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The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)

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Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)

#121

Post by dreamcompiler »

jandrese wrote: post #99
psunavy03 wrote: post #46

I fly a desk herding cats, I mean devs, for a living now. But as a Navy-trained aviator, this and the Colgan Air mishap in Buffalo always make me cringe. I can't entirely judge the crew, because the human mind is a strange thing that has ways of rationalizing truly abnormal situations and behavior. That said, an obvious Crew Resource Management failure compounded the issues here. That said, I believe aerobatics and o…

Maybe not even acrobatic flying training but glider training. Pilots with glider experience are some of the best performers in emergencies.

I wish glider training was mandatory for every professional pilot. Nobody really learns to fly until they can fly without an engine.

Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)

#122

Post by scarier »

rwmj wrote: post #58
psunavy03 wrote: post #46

I fly a desk herding cats, I mean devs, for a living now. But as a Navy-trained aviator, this and the Colgan Air mishap in Buffalo always make me cringe. I can't entirely judge the crew, because the human mind is a strange thing that has ways of rationalizing truly abnormal situations and behavior. That said, an obvious Crew Resource Management failure compounded the issues here. That said, I believe aerobatics and o…

Isn't "Upset" training now mandatory for civilian pilots, partly because of AF447? https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/faq/44870

In the US, spin recovery training is mandatory for flight instructors. That’s the only requirement I’m aware of, although all pilots do get some relatively basic training in unusual attitude recovery.

Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)

#123

Post by logifail »

turnsout wrote: post #56
psunavy03 wrote: post #46

I fly a desk herding cats, I mean devs, for a living now. But as a Navy-trained aviator, this and the Colgan Air mishap in Buffalo always make me cringe. I can't entirely judge the crew, because the human mind is a strange thing that has ways of rationalizing truly abnormal situations and behavior. That said, an obvious Crew Resource Management failure compounded the issues here. That said, I believe aerobatics and o…

To be fair, it sounds like this crash caused airlines and regulators to demand much more adverse event training, including high-altitude stall recovery. But according to the article, Airbus hasn't addressed the split control issue…

> this crash caused airlines and regulators to demand much more adverse event training, including high-altitude stall recovery

Q: How many pilots would attempt a stall recovery if the aircraft's instruments were not indicating they were stalled?

Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)

#124

Post by bombcar »

vkou wrote: post #118
skissane wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case - the plane was rapidly descending, and the pilots were completely failing to do anything to fix the situation. Maybe at some point it became clear that the pilots were doing nothing to actually save the plane, and then the computer could have been justified in ignoring them, and trying to solve the problem itself? > If you say 'The computer', I'll have to ask you: How well did that work out for the 346…

And maybe in JT 610 and ET 302, the pilots should have been justified in ignoring the Boeing computer, which was making bad decisions based on a faulty sensor reading, and was trying its damn hardest to fly the plane into the ground (And succeeded, killing everyone on board, despite the best efforts of the pilots). How about we let the system whose sensors are functioning ultimately be in charge?

At some point you have to have "disconnect everything, I'm going to fly this by hand" situations where the pilot can kill everyone (intentionally or no).

The goal is to reduce those as far as possible, and we may be at or close to the point where any further improvements in one area cause problems in others.

But I still think this particular situation could have been helped somehow. Maybe planes need emergency deployable pitot tubes like they have emergency backup ram air turbines for power.

Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)

#125

Post by [deleted] »

vkou wrote: post #118
skissane wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case - the plane was rapidly descending, and the pilots were completely failing to do anything to fix the situation. Maybe at some point it became clear that the pilots were doing nothing to actually save the plane, and then the computer could have been justified in ignoring them, and trying to solve the problem itself? > If you say 'The computer', I'll have to ask you: How well did that work out for the 346…

And maybe in JT 610 and ET 302, the pilots should have been justified in ignoring the Boeing computer, which was making bad decisions based on a faulty sensor reading, and was trying its damn hardest to fly the plane into the ground (And succeeded, killing everyone on board, despite the best efforts of the pilots). How about we let the system whose sensors are functioning ultimately be in charge?

[deleted]

Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)

#126

Post by cedws »

Tronno wrote: post #98

In post-mortems involving pilot error, what strikes me is that airliner cockpit design sounds so convoluted, unintuitive, and just plain bad . The burden of disentangling this bad design is always placed on the pilots - through extensive training and rote memorization - which inevitably fails under stress. In this particular example, consider: - the opposing pilot inputs being signaled only by a pair of little green…

I also wonder why airspeed is derived by some formula applied to the measurement of flow along a tube that can be blocked by ice and become useless. Why not use GPS primarily and fall back to that if needed? Or the other way around even.

If you expect an instrument to routinely fail, it just seems logical to at least have a backup.

Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)

#127

Post by skissane »

vkou wrote: post #118
skissane wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case - the plane was rapidly descending, and the pilots were completely failing to do anything to fix the situation. Maybe at some point it became clear that the pilots were doing nothing to actually save the plane, and then the computer could have been justified in ignoring them, and trying to solve the problem itself? > If you say 'The computer', I'll have to ask you: How well did that work out for the 346…

And maybe in JT 610 and ET 302, the pilots should have been justified in ignoring the Boeing computer, which was making bad decisions based on a faulty sensor reading, and was trying its damn hardest to fly the plane into the ground (And succeeded, killing everyone on board, despite the best efforts of the pilots). How about we let the system whose sensors are functioning ultimately be in charge?

As I said, MCAS was badly designed software - the computer would have had information from other sensors from which it would have been able to infer that it was crashing the plane, but it wasn’t programmed to consider them. Badly designed software is not an argument against computers, it is an argument against badly designed software

Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)

#128

Post by afterburner »

markus_zhang wrote: post #24

Does anyone think lack of sleep is the major contributor of this event, or the invalidation of all three speed sensors? I think we do test pilots for alcohol and drug before a flight, but can we also test them for reaction and a couple of hazard scenarios? Do you think it is too much? About the sensors, is there any inexpensive way to increase the heat or anything to prevent it from happening again?

Although it might be the way its written, but Dubois leaving the cockpit seems to come at the worst possible time too, right before they're about to hit a storm and the junior officer is nervous. Although he may have known he really needed the sleep, which is also a problem due to lack of sleep.

Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)

#129

Post by sandworm101 »

rwmj wrote: post #58
psunavy03 wrote: post #46

I fly a desk herding cats, I mean devs, for a living now. But as a Navy-trained aviator, this and the Colgan Air mishap in Buffalo always make me cringe. I can't entirely judge the crew, because the human mind is a strange thing that has ways of rationalizing truly abnormal situations and behavior. That said, an obvious Crew Resource Management failure compounded the issues here. That said, I believe aerobatics and o…

Isn't "Upset" training now mandatory for civilian pilots, partly because of AF447? https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/faq/44870

Upset and departure are different things. Some aircraft can seem strait and level, but still be fully departed and falling like a rock. This won't happen in a Cessna trainer. It is normally associated with faster aircraft. The F-16 famously has a deep stall mode that sees it fall like a pancake for many thousand feet, with little hope of recovery at low altitudes.

Re: The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)

#130

Post by vkou »

bombcar wrote: post #124
vkou wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And maybe in JT 610 and ET 302, the pilots should have been justified in ignoring the Boeing computer, which was making bad decisions based on a faulty sensor reading, and was trying its damn hardest to fly the plane into the ground (And succeeded, killing everyone on board, despite the best efforts of the pilots). How about we let the system whose sensors are functioning ultimately be in charge?

At some point you have to have "disconnect everything, I'm going to fly this by hand" situations where the pilot can kill everyone (intentionally or no). The goal is to reduce those as far as possible, and we may be at or close to the point where any further improvements in one area cause problems in others. But I still think this particular situation could have been helped somehow . Maybe planes need emergency deplo…

A million different things would have helped in this particular situation. A stall warning that doesn't suddenly cut out when the plane exceeds a particular angle of attack [1] (That's an automation failure!). Emergency pilot tubes (That prevents the plane from dropping out of normal law!). Better pilot tubes (That prevents the plane from dropping out of normal law!) A pilot that actually received proper training (That's a human failure!). Not averaging control inputs between the pilot and the copilot (That's a design failure!).

I don't think the takeaway from this is 'In an emergency situation, where the plane knows that it can't make good decisions, it should lock the pilots out and try to fly itself.' By definition, if the plane knew how to fly itself, it wouldn't be an emergency situation!

----

[1] If the plane is so confused that it can't even detect that its in a stall[2], I can't trust it to fly itself.

[2] The stall alarm would turn off when the plane was stalling, and would turn on when it was recovering from a stall!

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