of them are reasonably well respected posters on the board, it would be nice if they actually learned from other people’s mistakes.
I haven’t been taught anything about Va since my initial training. It’s not really something I think about, I don’t think to myself “I’m below Va now so I can do what I like to the controls”. Apart from when performing aerobatics I don’t think I’ve ever made control inputs that required the speed to be below Va.
You probably won’t retrain it unless you spend time in a simulator actively practicing. I hate to say this because I’ve always prided myself on flying in balance and using the rudder properly but in a jet a lot of the time you’re best to keep your feet flat on the floor. Then at least it takes a deliberate movement to put them on the pedals by which time you will have had a chance to decide whether you really need them or not rather than instinctively belting out some full deflections. In the BAe146 at least, you can control an engine failure after take-off using just aileron, once you’ve got the wings level and pitch at 10º which will give you something very close to your engine out climb speed, you can introduce enough rudder to neutralise the ailerons. (I’m not suggesting you should keep your feet off the pedals during take-off, just that immediate rudder use isn’t necessary for an engine failure.)
I used to find, when I did fly multiple types in a day, that it was easier to move from aircraft to aircraft when doing it all the time compared to flying one type for a month then doing a couple of days in another type. That said, there are things you can do to make flying different types easier.
I’m sure you’ve come across people who have a set of catch-all light aircraft checks that will include undercarriage, mixture, prop, carb heat, etc regardless of whether or not the aeroplane they are in at the time actually has these. I was getting an annual check in a Tiger Moth once and the checker wanted to hear me rattle off a whole heap of mental checks even though only 10% of them were fitted to the aircraft.
If you commute to work in a C172 and then fly an A300 or something, when you are thinking about what to do if you encounter wake turbulence, mentally train yourself to apply aileron first and only after you have full aileron and are unable to get the wings level apply enough rudder to help out. That will work in both types and will work any aeroplane.
Well the FAA have been trying to get the message across regarding Va but as evidenced by that PPRuNe thread, some don’t want to listen.
On the broader subject of differences between aircraft types, airliners are different enough that, although many schools try, it is difficult to train to fly them while you are really flying a light twin.
Some examples.
In aeroplanes in general the combination of attitude and power will give you an outcome in terms of performance. On approach to land, if you are low you will need to raise the nose a bit and increase the power, if you are high you will need to do the opposite. There is sometimes fierce debate among those with not much better to do over whether, while on approach, you control speed with the elevator and descent rate with the power or vice versa. Everyone knows that ultimately they go hand in hand, but on an under powered light training aircraft you will tend to see quicker corrections to speed if you use the elevator for the initial correction and then use power fix the glide path. On a large aircraft with lots of power though, the massive amount of inertia in the aeroplane means that pitching for airspeed doesn’t work very effectively because a small change in pitch results in a large flightpath deviation but only a minor change in speed. You get a much better result by just pointing the aeroplane where you want it to go and controlling the speed with engine thrust.
Some flight schools train the big aeroplane technique in small aeroplanes even though it’s not appropriate for the small aeroplane. Other schools just train you to fly what you are flying and leave the differences to who ever trains you to fly the big stuff.
Doing your multi-engine rating. As you know, in a piston engined twin performance is marginal at the best of times and you need to get the failed engine’s prop feathered without delay. However in a turbo-prop all you need to do is confirm the auto-feather system has worked correctly and in a jet you don’t have to do anything at all, just keep it flying straight, wait until you are at a safe altitude, engage the autopilot and carry out the drills at your leisure. Now you can’t train the jet way in a light twin because it just doesn’t work. The aircraft types are too far removed.
There are other things. Jets don’t stall the same way. Swept wing aircraft tend not to have the pre-stall buffet we were trained to look for so they have stick shakers to mimic it, they don’t naturally pitch down at the stall so they have stick pushers that mimic that as well.
I know. I did my multi-engine IFR training in a Baron then went straight on to my first twin job in a BN2 Islander that has conventional engine controls and fixed undercarriage. And shortly after I started flying an Aero Commander, so back to retractable gear.
Correct. Although you might be surprised at the differences that can be present in a fleet of supposedly similar aircraft. Our BAe146s and Avro RJs all require just one type rating (the RJ is an update on the 146 that has an autopilot that works properly and an autothrottle) but there are many differences. Not just between the 146 and RJ but between the individual aircraft. There are five different service ceilings across the fleet, four different types of passenger oxygen system, five different sets of speed limitations, three different pressurisation systems, three different GPS/navigation units, there are different models of weather radar, and it goes on. We have a section in our company manuals dedicated to the differences between individual aircraft. It starts with a mythical “standard fleet aircraft” and then lists each difference for the rest of them. The thing is there are only a couple out of the entire fleet that conform to the fleet standard.
What you have to realise in that situation then is that there is too much to know and you can’t know it all. The Dash 8 was the biggest aeroplane that I knew properly. I now have to be content with knowing several “memory item” drills and enough about the systems so that I can operate them and can diagnose a problem accurately enough to be able to choose the right emergency checklist. We’ve got no hydraulic fluid and no hydraulic pressure, should we use the low pressure or low quantity checklist? Do we have an electrical failure AND an engine failure or an electrical failure caused by the engine failure? My sim buddy for the initial training kept announcing that we had an electrical caution when what we actually had was an engine failure.
Every aeroplane in our fleet has different airspeed limits for flap/gear/Vmo/Vturb etc. So I don’t try and remember it all, each aircraft has a placard beside each pilot and if I hop into one I haven’t flown for a while I check the placard and brief myself on the limitations.
In some cases you can go down the commonality route. If the flap speed in one is 210 knots and the flap speed in another is 220 knots then if you only ever call for flap below 210 knots you won’t get into trouble. That doesn’t always work though because the difference in some of the speeds means you could get too slow in one aircraft in an effort to stay below the max flap speed for the other aircraft.
To get back to your question. I would suggest that the number of situations where you truly have to act NOW without hesitation is small. In almost all cases the first thing you should do when faced with a problem is nothing, sit on your hands for a few seconds and have a think about what the problem really is and what you need to do. I see far more problems in the simulator caused by doing the wrong thing straight away than by doing the right thing after a bit of a delay. So most of the time you should have time to over-ride any old habits that might rear their ugly heads when you don’t want them to.
For the times when you do have to react immediately, you can mentally train yourself to do things, it costs nothing. Sit alone somewhere, close your eyes and mentally go through a flight or phase of flight and rehearse any normal or abnormal sequences you want to practice. Or you can verbalise it as part of a brief either to yourself or to the other pilot if you are multi-crew.
Unfortunately for the AA587 pilot, he was trained to pretty much do the wrong thing, and trained recently. It wasn’t a case of old habits dying hard. Still he was an outlier, another captain had experienced wake turbulence with the accident pilot on a previous occasion and felt that he had reacted “aggressively”.
A combination of a ham-fisted pilot AND inadequate training AND a sensitive rudder system, not good.
The quote from PPRuNe earlier comes from someone who’d recently received the word that our understanding of Va had been wrong. But what is his reaction to it? He doesn’t take it as useful information, he takes it as evidence that Airbus have influenced the FAA so that Airbus isn’t seen to be at fault. To paraphrase, it was the aeroplane not the pilot, the aeroplane was a bad design, I can keep doing what I always have.
Yeah it is silly. I think later versions of the Baron had the controls back the normal way didn’t they?
I think it did, in the slow way industries do anything. There would have been bulletins and briefings, and those who are interested would have read the bulletins and attended the briefings. it’s probably a bit like a CRM course though, those who need it most aren’t the type to take it seriously.
I remember there was discussion after the Colgan Dash 8 accident about how we train stall recovery. I then attend the BAe146 course and get trained to recover from a stall pretty much the way we’d just decided had contributed to the Dash 8 crash. Sometimes the message gets through, sometimes it doesn’t.
Yeah I don’t have much to say about the AF447 accident. The FBW Airbus family were originally designed to be easier to fly but by removing one set of errors and accident causes you often introduce another set that no one is quite ready for. I’m a bit dubious about things like “lane assist” and adaptive cruise control in cars for this reason.
It might make it easier to weed out the bad pilots! Unfortunately mediocrity is tolerated in the industry because it doesn’t normally have any negative effects. We have a pilot in our company who is hoping to get the next command at our base, but he is a struggler and will always be a struggler. To him a good check is one where he gets average scores, a normal check is one where he has to repeat things. Although I like the guy on a personal level I really hope they don’t make hime a captain because he just doesn’t have it.
You keep misrepresenting what I said or at least tried to convey. It is my contention that the plane design should have sufficient limited deflection tied to the speeds operated. I know I wasn’t clear enough on earlier postings. I say this because Va as you defined it doesn’t provide the information needed to operate the plane. What speed CAN you deflect the rudder back and forth. The reciprocal of that question is what number of degrees can be used back and forth given a specific speed.
Going back to the 767 that was slipped on final, that involved 2 control surfaces hard against each other at the same time. I expect the plane to be able to do this and if it can’t then the limits should be adjusted accordingly.
IMO, training on aircraft should include a solid knowledge of the structural design and what kind of stresses can be induced on them.
And I keep telling you that it does. Just like every other aeroplane that needs it. The faster you fly the A300, the lower the amount of rudder deflection available. And that is fine provided you respect the design definition of Va rather than the one we were all taught.
You can’t, ever! There is no speed that you can waggle the rudder full deflection back and forward, when would you ever need to? Why would you ever want to?
None. Why would you be waggling the rudder?
Cite that both controls were full deflection please? And even if it was, the A300 pilot used both controls to full deflection in alternating directions several times. It wasn’t someone easing into a side slip using the aileron and rudder they felt necessary to achieve the result they wanted, it was control wheel and rudder full one way WHACK!, full the other way WHACK!, again WHACK!, and once more WHACK! then, and only then did the stresses get high enough to break the aeroplane. It also wasn’t done at approach speed, it was done at 250 knots.
Definitely. Which is why flight manuals now, at least, warn against using alternating control inputs.
Here is the Va description from the Avro RJ operating manual:
That is all the information needed to operate the aircraft. If you need more information then you are doing it wrong. I would suggest that the Gimli Glider wasn’t protected by Va either at the time, but he wasn’t being anywhere near as vicious with it as the AA587 pilot.
Jesus RP I understand this. That’s not what I said. if the tail is coming off then the limits need to be changed.
I’m sorry but that’s pure nonsense. And the reason you want to is to keep the plane level in conjunction with the ailerons. It’s pretty easy to understand that the A300 in this case had too much rudder travel and that opposite rudder was induced to correct the situation. Did it occur to you that the lack of using the rudder by pilots is a loss of skill. If the plane is mixing the controls automatically then there are obviously engineered limits to this function. If the automated mixing doesn’t fix the problem and additional input stresses the plane to failure then there’s an engineering problem in search of a solution. Based on what you’ve said there is no reason to use the rudder pedals. Fine. remove them.
I can’t beyond the criteria for which it was done.
You’re deliberately misrepresenting a slip as something eased into and full rudder deflection as something mechanically violent. Both maneuvers put lateral stress against the mounting points (absent a spar). It’s a definable, measurable level of force and not a suggestion not to do something. It’s also something that can be plotted on a scale and engineered to compensate for.
According to that a 767 should not be able to side slip. Yet it can.
No. Once again every other airliner has the same restriction. If the limit needs changing on the A300 then it needs changing on every other passenger jet as well. You cannot use full alternating rudder. Did you read Boeing’s article on their own aircraft? Do you understand why alternating full and abrupt rudder inputs put the side loads on the fin beyond the design limit?
Do you understand that the A300 is a conventional jet and that its yaw damper and rudder setup is just the same as many other passenger jets? I get the impression from what you say above that you think it’s fitted with Airbus style “take the pilot out of the aeroplane” technology. It isn’t. It is not fly by wire, the rudder system is not unique, and the yaw damper is not unique.
Do you understand what a yaw damper is and why it is fitted?
A passenger jet is not a light aircraft and you don’t fly it like a light aircraft. You don’t use the rudder to coordinate turns the way you do in light aircraft. You certainly don’t use alternating full rudder for anything. Are you able to name a situation in any aircraft where you should use full rudder in alternating directions?
The problem with jets like this is that the rudder has to be incredibly powerful in order to cope with the engine failure after take-off scenario, but beyond that and maintaining directional control during take-off and landing they are not there for waggling. Because they are so powerful they need to be limited as speed increases, and they are, the A300, B747, B737, Dash 8, BAe146, MD80, etc. They all have their rudder travel limited as speed increases.
The thing is the AA587 pilot didn’t need to use ANY rudder at all, in any direction. You roll an aeroplane with the ailerons, you only use rudder to assist roll if the ailerons have become ineffective, e.g., if you have stalled.
Well that’s a problem for your position. A sideslip is not an all or nothing manouevre. You use as much sideslip as you need to to lose the height you want to. It may or may not involve full control deflections. I’ve done many hundreds of hours in aircraft with no flaps and have done hundreds of sideslips. I’ve never done one that involved full control movement.
It’s not a misrepresentation. A sideslip to lose height is a controlled manouevre. The AA587 pilot put 140 pounds of force on the rudder pedals in alternating directions.
Here’s the key point that you seem to have missed. If you apply a single rudder input to full deflection and hold it there you will get the definable, measurable level of force on the fin mounting points that you mention above. That’s fine, that is what the aeroplane is designed for. However, if you then go to full opposite rudder, the self stabilising moment of the fin ADDS to the force from the rudder in the opposite direction to produce a greater yaw and greater resultant side loads. If you then go the opposite way again, the self stabilising moment is greater because the side slip angle was greater and it is again added to the force from the rudder to produce an even greater side slip angle and greater side loads on the fin. Each time you reverse the controls the resulting forces increase.
The Gimli pilot never did any of that. The most he could have done was full control held in one direction.
We don’t know how much control deflection was used so we don’t know if there is any relevance of the B767 to the A300. Even if full control was used, it wasn’t alternating control, and finally, just because something didn’t break, doesn’t mean you didn’t take it outside its design parameters.
I will finish with this quote from Boeing again seeing as you don’t seem to get the significance of it:
One day on preflight, I found the vertical fin on our C-310Q was broken/buckled about midway up on it’s main spar. It looked fine but when I reached up and gave it a wiggle, ( very good part of a pipeline patrol plane preflight, where I learned the importance of this. ) it actually flopped about 10º from the vertical. “WTF” :eek: was my reaction. I was thinking about why I did not notice it during the last flight.
Oh, that days flight was scrubbed …
There were a few flights over the years that I would have expected that result but none recently before I made that discovery. The rudder never felt odd in anyway. Being lucky is sometimes the only explanation for why I lived.
Several times over the years I have found myself, only partly through my own fault, but never the less, outside the box in a way that no designer of that aircraft had ever dreamed possible.
The idea that since, “We can’t think of it so it will never happen.” is not the best way to go at it. Especially not taking into consideration what smart fools we are sometimes.
So, now that we know the engineering problem with very big airplanes, especially the newer computer enhanced ones is, why can they not put in a preventer of some sort that makes it impossible to go whack, whack with a control surface? Or even ‘one,’ too fast of a whack?
If there are truly a seconds to be used before initiation of recovery protocols, then a slower moving but equally powerful control surface is an easy fix IMO.
I can shoot holes in all my ideas all by myself thankyouverymuch. If they won’t engineer a way to compensate for the ham fisted, then the ham fisted should go away.
[rant]
He does not because management & the Airline Pilots Union, which does what all unions do besides the good stuff.
They force bad people to be allowed to continue in critical positions with no regard to public safety.
Why was that guy in the front of an airliner? He had been told to not do that, right? He refused to follow procedure. Ergo, he should have been gone.[/rant]
Some day, it will be proven in some one in a million event that going ‘whack, whack’ was what saved the day. Not worth the cost? I agree.
BUT: I am very glad for myself that the airplanes I was in, which had gotten all out of whack, responded to the ‘whack,whack’ and other out of the design box things I did which saved me & in one case, my passengers life.
IMO ← I still think there is an engineering fix to this problem. I just don’t have the smarts or training to find it.
I too apologize for my part in the hijack because I did not respond to my ‘know better’ meter, sorry. :smack:
Heres a simple way to know if the turbulence is extra bad, watch the airline staff, if they seem to make uncomfortable faces, then you know its getting gnarly.
