What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447

[nigelb]

"Two years after the Airbus 330 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, Air France 447's flight-data recorders finally turned up. The revelations from the pilot transcript paint a surprising picture of chaos in the cockpit, and confusion between the pilots that led to the crash.


Read more: Air France 447 Flight-Data Recorder Transcript - What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 - Popular Mechanics "

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technol ... 47-6611877

Posted in case your interested.

Nigel²

[jonesey2k]

That is painful to read...

[DaveB]

It is indeed Mark. I had to update my old pc to IE8 in order to read it but I'm glad I did.

Like the early Comet crashes.. it may be a lesson learned as the report suggests and one would hope so.

ATB
DaveB

[Tonks]

Very sad... if only they had gone back to the mantra you learn in basic flying training... Power Attitude Trim!!! Set a sensible power and and a sensible Attitude on the horizon and Trim the aircraft... and that can all be done on an Airbus despite its automatics!!!

Tonks

[Dev One]

Very disheartening to read it, but I suspected as much from the BEA report. I'm not sure, but I think the side stick has no movement, its just a force sensor, & talking of which the slave sidestick therefore has no indication to the operator of what the other is doing seemingly. Sounds as if Boeing have a mechanical link between their control. One must also consider disorientation as playing a very big role in this accident.
On the AGS at Llanbedr we had an indication of the commanded transmission i.e. that sent by any one of the five operators in the loop. Now that required co-operation!!! (The AGS was designed by the same people as the Airbus system).
Keith

[TSR2]

Very very sad. As Tonks said, the first thing I was taught when I was learning to fly a little piper was P A T. I supose when you have all these systems that monitor everything its very easy to forget the basics. If only the Captain or FO had been in the cockpit. Its incredible that this all happen in just 12 minutes.

[Motormouse]

Sad indictment of todays level of emphasis on not allowing the pilots to 'fly the plane'; this was borne out in my last airline, where the mandated SOP for
one type equipped with Cat 3 'Autoland' , was to only allow automatic landings; any manual landing was an automatic 'incident report'
resulting in slapped wrists for crew concerned.

ttfn

Pete

[cstorey]

The article makes sobering reading, but to me leaves a vital question unanswered : if the displays were working normally, how was it that no-one recognised the unusual attitude of the aeroplane ? I just cannot believe that in such a situation the captain in particular when returning to an obvious emergency did not review the instruments and recognise the extreme nose up condition . We shall probably never know now, but to me ( although the junior FO freezing on his sidestick did not help ) the whole situation suggests that the attitude information was unreliable. If nothing else, this would explain the obvious bafflement of the crew about what was happening to them, and would also explain why the FO kept applying back stick to try and arrest the descent

[jonesey2k]

Maybe they should have some sort of alarm come up on the screen when both control sticks are at the extreme opposite of each other.