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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)

#181
post #30

I strongly recommend Mentour Pilot[0] and his many stories about airplanes issues on YouTube. [0]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e5AGHEUxLME

He feels like tiktok videos to me, and is therefore unwatchable unfortunately.

I'm genuinely curious how an hour-long YouTube video, meticulously researched, scripted and animated feels like tiktok to you.

The production value on those videos is really high. They are information dense and the creator goes out of his way not to sensationalize.

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

#182
As someone who follows aviation and flew the Flight Simulator quite a bit when young, I don't quite understand how it all happened.

The mechanics are clear, but aren't pilots trained _ad nauseam_ precisely against this kind of events? It read like this was two panicking guys shouting at each other.

By contrast, listening to the recording of the Hudson River landing, it was stunning just how eerily calm the pilots was there. You hear them opening the manual and reading from it IIRC!

I don't mean it like, they're dumb cos I watched a YouTube video, I just don't understand. Especially since, as the article claims, pitot tubes all freezing at the same time is somewhat common.

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

#183

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…

I have zero flying experience, but man, just by playing Pilotwings on the SNES and Ace Combat on the PSX, it's ingrained in me that when you stall any aircraft, be it a hang glider or a fighter jet, you put your nose down, gain speed and recover your aircraft. I am Brazilian, and since the first time I read the accident report I couldn't believe how a professional pilot could keep pitching the nose up for minutes on…

My lack of credentials are identical to yours (fuck Lance) but this is way too harsh. When you witness a car veer off the side of the road, "what a moron, why didn't they just turn the wheel" is a logical question, but in reality the driver may have thought to do so and been physically unable to correct a power steering failure in time.

The SNES controller had 8 buttons and was operated from the safety of your couch. I'd imagine trying to correct this sort of situation is more like playing Microsoft Flight Simulator, while you're on a roller coaster, with random features of the plane not working, hypoxia clouding your judgment, and knowing 100+ lives are at stake if you fuck anything up.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plane in this case doesn't matter. No training for stalls ever tells you to pull up. It's directly opposed to how stalls ARE trained. This pilot was a chaos monkey, and the other pilots were unable or unwilling to get the chaos monkey out of the situation. He had completely reverted to human instinct, which is terrible for flying, and also was letting himself override his copilot, who was handling the situation m…

Indeed. Other controls would have caused a wrestling match over the controls with probably the same outcome. I believe the best solution is what Airbus implemented after this incident. An alert if there is dual input, and a button for the captain's side to override the other side. No need to wrestle, press the priority button and take over control.

Those existed before this accident. Bonin pressed the priority button to steal control from the other pilot, who was fixing things, at least once, and "dual input" alarms sounded pretty much the entire time the plane was falling out of the sky.

The ONLY way to have prevented Bonin from crashing the plane would have been to remove him from the controls. He was doing the same thing that lifeguards are warned about; when the human brain is in that kind of panic state, it will happily do things that it should know will inevitably lead to it's own death, like scrambling in such a way that you drown the lifeguard trying to rescue you.

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

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plane in this case doesn't matter. No training for stalls ever tells you to pull up. It's directly opposed to how stalls ARE trained. This pilot was a chaos monkey, and the other pilots were unable or unwilling to get the chaos monkey out of the situation. He had completely reverted to human instinct, which is terrible for flying, and also was letting himself override his copilot, who was handling the situation m…

Perhaps the physical effort of struggling against his co-pilot would have made him realize he was doing something wrong. It's too easy to pull back full on a fully non-mechanical control, and just lock up there.

No, this situation is the same as when lifeguards are warned about saving panicking and drowning people, in that if you don't handle them in specific ways they will happily drown you in their panic. You cannot rely on "shaking someone out of it" in these circumstances because there is no reliable way to force the brain to reject it's panic instincts and return to rational thought.

The only solution would have been physical restraint. Bonin was an active threat

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

#186
post #93
post #52

It's tempting to blame the inexperienced first officers, their training, or the CRM failures on this flight, but the blame for this crash has to land squarely on the atrociously bad UX of the Airbus cockpit. Sensory overload and no clear readout of what is actually broken (pitot tube icing in this case) is bad but the fly-by-wire joystick configuration is what really doomed this flight. In Boeing airliners and many o…

>It's tempting to blame the inexperienced first officers, their training, or the CRM failures on this flight, but the blame for this crash has to land squarely on the atrociously bad UX of the Airbus cockpit. Hard disagree. No matter how bad the UX, there just isn't any conceivable situation where Bonin's pulling up the rudder for minutes on end wasn't suicidally dangerous, or made any sense at all.

Same sentiment heard elsewhere. Pulling stick up in a stall midflight is a rookie mistake. Pulling up & increasing thrust is a takeoff peculiarity. Even if AF447's altimeter was faulty, they both missed something else in their panic - they fell 20,000ft in few minutes, going faster & faster. The g-forces are palpable enough to experienced pilot (who reky on it sometimes when they fly in complete darkness).

This incident was rookie flying behavior coupled with a complete disregard of situational awareness. The flight UX of Airbus isn't that bad: 330 & 340 have a much better panel layout & less clutter than their Boeing counterparts from late 90s.

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

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you are in a stall at 35k feet, there is never a situation in which the corrective action is to pull up, especially not to max AoA. You aren't anywhere near the water, you should be trying to gain speed. Bonin just went to primal instincts, full fight or flight, and was "taking matters into his own hands" even despite the fact that he was aware he wasn't doing anything useful. The other pilot even told him to…

I have an instructor rating, part of training is exactly that. If someone freezes up at the wrong moment, be prepared to use violence to get them off the controls. One trick that often works is to put your hand in front of their eyes. Humans have a deep instinct to want to see at all times, so they'll let go of the controls and use their hands to remove yours. No need for physical harm.

Bonin was showing himself to be extremely resilient to coming back to reality and rationality. He needed to be physically restrained. He was far too stuck in his head to rely on anything less.

Alternatively, we just kinda have an understanding that if your pilot goes into panic, and the copilot can't figure out a way to get them out of it, everyone dies.

Of course, then what if they panicking pilot decides they have to restrain you so they can continue what they are doing?

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

#188

As someone who follows aviation and flew the Flight Simulator quite a bit when young, I don't quite understand how it all happened. The mechanics are clear, but aren't pilots trained _ad nauseam_ precisely against this kind of events? It read like this was two panicking guys shouting at each other. By contrast, listening to the recording of the Hudson River landing, it was stunning just how eerily calm the pilots was…

I think it's just an "everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" situation. In an actual emergency some people react well and go back to their training, others panic & freeze up.

And it's hard to predict, you do tons of emergency situations during all the flight training they would have gone through in sims and actual planes, but in the back of your mind you still know it's coming and not a real emergency when the instructor pulls the power out to simulate an engine failure or tapes up a piece of paper to block the airspeed indicator.

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

#189
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He feels like tiktok videos to me, and is therefore unwatchable unfortunately.

I'm genuinely curious how an hour-long YouTube video, meticulously researched, scripted and animated feels like tiktok to you. The production value on those videos is really high. They are information dense and the creator goes out of his way not to sensationalize.

Well, to answer your question, it's because I thought "Mentor Pilot" was an entirely different youtube channel! :/ I'll like this one

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

#190
post #58

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 Prevention and Recovery Training is mandatory for FAA Part 121 (Air Carriers) flight crew.

It is not required for Part 91 (General Aviation/"Private") or Part 135 (Charter) operators.

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...

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