Cockpit voice recorder of Lion Air jet depicts pilots' frantic search for fix

Those fixes are inarguably lower level than training. Not just to be pedantic but the whole reason Boeing is in this mess is because they figured all the lower level things could sort out issues, without engaging higher level fixes.

I'm skeptical of the amount of automation the big manufacturers are pushing. They're creating wildly more complex system interactions in the process.

The girlfriend was on location and apparently the one who turned on the camera (but did not remove the lens cap, making it an audio-only recording). She was killed and partially eaten together with Treadwell.

Edit: The tape is actually owned by Jewel Palovak who this scene is also with; She's a former girlfriend of Treadwell, not his (or his girlfriends) mother.

MCAS strikes me as the low airspeed variety of stall risk case. The high airspeed case is rare, and trained for aerobatics and flight instructors. The low airspeed case is taught on day 2 to student pilots, both power on and power off varieties. MCAS is reported to not take airspeed into account, therefore it must apply a one size fits all correction, which if useful for low airspeed approach to stall would seem to be overly aggressive for high airspeed.

AF 447 airspeeds were regularly below 60 kt. That's not a high airspeed stall. The final report is ~223 pages long, it's rather complicated to summarize, BEA blame practically everyone for something including weather, software, simulators, training, and pilots. As a pilot, some of the Airbus system behaviors in this case really piss me off to read, just how aggregiously badly designed it is when it gets confused, papered over by dumping the consequences of failed automation and the ensuing alternate laws onto the pilots. The pilots' job is system admin and troubleshooter. If they fail, they will be partly blaimed no matter what, because that's the job.

From the AF 447 final report: a) Both pilots were shocked by the autopilot disconnect. b) Reconnect of autopilot prior to 30 seconds of stabilized airspeed indication can result in pitch runaway and an unsafe condition. c) stall warning sounded continuously for 54s, neither pilot referenced the warning or stall buffeting. d) absence of any training, at high altitude, in manual aeroplane handling and in the procedure for ”Vol avec IAS douteuse” which you allude to. e) theoretical training for the pilots associated the buffet with stall and overspeed, even though in reality buffet is only encountered with stall. e) when there are no (software) protections left, the aeroplane no longer possesses positive longitudinal static stability even on approach to stall.

It's just crazy, only somehow partly neutralized by the statistical fact air travel is still really safe!

AF 447, last recorded values were a pitch attitude of 16.2 degrees nose-up, roll of 5.3 degrees to the left, a vertical speed of -10,912 ft/min, ground speed of 107 kt, and full power. And for the last 11 seconds "sink rate" and "pull up" warnings sounded. No emergency transmission sent (quite common).

Of course - generally the expectation is that control surfaces will not move on their own accord, unless specifically asked to; either directly by the pilot by moving the yoke/stick, trim wheel, rudder etc, or indirectly by setting the autopilot, which in turn moves those controls.

If they move on their own accord - usually via autopilot - it's because they are trying to maintain a reference point the pilot asked them to.

When they move on their own accord, outside of any pilot inputs or settings, without the pilot knowing / understanding why, that's where the issues start happening.

Air France AF447 entering Alternate Law, Lion Air MCAS activating etc.

The initial course of action is always to return to stable flight, disabling whatever systems you perceive to be changing the control surfaces. When you just don't know which system is causing the issue, then you're just fighting the end result (eg nose down), not the underlying system issue (eg MCAS preventing stall by enforcing trim).

To find the cause of the end result (eg nose down), you work backwards to see what happened - because, chances are, you as a pilot made an erroneous setting / configuration somewhere to cause an undesirable aircraft state, not the system itself, as you are taught the system works under your command, plus no system acts to down an aircraft - they are all there to prevent an aircraft from getting into an undesirable state. You go back to the last known working configuration, and work from there to diagnose.

Long winded answer, but yes, you do check control surfaces, but they only show an undesirable aircraft state which can be corrected (eg pull back on the stick), but it doesn't solve for the what and why, and thus preventing getting back into that undesirable state. Trim is also one of those ones right at the bottom to check, as it's for fine-tuning an aircrafts pitch - where an elevator can move an aircraft up or down tens of degrees in a seconds, trim usually only moves the pitch tenths of degrees.

This is also where SOP's and training come in too - some airlines would have "set landing trim" on the final leg of the approach, others might have it on the base leg. Some companies require stall training in the sim once a year, other airlines don't even have sims. Some airlines are okay with reverse thrust on landing, others want to avoid wear and tear on the engine and want you to slam the brakes. The aircraft manufacturer would have their "recommended" training, and modify it in accordance to company practices / requirements, legal / regulatory frameworks etc.

From what I understand, and this is just from reading the news and forums, there was no knowledge or training about the MCAS system. The closest thing is a runaway trim, and again this probably differs from airline to airline.

All aircraft, pilots have a checklist of things - takeoff, landing, recovering from various undesirable aircraft states etc. Occasionally you do hit an edge case where a lack of knowledge and training collide with a background-running aircraft system acting out of the ordinary.

Again - I'm just a private pilot so do take the above with a grain of salt, Airline Transport Pilots have far more training and experience, and can probably provide a far better insight to the behaviour of larger jets, difference between companies, SOP's etc.

Good point. This is something I bet most non-pilots don't know. A pilot can actually damage or destroy an airplane through control inputs alone. In fact there was a case of a pilot intentionally destroying his airliner by rapidly slamming the rudder back and forth, but I can't find the flight reference now. And there are other examples, such as AA flight 587 where the large control inputs were causal in the crash that killed all aboard.