Just makes me glad how small the consequences are if I have a day of shitty performance at work
The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)
11–20 of 231 posts
Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)
#12As I recall, it’s linked in the (excellent) article, but William Langewiesche’s article about this crash is also very much worth reading:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-...
All of his articles about transportation disasters (Columbia, M/V Estonia, many other plane crashes) are very good and highly recommended.
Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)
#13It's kind of amazing how many of these accidents can come down to the pilots forgetting the most basic things. In this case, ultimately, the pilot and the co-pilot were exerting opposite controls. One to pull up, one to push the nose down. In a stall you push the nose down to gain aerodynamic lift. That's like Flying 101. But I guess when you panic, the natural instinct of wanting to pull up kicks in when you're rapi…
Often I don’t think it is as much “forgetting” but more getting behind the events to the extent they don’t properly assess / understand the situation and then make poor choices and it is too late.
Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)
#14I hate me for watching the news about it on that time. That's the flight that seeing all the details about on television gave me the fear of flying that I have these days, specially when above the ocean. I just can't overcome this.
I suppose you've heard it all, like the fact that there are more than 10000 planes currently in the air and we haven't heard about a plane crash for weeks now. If you go to https://globe.adsbexchange.com and zoom out you can see all the planes around the world, flying safely. I suppose the only way through the fear is to fly and realize at the end that you're fine (although obviously IANAP)
Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)
#15What an amazing article. I know comments here are meant to be more substantial, but this is truly one of the best written content I've ever come across.
My most sincere admiration and thank you notes to the author for putting all of this together in such a great way!
Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)
#16> A brief interruption to their airspeed indications, lasting less than a minute, had thrown two trained Air France pilots into a state of paralyzed agitation.
I'm generally suspicious of technical solutions to human-factors problems. But I can't help wondering if some combination of voice stress analysis and measuring pilot coordination might be able to produce a warning that would have prompted the flight crew to see that they had stopped flying in an orderly way.
Easy to say speculate, though, when you're not in that situation.
Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)
#17It's kind of amazing how many of these accidents can come down to the pilots forgetting the most basic things. In this case, ultimately, the pilot and the co-pilot were exerting opposite controls. One to pull up, one to push the nose down. In a stall you push the nose down to gain aerodynamic lift. That's like Flying 101. But I guess when you panic, the natural instinct of wanting to pull up kicks in when you're rapi…
> Unlike most other airliners, the control sticks on Airbus models are not mechanically linked and the pilots cannot directly feel what the other pilot is doing. This is a very bad design - at a bare minimum an incredibly loud and annoying alarm should go off if the pilots are fighting controls, because neither knows what the plane is receiving as an input.
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Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)
#18If you liked this article, definitely consider checking out other articles written by Kyra (Admiral_Cloudberg). She has done a ton of articles on almost all notable (near)crashes, including their root causes, investigations, and subsequent effects on the airplane industry.
For some crashes that have interesting causes (at least from an engineering perspective) beyond "maintenance failed to identify a problem before takeoff" or "pilots fail to identify problem or take wrong actions", I strongly recommend the articles on TWA 800 (1996) [1] and the near-crash of SmartLynx Estonia 9001 (2018) [2]. The first goes into great detail exactly _how_ the FAA discovered the root cause, whereas the second one involves a logic oversight in the flight computers of a modern Airbus plane.
[1]: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/memories-of-flame-the-cr... [2]: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-dark-side-of-logic-t...
Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)
#19It's kind of amazing how many of these accidents can come down to the pilots forgetting the most basic things. In this case, ultimately, the pilot and the co-pilot were exerting opposite controls. One to pull up, one to push the nose down. In a stall you push the nose down to gain aerodynamic lift. That's like Flying 101. But I guess when you panic, the natural instinct of wanting to pull up kicks in when you're rapi…
Are you thinking of Helios Airways Flight 522? That Ethiopian Airlines flight was a hijacking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522
The same author as the OP also has a great article on Helios 522: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/lost-souls-of-grammatiko...
Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)
#20It's kind of amazing how many of these accidents can come down to the pilots forgetting the most basic things. In this case, ultimately, the pilot and the co-pilot were exerting opposite controls. One to pull up, one to push the nose down. In a stall you push the nose down to gain aerodynamic lift. That's like Flying 101. But I guess when you panic, the natural instinct of wanting to pull up kicks in when you're rapi…
> Unlike most other airliners, the control sticks on Airbus models are not mechanically linked and the pilots cannot directly feel what the other pilot is doing. This is a very bad design - at a bare minimum an incredibly loud and annoying alarm should go off if the pilots are fighting controls, because neither knows what the plane is receiving as an input.
It has been changed after this incident. There is now an alert for dual input. The resulting Airbus system is better than traditional connected yokes, because it doesn't have the unexpected opposite input anymore (with the alert) but it does also have an override switch for the captain's side. Which means you can overpower the first officer with just a button instead of physically having to wrestle for the controls.
You can see it used here: https://youtube.com/shorts/nBmPXrBpp3Y
You hear the normal 50.. 30.. etc. callouts and then when the captain goes full thrust you hear "priority left" which is the override button being pressed to pitch for go-around.
That's much nicer than what we have teaching with traditional controls. Because at that point overpowering a startled pilot is a bit hard.