Fatal Flight 447 - Channel 4 8pm Tonight Sunday 16th

vicwatson

- Chaos In The Cockpit

And on Channel 4 plus one.

Air France flight 447 disaster 2009

cml387

Watching at the moment.

Is that an Irish aviation expert speaking?

vicwatson

cml387 wrote: »

Watching at the moment.

Is that an Irish aviation expert speaking?

John mahon. sounded Irish

mike65

So then a thought popped in to my non expert head, would a manual spirit level (you know the ones with a bubble in liquid) have saved that plane?

dmc17

Seems crazy that there's 2 guys trying to control the plane without realizing what the other person is doing while the 1 person that should be in charge is sitting behind them watching this

Am I missing something or is there a serious lack of leadership here?

cml387

mike65 wrote: »

So then a thought popped in to my non expert head, would a manual spirit level (you know the ones with a bubble in liquid) have saved that plane?

Not really It seems that such total confusion reigned that night, no instrument would have saved them.

It still seems a most perplexing accident that the crew could have been so confused. But then,think of the Cali crash.

John_Mc

cml387 wrote: »

Not really It seems that such total confusion reigned that night, no instrument would have saved them.

It still seems a most perplexing accident that the crew could have been so confused. But then,think of the Cali crash.

Which Cali crash is that?

Skyknight

American Airlines Flight 965, December 20, 1995.

Bearcat

mike65 wrote: »

So then a thought popped in to my non expert head, would a manual spirit level (you know the ones with a bubble in liquid) have saved that plane?

They had something posher than that.....3 perfectly working artificial horizons....two primary, one secondary. They pitched the aircraft to over 10degrees plus which is a massive no no at high altitude in the belief they were overspeeding having discussed previously there was an issue with the air speed indicators. As David Learmount said if they did nothing as in not chase the erroneous speed indication but maintained their current pitch of 2.5degrees and 93% N1 engine speed and took out the checklist for erroneous speed indications which is a memory item for the first bit as above.....it would have been a different story.

I blame the Capt for this calamity. He knew there was weather ahead from the sig weather forecasts and from his bloody weather radar that can scan 320nm a ahead and discussed same with the relief commander who was very inexperienced....then he fughs off for his rest. On return he sits in the jump seat and watches the calamity unfolding. It beggars belief. Flying through the inter tropical convergence zone brings some massive thunders storms with massive updrafts. The mantra is avoid like the clap, but not these guys. The programme which I found very good as against the usual media clap trap hype with air crashes failed to mention other aircraft on similar routes that night ahead of the AF deviated well off track avoiding thunder cells.

AF pointed the finger at Thales re their pitot tubes being dodgy.....airbus retested them and they preformed well beyond certification requirements.

An accident that should have been an incident at best......:mad:

phonypony

vicwatson wrote: »

John mahon. sounded Irish

ex chief pilot of go

APM

Mahon most recently was at Astreaus....I read somewhere early in his career he applied for Aer Lingus a couple of times. The 3rd time at the interview they asked him why did he think he was unsuccesful previously, his answer was because he didn't have a father flying for them.

pconn062

That was pretty difficult and chilling to watch, the panic and uncertainty in the cockpit and it all seemed to happen so quickly. Doesn't bare thinking about what the passengers went through in those 3 and a 1/2 minutes.

mike65

dmc17 wrote: »

Seems crazy that there's 2 guys trying to control the plane without realizing what the other person is doing while the 1 person that should be in charge is sitting behind them watching this

Am I missing something or is there a serious lack of leadership here?

That was a design failure for me (presumably based on most people being right handed?), the control unit should have been placed centrally on the inside of the pilots seat so both could see it.

phonypony

APM wrote: »

Mahon most recently was at Astreaus....I read somewhere early in his career he applied for Aer Lingus a couple of times. The 3rd time at the interview they asked him why did he think he was unsuccesful previously, his answer was because he didn't have a father flying for them.

Haha! Must have worked, cos they took him on!

St. Leibowitz

I think there were huge holes in that program and lots of facts unmentioned.

Such as the fact that they were expecting the ITCZ weather, and were surprised that that handn't seen it on their weather radar, and then when they checked their radar, and discovered it was tilited up, and looking over the weather, they realised that they were right in it.

But the biggest thing that wasn't mentioned was that the flight computer switched from normal law to alternate law when it lost the speed inputs. The crew never realised that the aircraft was under alternate law control. And what is one of the things that alternate law removes ??? Alpha floor protection.

In my opinion, Bonin was unaware that alpha floor protection was gone, and was operating under the hype that "you cannot stall and Airbus, the aircraft won't let you". That's why he held the sidestick back all the way into sea. We've all seen the Airbus videos on the pilot holding the sidestick right back, and the aircraft maintaining controlled flight. I think that that is what he was doing.

This accident started years ago with pilot training, and was compounded by poor disipline and communications in the cockpit, in my opinion, which is by no means expert.

John_Mc

St. Leibowitz wrote: »

I think there were huge holes in that program and lots of facts unmentioned.

But the biggest thing that wasn't mentioned was that the flight computer switched from normal law to alternate law when it lost the speed inputs. The crew never realised that the aircraft was under alternate law control. And what is one of the things that alternate law removes ??? Alpha floor protection.

In my opinion, Bonin was unaware that alpha floor protection was gone, and was operating under the hype that "you cannot stall and Airbus, the aircraft won't let you". That's why he held the sidestick back all the way into sea. We've all seen the Airbus videos on the pilot holding the sidestick right back, and the aircraft maintaining controlled flight. I think that that is what he was doing.

This accident started years ago with pilot training, and was compounded by poor disipline and communications in the cockpit, in my opinion, which is by no means expert.

They acknowledged Alternate Law at 02:10 in the CVR transcript so they knew there were no protections.

St. Leibowitz

John_Mc wrote: »

They acknowledged Alternate Law at 02:10 in the CVR transcript so they knew there were no protections.

"They" didn't. Robert acknowledged Alternate Law. There's no evidence that Bonin heard him, or took in the implications of what that meant if he did. It was Bonin who held the side stick back almost all the way into the ocean. Again, poor communications.

Also, the program never mentioned it at all.

John_Mc

Yeah, you are correct on that one. All procedures broke down to the point where an acknowledged "I have control" didn't mean that you had control.

It's absolutely crazy. I don't know much about Airbus logic but even I know the differences between Normal and Alternate laws. How a fully trained and qualified Airbus pilot acted the way he did is baffling. It has to be something to do with the ergonomics of the Airbus.

Another point missed in the documentary was the pitch trim setting itself to something like 11-13 degrees up. This meant that even when they pointed down, a large part of the the deflection was cancelled out by the huge trim setting.

St. Leibowitz

John_Mc wrote: »

Y.

Another point missed in the documentary was the pitch trim setting itself to something like 11-13 degrees up. This meant that even when they pointed down, a large part of the the deflection was cancelled out by the huge trim setting.

Didn't know that. Thanks.

John_Mc

St. Leibowitz wrote: »

Didn't know that. Thanks.

Yeah here's the extract. Terrifying or what :eek:

At 2  h  10  min  51, the stall warning triggered again, in a continuous manner. The thrust levers were positioned in the TO/GA detent and the PF made nose-up inputs. The recorded angle of attack, of around 6 degrees at the triggering of the stall warning, continued to increase. The trimmable horizontal stabilizer (THS) began a nose-up movement and moved from 3 to 13 degrees pitch-up in about 1 minute and remained in the latter position until the end of the flight. Around fifteen seconds later, the ADR3 being selected on the right side PFD, the speed on the PF side became valid again at the same time as that displayed on the ISIS. It was then at 185kt and the three displayed airspeeds were consistent. The PF continued to make nose-up inputs.
The aeroplane’s altitude reached its maximum of about 38,000 ft; its pitch attitude and angle of attack were 16 degrees.

At 2 h 11 min 37, the PNF said “controls to the left”, took over priority without any callout and continued to handle the aeroplane. The PF almost immediately took back priority without any callout and continued piloting.

At around 2 h 11 min 42, the Captain re-entered the cockpit. During the following seconds, all of the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped, after having sounded continuously for 54 seconds. The altitude was then about 35,000 ft, the angle of attack exceeded 40 degrees and the vertical speed was about
-10,000 ft/min. The aeroplane’s pitch attitude did not exceed 15  degrees and the engines’ N1’s were close to 100%. The aeroplane was subject to roll oscillations to the right that sometimes reached 40 degrees. The PF made an input on the side-stick to the left stop and nose-up, which lasted about 30 seconds.

vicwatson

Imagine had they never found the black box.

I don't believe in miracles but how they found the needle in the haystack is beyond me.

Mr Benevolent

Imagine had they never found the black box.

I don't believe in miracles but how they found the needle in the haystack is beyond me.

They had to or Airbus's reputation would have been severely damaged. Imagine the final report without the black box evidence: 'Multiple failure messages... aircraft hit the sea a few minutes later.'

mike65

You'd think the so called black box/s would be designed with a radio bacon built in.

Dravokivich

mike65 wrote: »

So then a thought popped in to my non expert head, would a manual spirit level (you know the ones with a bubble in liquid) have saved that plane?

I recall seeing a demonstration in a clip before regarding something similar to this. With a glass of water upon the dashboard (if you can call it that) on a plane. Pilot either spun the wings over 360 or did a loop (cant remember was a long time since seeing the clip), no spill from the water though. Don't think the level on it changed by much either.

So from that, doubt a spirit level will do much use.

Mr Benevolent

mike65 wrote: »

You'd think the so called black box/s would be designed with a radio bacon built in.

It did have one, but being 5 miles underwater it wouldn't have helped. It had a sonar beep too, but they only have 45 days of battery power. The whole thing is every pilot's nightmare come to life. The answer was staring them in the face but they didn't see it. The aircraft was working perfectly (bar the protection laws) until it hit the water. They destroyed a perfect aircraft and over 200 people.

It has to be something to do with the ergonomics of the Airbus.

An angle of attack meter would have sorted the problem instantly, but very few commercial aircraft have them. Also, the stall warning stopped above about 20 degrees AoA - the aircraft was at 40 degree AoA at times. So we have:

Aircraft in a level attitude (pitch) but rolling randomly
Engines at max thrust
No sensible IAS indication
Rapid descent

And contributing:

No stall warning
No command structure
Nighttime
Moderate to severe turbulence
Flight control law degradation

It's not too big a leap for the two confused copilots to think "Ah, a huge downburst" (for example) and continue from there. As an aside, it's remarkable that the aircraft stayed fairly stable at 40 degrees AoA - a lot of fighters can't do that!

vicwatson

Confab wrote: »

It did have one, but being 5 miles underwater it wouldn't have helped. It had a sonar beep too, but they only have 45 days of battery power.

Thought they said 30 days on the power ???

Mr Benevolent

vicwatson wrote: »

Thought they said 30 days on the power ???

I stand corrected!

John_Mc

Apparently the variance in water temp at different depth levels acts as a sonar barrier. The peaks and troughs of the mountain ranges on the sea bed floor would have added to the difficulty of hearing it.

It's amazing they did find it to be honest

A320

phonypony wrote: »

ex chief pilot of go

Ah ya he was in that ITVV Flight deck video!!!

JoeA3

John_Mc wrote: »

Apparently the variance in water temp at different depth levels acts as a sonar barrier. The peaks and troughs of the mountain ranges on the sea bed floor would have added to the difficulty of hearing it.

It's amazing they did find it to be honest

Interesting that they got the guys who found the Titanic wreck to help find it. Talk about needle in a haystack - mountain ranges on the sea bed and you are looking for a small box in it!

DUBLINHITMAN

Rip arnie and max
The forgotten Aerlingus baggage handlers i worked with for years .
Absolute gents and glad to have known them .

Great documentary , hard to watch thinking about my friends but when you see the confusing circumstances that happened and the closing statement saying about the training of pilots with automated aircraft types it's understandable how it happened .


One guy stated at the start that the pilots only really fly 4-5 minutes on a 11 hr flight .

So a pilot stating he has so many flying hours
Isnt really true flying hours is it ???

Genuine question don't mean to offend anyone

I have no clue about flying but when I started in Aerlingus we were all warned about the sensors and to be carefull with machines around them . .