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Capt Sullenberger lessons from AF447
Four years after Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean, experts have pieced together what they believe happened on board the airliner that June evening. (www.cbsnews.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
Stall Warning, Decreasing Airspeed, Pulling back on the stick.... doh.. Wonder what to expect.. The Obvious... A Real Stall and not just a warning. and even at that they continue to hold the stick back.
I have to chime in here on this BA/AB debate. Both are great aircraft and computers are all over them. The newest military aircraft are fly-by-wire. The F-16 is an OLD aircraft now and it is totally FBW. Not wanting to get into the sidestick and how it functions, I want to point out the fact that the relief captain held the nose up, ignoring 75 stall warnings and he was really the cause of the accident. You only have to review the FAA video of Colgan 3407 at KBUF to understand that airlines train to never loose more than 100 feet during stall recovery. The outcome in this tragic case was the same---CFIT. However, the crews need to understand that you always have to lower the angle of attack first. Sometimes you will have to do this only 500 feet AGL. The airplane will not fly if beyond the critical angle of attack. Get the wing flying, add full power and you break the stall. If you already have full power (TOGA in the case of AF) you need to lower the pitch and get the wings flying again. He and the Colgan captain, somewhere along the line, never learned this. Colgan had about 800 feet. AF had 30,000 feet. What in hell was he holding the nose up at that altitude? I have to admit, I wasn't there. I don't know the implications of the weather. There must have been lots of panic and poor decision making. Let's learn.
At the risk of armcharing more and not having been there, FBW is not really the issue, nor is the sidestick itself. Military have had sidesticks for a good while on fighters. FBW has been around a long time. Though set up a little different with some feel to it, the 777 and 787 are both FBW and the 767 has some FBW functions, though not all.
The big question is what caused the AP to drop off in the first place.That started the whole process. There have been many theories and guesses but no real answer. Both here and in the Colgan crash, regardless of all the training in the world, it was probably just human nature that took over that caused the pullback on the stick. This was compounded by the fact that they were not linked and actions could not be seen by the PNF and in the short time it took the Captain to get back to the cockpit and rcognize the situation, it was too late. The rest is history.
The big question is what caused the AP to drop off in the first place.That started the whole process. There have been many theories and guesses but no real answer. Both here and in the Colgan crash, regardless of all the training in the world, it was probably just human nature that took over that caused the pullback on the stick. This was compounded by the fact that they were not linked and actions could not be seen by the PNF and in the short time it took the Captain to get back to the cockpit and rcognize the situation, it was too late. The rest is history.
Preacher, I agree about the linking and feedback in the sidestick. I can't imagine not feeling what I was doing with the flight controls. The issue about not being linked together is new to me in this discussion. A single seat fighter doesn't have a link (to who?). A commercial airliner always has two pilots. I never flew an Air Bus and will have to ask a friend of mine who did, more about it.
I have never flown a Bus either but that is a well noted thing about the independence of the sticks. Seems to me a simple sensor or programming change could take care of that
you got it!
Sh--t happens!
It would be confusing to any pilot who didn't understand that about how the Airbus is programmed.