Another plane crash?

Status
Not open for further replies.
dangermows said:
Look at the Air France crash... Pilots f***ing up, again.

The Airbus's stall alarm is designed to be impossible to ignore. Yet for the duration of the flight, none of the pilots will mention it, or acknowledge the possibility that the plane has indeed stalled—even though the word "Stall!" will blare through the cockpit 75 times. Throughout, Bonin will keep pulling back on the stick, the exact opposite of what he must do to recover from the stall.

The plane has climbed to 2512 feet above its initial altitude, and though it is still ascending at a dangerously high rate, it is flying within its acceptable envelope. But for reasons unknown, Bonin once again increases his back pressure on the stick, raising the nose of the plane and bleeding off speed. Again, the stall alarm begins to sound.

Still, the pilots continue to ignore it, and the reason may be that they believe it is impossible for them to stall the airplane. It's not an entirely unreasonable idea: The Airbus is a fly-by-wire plane; the control inputs are not fed directly to the control surfaces, but to a computer, which then in turn commands actuators that move the ailerons, rudder, elevator, and flaps. The vast majority of the time, the computer operates within what's known as normal law, which means that the computer will not enact any control movements that would cause the plane to leave its flight envelope. The flight control computer under normal law will not allow an aircraft to stall, aviation experts say.

But once the computer lost its airspeed data, it disconnected the autopilot and switched from normal law to "alternate law," a regime with far fewer restrictions on what a pilot can do. In alternate law, pilots can stall an airplane.

It's quite possible that Bonin had never flown an airplane in alternate law, or understood its lack of restrictions. Therefore, Bonin may have assumed that the stall warning was spurious because he didn't realize that the plane could remove its own restrictions against stalling and, indeed, had done so.
Click to expand...
Whilst it makes uncomfortable reading, this is a fair summary. The accident was entirely avoidable, and if the co-pilot in the right hand seat had just let go of his sidestick, the aircraft would have come out of the stall on its own. His actions were inexplicable.
 


johnny c said:
Maybe the pilots wouldnt make errors if they knew how to fly a plane rather than push buttons
Click to expand...
Sadly this "modern" view of what pilots do seems to be widely held and the profession is woefully poor at correcting the situation, still if you actually believe that, dont you think it a bit risky boarding an aircraft?

Edit: shit I've really chomped here, how embarrassing.
 
johnny c said:
Maybe the pilots wouldnt make errors if they knew how to fly a plane rather than push buttons
Click to expand...

Precisely.

That's the most common complaint i repeatedly read about and posted by the pilots themselves on the professional pilots forum.

Training regarding the techniques of basic flying are kept to an absolute minimum with 95% of the training based on computer operating, which is not only increasingly complex and constantly changing, but also varies quite a lot from one aircraft type to the next, yet another reason why pilots have made mistakes after transferring from one aircraft type to another.
 
May not be of relevance in this case, but the rear-engined MD83 is prone to 'deep stall', which happens when the plane is at a steep angle and the engines and tail get caught in the turbulent air off the wings. The plane loses power, and the control surfaces of the tail become ineffective.

It's possible that a deep stall could have been caused by bad weather. Once in it, it's notoriously difficult to get out of.
 
Nothing ruled out.
Bad weather considered a likely factor, but terrorist action and attack from the ground believed possible.
According to the news it was flying over a conflict zone at the time, yet another holy war and all that crap that the French were trying to sort out.
 
lenshack said:
Precisely.

That's the most common complaint i repeatedly read about and posted by the pilots themselves on the professional pilots forum.

Training regarding the techniques of basic flying are kept to an absolute minimum with 95% of the training based on computer operating, which is not only increasingly complex and constantly changing, but also varies quite a lot from one aircraft type to the next, yet another reason why pilots have made mistakes after transferring from one aircraft type to another.
Click to expand...
No offence mate, but that is utter shite.
 
HillView Aviator said:
No offence mate, but that is utter shite.
Click to expand...

So professional pilots with years of experience on long haul are talking utter shite.
Right, you know best.
As a matter of interest precisely what do you fly apart from your kite ?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top