General Chat

The preliminary findings just released conclude that the plane was put into a fantastically steep climb then stalled and crashed.
The crew had over 35,000 feet of altitude to recover from the stall but failed to do so.
The circumstances are similar to the Air France plane and one other that both crashed in the Atlantic after stalling at high altitude (both due to air speed indicator malfunction).
There seems to be a deficency in modern aircrew training in recognising and recovering from a stall in a commercial airliner.
It should be a simple case of engine power on, shoving the stick forward to pick up speed then easing the stick back to regain normal flying position.
30-odd thousand feet is enough to do that several times over.
Let's hope that the lesson is learned THIS time.

Glider flying without instruments demands being able to see the horizon and is relatively easy to accomplish,
however in todays glass cockpits relying too much on electronics, in bad weather, losing any of this airspeed/attitude information, can be and is fatal.
especially flying in conditions where outside info is not available
what amazes me is that there doesn't seem to be any mechanical backup, Ie gyro compasses et al...........
in the air france accident it seems that one pilot was trying to unstall, and the other was trying to climb......

ie the aircraft was falling out of the sky( stalled) with no forward airspeed (frozen pitot) so pilot one,was trying to climb, where the other was aware and trying to put the nose down..

many lessons on flying without instruments can be learned from the case of the Gimli Glider.......but at least they had clear weather to help them.........
Bob

http://www.wadenelson.com/gimli.html

The Gimli Glider ............... and also the Hudson River event of a few years ago ............... are great examples of old-time flying.


Unfortunately, most pilots these days are too young to have that experience!

It isn't a case of bring back Biggles the design and control problems of modern civil jets are very complex. Flying a two engine Cessna on instruments, still less a glider, is a world apart from wide bodied jets.

One thing is for sure crews from cultures where there is a high degree of deference to seniors in airline crews tend to suffer from entirely preventable pilot error accidents.

Rollo

not sure if you know about the Gimli glider event .....................


it was a matter of using old-fashioned skills to land a Boeing 767-233 jet that had run out of fuel at 41,000'


caused by a combination of company failures and a chain of human errors that defeated built-in safeguards.



and of course the Hudson River one was a matter of landing an Airbus A320-200 ON the river when birds had buggered up the engines .................. using old-fashioned skills!



those skills and latent knowledge are what is missing with younger pilots!

as an aside to the Gimli Glider Event,

a Flight simulator machine was set up to test all? of their pilots in those circumstances............

and no one landed safely........
Bob

As the old saying goes:
A good landing is one you can walk away from.
An excellent landing is one where the aeroplane can fly again!

Agree with the comment re cultural differences and deference. Having watched numerous episodes of 'Air Crash Investigation' this issue seems to crop up. When a series of problems occurs, sometimes basic checklists are ignored as everyone tries to solve the root cause - and nobody is left flying the plane... :-(

"There are many Old Pilots"
"There are many Bold Pilots"
"but there not many Old, Bold Pilots"

and"Runway behind you, is no use whatsoever!"