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Pilots Disabled Critical Computers Moments Before AirAsia Crash
The pilots of AirAsia Bhd. Flight 8501 cut power to a critical computer system that normally prevents planes from going out of control shortly before it plunged into the Java Sea, two people with knowledge of the investigation said. The action appears to have helped trigger the events of Dec. 28, when the Airbus Group NV A320 climbed so abruptly that it lost lift and it began falling with warnings blaring in the cockpit, the people said. All 162 aboard were killed. The pilots had been… (www.bloomberg.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
They probably had to disable them in order to get their hands on the aircraft and fly it, otherwise they would have had to fight the computer and whatever upset they had. When will Airbus realize that sometimes a pilot has to fly a plane.
Actually, they probably turned off the FACs because they were getting erroneous readings, or they were trying to eke out a little more climb but the slow speed protections were overriding them (which means the plane was attempting to prevent a stall and the pilots shut the computer down and stalled the plane themselves). When I see that the plane climbed over 5000 feet in under 30 seconds, I'm thinking they were caught in a major updraft. I fly the 320 and I'll say that even the lightest loaded 320 wouldn't do that at FL320. Even disconnecting the AP and pulling full back would only do that for a few seconds before the low speed protection kicked in. If they turned the FACs off there would have been no protection and a stall would have occurred.
I really don't know of anything, commercial wise, that wood. Those are fighter jet numbers.
If the pitot tubes iced over it would cause all kinds of warnings on the flight deck. To me it seems like a repeat of Air France 447. Only this time the crew started messing with FAC's instead of flying the airplane with basic power settings and attitude control.
If the pitot tubes iced over then the pilots wre not getting any correct readings from the HSI, altimeter, speed, rate of climb (or descend), AOA, etc. and without these they probably stalled and dropped down without knowing what was going on. To me this was an accident similar to AF447
Minor correction here.. The AOA was still working so they would have had conflicting information... As far as the HSI indications, that is not a product of Pitot Static... HSI is for Horizontal Situation Indicator that will either come from the Gyros, AHRS Computer, IRS, or INS systems. If the Pitot only was iced and not the static, the Airspeed would have gradually increased with pressure altitude. If it was the other way around and the Static being frozen then the altitude would drop with airspeed, which would continually increase with altitude... If they thought they were going too fast and trying to climb then they would have stalled... If the stall warning was going off at the same time then they were getting conflicting information and would not have known what to do, and since stall had one vote and the other 3 showed going too fast they would have following the voting and said that the stall warning was in failure. I have not seen the FDR data yet, and the CVR Data released is sketchy at best, so until all the data is out it is hard to tell...
Thanks for the corrections, now prior to the release of the FDR and CVR data what would be your theory about the conflicting information, what cause that awful situation, and secondly what would have been the correct actions to take control of the aircraft and save the lifes of so many souls on board.
I am still leaning towards another Air France 447 with the Pitot Icing. That is very probably with the fact that they airspeed was indicating so fast, so they were climbing to slow it down... In the process the only working system (Stall Warning) went off, and crew thought it was a failed system and ignored it. They knew one system had to be failed, and they chose the wrong system. Once climbing and not slowing down, they should have figured out that the Airspeed was incorrect and corrected, but by then it was too late.... This is all in my personal opinion and not based on public facts.
I am also leaning towards a repeat AF447 which suffered multi false readings due to Pitot tubes freezing, wasn't it.
That is the one...
I wonder how much of the FDR data will be publicly released.