One of the more interesting responses to my recent Pop Mech piece on Air France 447 came from the Atlantic Wire, which took my description of the sounds and smells that the pilots experienced as a point of departure to discuss what the flight’s final moments must have felt like for those in the cockpit. Here is a photograph that accompanies the post, showing the electrical phenomenon known as St. Elmo’s fire. I’ve never seen such a thing in real life, but imagine that it must seem both beautiful and worrying.
Thanks to the cockpit voice recorder, we have a pretty good idea of what the pilots heard, and the instrument data gives us a pretty good idea of what they saw. But what about the passengers in the back? Their perspective was very different, so I’d like to offer a few speculations about what the final moments of the flight might have been like for them.
The plane had taken off from Rio de Janeiro at 7.30 in the evening, local time, and had been flying for about four hours when it first encountered the weather system that would precipitate the final crisis. It was nearly midnight, then, by the internal clocks of most of the passengers; a few were probably reading, or watching a video, while the majority were probably sleeping, or lightly dozing. The captain himself had just left the cockpit to go take a nap.
As the flight neared the line of massive thunderstorms straddling the Inter Tropical Convergence, any passenger who happened to be awake would probably have felt some light turbulence. Those looking out window would have watched the plane fly into a bank of clouds, then out into clear sky, and then back into clouds. At six minutes past midnight, one of the co-pilots made a call back to the head flight attendant, alerting her that the plane would shortly be entering an area of turbulence. He made no such announcement to the passengers, however.
The turbulence grew worse. In the cabin, the flight attendants would have been strapping into their seats.
As a frequent traveler, I’ve experience similar moments many times before: the sudden, unanticipated jolt, followed at irregular intervals by more lurches of varying magnitude. I invariably remind myself that turbulence alone has never caused a modern airliner to crash, but it does little to soothe my nerves. Fears are, after all, irrational, and there is something primally disturbing about being tossed around without any clues as to why, or when the next bump will take place. I imagine some passengers might have been roused from half-slumber; others might have tightened their seatbelt, or tossed back the half-finished drink to keep it from spilling.
The main drama began at 10 minutes past midnight, when the speed sensors became iced over, the autopilot disengaged, and the pilot flying the plane pulled back on the controls, sending into a steep climb. The passengers would have had no explanation for the sudden lurch, nor would it have been easy for them to know in the minutes that followed if they were climbing or descending. One of the most difficult things about piloting a plane in darkness or clouds is the body’s inability to accurately determine its orientation or whether it’s going up or down; this spatial disorientation was the main factor behind JFK Jr’s death. Once an aircraft is in a steady descent or ascent, it feels just the same as flying level, just as an ascending elevator feels the same as one at rest. Few of the passengers could have guessed that after the plane reached its maximum altitude it began a very rapid descent. Indeed, even the co-pilots themselves, with their panels full of instruments and indicators, seemed uncertain as to what exactly was happening, several times discussing whether they were actually going up or down. Until the moment AF447 hit the water, none of the passengers could have known what was in store.
It’s also worth pointing out that, though the plane several times achieved an angle of attack exceeding 40 degrees, this does not mean that the passengers would have experienced themselves as tilting steeply backward, like roller-coaster riders climbing the first hill. The angle of attack is the angle between the wing and the air through which it’s moving; the reason that the value was so high during AF447’s final minutes was that the aircraft was practically dropping like a brick. Its orientation, however, was only about ten degrees up. It probably didn’t seem that remarkable, or even noticeable given what else was going on at the same time.
What the passengers would certainly have felt, and been alarmed by, were intense buffeting and turbulence. Remember, the flight was passing through the top of a major thunderstorm. Making matters worse was the fact that when an aircraft wing is on the edge of an aerodynamic stall, it naturally experiences a kind of buffeting, or trembling. Add to this the fact that a plane is very difficult to control at stall speeds, so the pilot flying the plane was making big side-to-side movements of the flight controls, causing large-scale lurches to the left and right.
It’s a testament to the integrity of the Airbus that it withstood the forces it was subjected to; in his book Erreurs de Pilotage (Volume 5) Jean-Pierre Otelli makes the case that a lesser airliner would probably have been ripped to shreds. But it can’t have been an easy ride for the passengers. I know from experience that in heavy turbulence a moment comes when a particularly violent lurch seems to release the anxiety of the cabin en masse; a gasp seems to erupt from everywhere at once, and a contagion of fear takes over. People begin to cry, to pray, to quietly sob. All at once, everyone has entered a new emotional domain.
One reader commented, shortly after my Pop Mech piece went up, that she hoped that the passengers hadn’t suffered. I think it’s true in a sense, that they didn’t know that the plane was doomed, and that the force of impact was so great that most or all were killed instantly. Psychologically, though, it must have been a terrifying ordeal — though for none quite as much as for the pilots, who alone knew what was about to happen to them.
I have often wondered what it would be like being on a plane that was about to experience CFIT or to be at the controls of a small plane and have an engine failure at takeoff and ‘Auger In’.
While I have often dreamed I was witnessing a plane crash I never dreamt was on board.. plenty of books have painted that scenario in my mind though, ‘AIRFRAME’ by Michael Crichton painted a pretty good one and is seared forever in my head.. the term “Porpoising” comes to mind..
While the pilots knew what might happen the passengers were surely immediately ‘turned off’, while they may have been scared they never suffered. That has been left for the living..
-spaz
I have often wondered what it would be like being on a plane that was about to experience CFIT or to be at the controls of a small plane and have an engine failure at takeoff and ‘Auger In’.
While I have often dreamed I was witnessing a plane crash I never dreamt I was on board.. plenty of books have painted that scenario in my mind though, ‘AIRFRAME’ by Michael Crichton painted a pretty good one and is seared forever in my head.. the term “Porpoising” comes to mind..
While the pilots knew what might happen the passengers were surely immediately ‘turned off’, while they may have been scared they never suffered. That has been left for the living..
-spaz
There have been cases where light aircraft have pancaked into the ground, hit flat as the result of a full stall, and the bodies of the individual on board were found to have disintegrated on impact. Isn’t it likely that that is what ocurred when the aircraft hit the water?
“What doomed the 228 men, women and children aboard Air France 447 was neither weather nor technological failure, but simple human error. ”
There was technological failure. A failure of the air speed indicators which Air France had been warned about, and yet the company failed to replace those sensors.
I can see your point regards the reaction to a technical failure, but to appear to place the blame on human error alone is a terrible misrepresentation.
Thank you for not only tha facts but also the irrufutable truth that most non pilots (and media) never understand…planes don’t kill people, people kill people…after hearing from my wife over and over that as a private pilot I am the next like Buddy Holly, forgetting that I am neither IFR rated nor stupid enough to fly in an ice storm, I am reminded about he ignorance of the general non aviation community. The article about the Air France flight, tragic and not unentirely not a coincidence that it is the “french” once again showing the inability to adapt, articulates the basic premise of flight …that it is most often safe but like eany transportiaion is still subject to mistakes,misjudgemtns and lack of training of “people”…thanks for your clarity of thought..sorry for the cheap shot at the feeble french, I could not resist…
As they say, “If it ain’t Boeing, I’m not going. I’ve flown Boeing aircraft for the past 15 years, and I cannot believe Airbus uses asynchronous controls. This means that what the flying pilot is doing with the control stick cannot be seen or felt by the other pilot. Had the monitoring pilot know the flying pilot was holding the stick back the whole time, I can’t help but think that he may have recognized the problem and done something about it. On a Boeing, you cannot only feel what the other pilot is doing with the controls, you can also clearly see what they are doing by looking at the control yolk.
The other thing that is not discussed here at all, and should be discussed at the highest levels of the FAA and our government, is the fact that even U.S. airlines are allowed to have 1 captain and 3 first officers on a long haul flight such as this. The airlines do this to save money, because they pay a first officer substantially less than a captain. It is insane to reduce the safety and experience level in the cockpit so the airlines can save money. Some airlines staff their long haul flights with 2 captains and 2 first officers (even though the FAA does not require this) so that they always have a captain on the flight deck. It should not be an option for an airline to save money by staffing these flights with only one captain. I cannot help but think that this accident, and all of the deaths caused by it, could have been prevented had there been a captain on the flight deck when they encountered this weather. Even more alarming is the fact that European and Canadian airlines are using what are called “Cruise Pilots” on their long haul flights. These are very low time, inexperienced pilots that fly the aircraft en route so the more experienced pilots can rest. They do not take off or land the plane due to their low flight time. These pilots, due to their extremely low flight time, may not even know how to visually read the weather and use the weather radar to avoid the thunderstorms that AF447 encountered. This done by the airlines to save money. The flying public would be outraged if they knew safety was being compromised to save a few bucks!
JACK
“What doomed the 228 men, women and children aboard Air France 447 was neither weather nor technological failure, but simple human error.
There was technological failure. A failure of the air speed indicators which Air France had been warned about, and yet the company failed to replace those sensors….”
This comment misunderstands the point being made. Of course there was a technical failure – such things happen all the time. The point is that this is NOT what doomed the flight. The pitot tubes iced for a moment, and then de-iced. The plane remained perfectly flyable throughout this whole process. This seems to me to justify the company’s decision not to institute an emergency replacement – the aircraft’s safety was not compromised by the short loss of this data.
Clearly the action which doomed the aircraft was the maintenance of a stalled condition. Again, stalls can happen, particularly at max altitude. If anything mechanical can be blamed, it is the inability of the pilots to recognise their condition, and the implication that has for cockpit ergonomics and UI on a fly-by-wire plane…
@JACK R
Many first officers have more experience and more flying hours under their belts than their captains. The job title does not suggest anything much about the competence of the individual.
It is felt important that an aircraft has a single person “in command”. With two “captains”, it would be as unclear who is responsible for what as was apparently the case in this flight with two copilots: far from improving safety, inflating someone’s job title would not change the experience or competence of the flight crew but could instead lead to more confusion rather than less.
Next time, go through your pre-rant checklist and engage brain before engaging mouth.
Engage brain? Wow! F/O’s more experienced than Captains? Really? With two Captains it will be unclear who is responsible for what? Really? This is an argument presented by someone with an engaged brain? I pray, for the publics safety, that you are in no way involved in this industry.
OK, there are some unbelievably talented and experienced F/O’s out there. But in this industry, more so than almost any other, experience matters. Ok, of course there are a couple of F/O’s with more time than the Captains they fly with. But this is much more the exception than the rule. After 24 years of commercial flying, I’ve only seen this a hand full of times. (I’m not F/O bashing here because I am an F/O) The point is, in most cases, to accrue enough seniority to become a Captain, you must first put in many, many years as a First Officer, thus gaining crucial experience.
You completely missed the point on the “2 Captains” issue as well. The vast majority of time on a long haul flight, crewed with 4 pilots, is conducted with just 2 pilots in the cockpit. By crewing the flight with 2 Captains, you assure there is a Captain in the cockpit for the duration of the flight. The only time during the entire flight that there will be 2 Captains on the flight deck will be for takeoff and landing. During this phase of flight it is clearly understood that the Captain in the left seat is the pilot in command. IF you are arguing against this, you are arguing for less experience on the flight deck. PERIOD. I’m not saying this would have saved AF447, but having more experience on the flight deck that night would have made the accident less likely. Maybe a more experienced pilot would have flown many miles out of his way to avoid the weather? We will never know. I do know that when my family is flying in the back, I would choose a 25 year Captain over a 1st year “Cruise Pilot” with 300 hours of flight time is a Cessna every time!
@JACK R, I’m guessing that, with your non sensical arguments, you are probably in airline management and are worried that staffing flights with 2 Captains will cut into your golden parachute! Forget safety, right? I bet if the flying public had a vote on this, the outcome would be very lopsided.
There, I just disengaged my brain.
AF 447 was brought down by confusion, and a long accident chain that should have been broken. The Captain took a break when he should have been at the helm. The weather radar was set incorrectly. The size of the storm, a huge one wasn’t even discussed. The Captain left the most inexperienced co-pilot (Bonin) at the stick. Bonin was missing the critical piece of info that the plane had gone to alternate law and had no stall protection. If Airbus has a major fault it is no force feedback from the sidestick, it moves back and forth with no feel to it at all.
This flight is tragic because it should never have happened. Other flights lost airspeed data at night and flew on normally, simply going to a preset N1 or fuel flow power setting that would maintain altitude until the pitot tubes came back online. The other thing that would have prevented this was new pitot tubes that would not freeze were due to be installed within a matter of days.
Time and chance happen to us all………for these folks their number was up with Bonin holding that stick full nose up all the way to the drink…………..
Byron Blake,….. It was human error because the technical fault was temporary and manageble with the right control inputs. If you increase your speed while driving through heavy rain after your wiper suddenly fails is an example. You have a fault that is not neccesarily fatal if you slow down, put your hazard on and get off the road.
Two mistakes:
1) You CAN tell if you are rising or falling as in an elevator, for the simple reason that the force on you is not 1G but either more or less. It is true that most people are not sufficiently aware / sensitive to be able to tell, but some can.
2) As any pilot (_should_) know, the wind noise drops apreciably as speed drops, so the relatiave silence would have alerted those who are aware of the fact that airspeed had dropped. This is especially so as one crosses below 100kt. Were I on that plane – and awake – I’d have known when the speed dropped off that much, I’d have known why, too.
Also, conjecture on my part: some people may have been able to hear the stall warning blairing. They’re LOUD, and the cockpit doors aren’t that sound-proof. The door opened when the Captain returned. And, the loss of wind noise I cited in point 2 above would have helpd audibility of the alarm…
So SOME, maybe non-flight deck crew or first class passengers, may well have known disaster was eminent.
Gawd, what does one do then?
Hi Jeff,
I’m a scientist and keen on cause-and-effect and truly understanding things, and as a pilot with my first hours logged when I was 5 years old, I have followed flying accident investigations closely for a long time. In the very late ’80s Aviation Week & Space Technology (as it was then known) stopped providing transcripts of the major accidents of the day and I commend you for providing translated transcripts from AF447; thank you.
Cutting to the chase, you were WAY too kind to Pierre-Cédric Bonin; that man should _never_ have been certified as a pilot. Your story is a very well written piece, and you correctly identified quite a few issues. But the most fundamental cause, and the biggest issue here is the fact that “the system” let someone like Bonin get certified. I would have flunked this guy out of SEL (Single Engine Land) flying if I’d have had anything to say about it. His error is profound; he killed all those people.
I very much appreciate your interpretation for us in your writing; while I am an experienced pilot (but strictly private), a great many of your readers would know nothing of the basic circumstances of the cockpit and what one should or should not do. For them, your words gave great insight into cockpit dynamics, while for people like me, you remind us of what really happens.
In particular, your description instantly took me back to one time when some fool damned near killed us as I was getting a check-ride in a rental airplane in Colorado Springs – the guy giving me the checkride was adding stick input while I was trying to land the plane. At one point I jammed the power and let go the stick – the shocked idiot looked at me in disblief, and I turned and explained over the roar of the engine: “Either you fly it or I fly it, but we both can’t land this plane together.” (I asked him to show me how it’s done and he damned near took the landing gear off the plane, then, my turn, I set her down so softly he thought we hadn’t even touched down yet when I eased the brakes and turned it in toward the hangar – he was shocked we were turning ON THE GROUND!) …Point is, in all my reading, seldom if ever have I read anyone who has even attempted to convey cockpit dynamics, but you really nailed it.
But the lessons learned you cite aren’t quite right, and this is a key reason for my post. Your primary omission, and the primary cause of this accident; Only people who actually know how to fly a plane should be behind the controls. Bonin was clueless and it’s not excusable as you give him credit for. A MAJOR ERROR was that his colleagues gave him the benefit of the doubt, too, so the SECOND primary cause of this particular accident was the asymmetric controls and this stupid “averaging” system that plane uses.
Wouldn’t the passengers (had they looked outside the window) have seen the reflections of the planes position lights on the waters surface?
Probably not — by the time they were that close, the end would be a split second away. As another reader notes, they might have heard the stall warning going off.
@Jack R & @ Dodgy Geezer
I think the basic assumption is wrong.
That being: the ‘Captain’ has more experience and the 1st Officer.
While it is likely, but far from absolute, that the Captain will have more flying hours than a 1st Officer (there are many factors that go into making someone a Captain) they may not have as many hours in ‘type’ ie – flying the aircraft they are Captain of. So the Captain may have 6000 hours and the 1st Officer 4000, but the 1st Officer may have 1000 hours on ‘type’ while the Captain only 500.
In this accident the human failing was in not understanding what the aircraft was doing, what the different flight modes meant ‘normal law’ versus ‘alternate law’. Having a Captain on the flight deck wouldn’t have made any difference if he or she had no more experience in ‘type’ than the rest of the crew. What would have saved them all was a rational discussion of what was happening, rather than just doing first and thinking later.
@ CHRIS STRICKFADEN
” The article about the Air France flight, tragic and not unentirely not a coincidence that it is the “french” once again showing the inability to adapt”….”sorry for the cheap shot at the feeble french, I could not resist…”
Beeing sorry does not excuse anybody for behaving stupidly, arrogantly american! Generalising as you do about the french and probably others as well says a lot about your education and frame of mind (not that you can help it)! Such disgraceful behaviour as led people in the past to applaud at governing powers sending jumbos through skyscrappers.
You’re probably going to react and declare I’ve no sense of humor! Dark humor can be funny too especially when it has a logical punchline!
Think french are “feeble”, you would have neither PC nor PIN credit cards without the french.
OK this post is besides the point of this blog and discussion, very interesting indeed, usually beeing “only” a regular passenger. I got directed to this blog from pop mecs that wes pointed to from Atlantico.fr
I flew C130s way back. Needle ball always always works, do they still teach it today?
On the way down, the Captain arrived at about 20,000 feet. Assuming there was no airspeed indication, assuming an operating gyro, and a 10,000 ft per minute decent on the vvi, why didn’t the Captain retry the stall recovery proceedure?
He wasn’t at the controls, unfortunately. If he had been, he probably would have done just that.
@Chris Strickfaden & Fréderick L.
Bonsoir! Ça va bien, j’espere!
I do not speak french very well (I am not french, by the way) but I risk saying a few words to stimulate my brain cells.
@Fréderick L.: I think your point is valid with regards to condemning @Chris’ nasty remarks. I stand by you that far. But then, I take you probably wrote your comments while still under influence of your rage, as you engaged in the same mistake, by calling all americans ‘arrogant’; and no, I am not an american (at least not from the northern part.) =)
But I can understand your rage. Seems only natural for us human beings (regardless of country of birth) to feel enraged and then immediately proceed in doing the very same thing that ticked us off in the first place, without noticing.
If I may venture a rather controversial observation, I would like to add to this discussion that every nation, at some level, injects a different cultural mainstream set of behaviours into their citizens. Let’s face it, we (Fréderick, Chris, myself) were born in different countries (not telling you mine, by the way…), and we were raised and educated mainly by our local traditions and our parents. And we may have cultural gaps which makes us different.
What makes an individual stand out of their peers, or be closer to them culturally, is their ability to see beyond preconceived ideals and notions. That is a characteristic that is inherent on any human being at first. But then, it might become more or less shadowed by cultural standards being implied.
Most of the people born in the european continent, for example, display a strong will to stick with predetermined instructions (the ‘by-the-book’ type, if you follow me so far), tradition, bloodline, pride and usually (I am using the word ‘usually’ in a broad context here) shut themselves (often brutally) from any kind of new paradigms. They stick to what they know to be true and that’s it, period.
(I know that from living in Europe for quite some time now, and finding it difficult to get through some people in here)
On the other hand, in north america there seems to exist a tendency towards extremism when it comes to nation’s values. The general idea seen by other nations is that in there people have a belief that they are the holders of power and they are self-sufficient, and their way is the righteous way. And it must feel good to lay down their heads at night thinking that “this is America and everything will always be great”. Then they wake up the next day and what do they see on TV? Planes crashing towards Skyscrapers, while truths are being fabricated and delivered to the last minute to try and save some believers in the american’s ideals that have just been shattered to ground.
And still, they massively fill up stores to fight to the death for cheap $2-a-piece toasters while their economy dives closer to a catastrophic crash (much like the one which happened to the AF447 flight) and jobs get even lower as a consequence to that.
But I’ve seen americans stand higher than these lesser ideals, being well-accomplished
in becoming lateral thinkers. Same thing I can say about some of the europeans I have met.
But then again, the key words here are ‘generalization’ and ‘pride’ – it’s a tendency to the human being to be able to spot key behavioral standards and then label a set of individuals coming from a similar place by having just spotted these common behaviors in one or two samples. How quickly they jump from spotting these behaviors to labeling an individual leads to other words, like for example, ‘prejudice’, ‘xenophobia’, et-cetera.
I think the main idea here is keep an open mind. This would have probably saved not only the lives of AF447’s passengers but also millions of other people who died in catastrophes like the Iraqi War (just to mention a recent example).
And by the way, did you notice my Gravatar? It’s a NAO humanoid robot – that’s a product of france. =)
Just want to thank you for your piece and mention a book you might be interested in by Roger Rapoport. We’ve just published it as an ebook, The Rio/Paris Crash: Air France 447, and it’s also published in France as a physical book, came out last week. Great research, chilling read, about which pilot was at the controls and why they thought they were doing the right thing and why it’s only through sheer fortune that this scenario hasn’t happened more often.
Thanks again
James
I enjoyed your comments and totally agree with you,”Jack R.”, “Tech Guy”and “Richard Troy”!!
One more thing:”Total flight hours”and “technical skills” doesn’t mean much without other necessary qualities of a good “captain”like “leadership”,”communication skills”…etc.In my humble opinion,none of them wewe present on board of AF447.
Thanks.
Bonin was clearly under a lot of situational stress:
– Large thunder storm
– Turbulence
– Lack of visual references
– Partial systems failure
– Various bells and whistles inside the cockpit
– An unawareness of what systems could be relied on.
It’s clear he tried to fall back on his training and the best he could come up with was TOGA – maintaining a pre defined combination of throttle and pitch. At lower altitude this would have worked just fine but it was completely unsuitable for their situation.
“But EVERYONE knows you don’t recover a stall by pulling back on the stick”
Absolutely. The issue here is that it’s not clear that the pilots understood they were in a stall. Look at this way… You are so used to flying an aircraft that won’t let you stall it through your own inputs that you just take it for granted. The airspeed reading fails and shortly afterwards the stall warning goes off… It’s quite possible they assume the stall warning is a result of the airspeed indication dropping off the chart, not the physical situation of the aircraft.
Like most accidents there are a lot of contributing factors. Take any one of them out of the equation and it’s likely flight 447 wouldn’t have crashed. Personally my focus would be training – we only get experienced pilots by allowing inexperienced pilots to take charge. Their safety net is thorough training. Pilots should be adequately drilled in recovering from systems failure during all phases of flight – and with the airbus in question they should be left with no doubt that if the autopilot disengages through technical failure and the stall warning sounds, that is exactly what is happening. Then even the least experienced, most frightened pilot will understand that they need to put the nose down.
@Chris Strickfaden:
Personally I don’t think race had anything to do with this accident.
http://af447.typepad.com/af447/2011/11/a330-pilot-speaks-out.html
Werner
I appreciate your post in that you.re trying to interpose a little reason between Chris and Frederick responses to each other.
The article is an excellent peice on human interaction, and not just for the purpose of safely flying an aircraft. My remarks below speak more to the subject of how social programming plays a role in accidents.
In the investigation into the Macondo Disaster last year, the NTSB / USCG commission reviewed a number of emails between the engineering and operations staff of BP. All were American and appeared to be enmeshed in a group dynamic I would refer to colloquaillly as “Go Along To Get Along”. Individuals who cognitively knew the wrong actions were being taken, went along with the group think so as to not make waves.
In the grossly over-litigious society The United States has become (that is grist for another discussion) we have all become pre-conditioned not to take a stand in the face of peer pressure. We must behave correctly and respectfully to the feelings of others regardless of how threatening the situation.
Would have Capt Robert recognized the situation and taken the proper action? We can only speculate. Was M. Bonin incompetent? In the face of the situational stress, we can debate though the man is not here to speak for himself. What I do know is situational stress impacts each of us differently and there are only two things that save someone in that circumstance: luck and training.
Thank you for the opportunity to pontificate.
I look forward to discussion.
The context was – unfamiliar, confusng situation. It happened to be in a plane, and it really doesn’t matter one single solitary hoot whether it was a Boeing or an Airbus.
The underlying issue is: “Can you train absolutely everybody to react perfectly in times of stress?” And the answer has to be No. Anybody who says so is probably selling a training package.
But from my own knowledge, the accumulation of experience, not just training, really does improve the odds. The many times of “Oh … that was very scary, and I would have made this mistake, or that mistake …”
In this instance, Bonin was completely wrong, in any technical sense. But in my view, so was the captain. There is a time to be a mentor, available to be consulted, and there is a time when in whatever sense you really have to sit in the seat, look around carefully, and work out what is happening. Even if only to give that seat up again four minutes later. That’s OK too.
I do mean that as both truth and metaphor: I do know about flying, but I know far more about other situations in which there was the real possibility of immediate dreadful harm. It is possible to take charge without disrupting what is going on, make a few moves, and then give back the controls.
I did not learn that from any training – I learned that from being around people who did it, and people who failed to do it.
There was confusion in that cockpit, beyond doubt. And it would have been deeply stupid for the captain to strike some dimwit John Wayne pose – “I’ll take over here!” But as the person in command, carrying the responsibilty, I do believe that he failed. It is intrinsic in taking on that responsibility that you will have to work with people who are not yet fully competent, and some who may never be, in all their lives. If nothing else, that’s why you get paid more. C’est la vie, as they might not say at Boeing.
Thank goodness for heroic efforts by AF to recover the FDRs without that this discussion would not take place. There were many holes in this Swiss cheese but the key elements were the loss of airspeed indication and the lack of pilot awareness of the implications, namely the planes handling characteristics under alternate law. The latter should surely be clearly understood as part of endorsement on the A330, experience has already taught us that a handicapped A/P + pilot hybrid can be fraught with peril!
@Richard Troy:
“1) You CAN tell if you are rising or falling as in an elevator, for the simple reason that the force on you is not 1G but either more or less. It is true that most people are not sufficiently aware / sensitive to be able to tell, but some can.”
I would expect a “scientist” to know newton’s second law.
No acceleration = sum of forces are zero = resistance of support is 1G regardless of your speed.
In an elevator, you can feel when the elevator starts moving (when it accelerates). If you miss that, you have no physical mean of knowing if it moves, or in which direction.
It has nothing to do with people’s sensitivity, just physics.
In the plane, given that it is hard to mentally integrate the accelerations due to the turbulences, and separate gravity from motor thrust, it is very, very easy to lose count of the cumulated vertical acceleration you’ve been experiencing, hence your vertical speed.
your article reminds me of another transcript of a recent Quantas A380 incident over Indonesia. It was by chance that there were 5 senior commanders present in that flight from Singapore to Australia. Left to the normal set of flight crew the over 800 error messages displayed by the cockpit computer after the loss of the No.1 engine would have completely overwhelmed the PF & PNF and could have resulted in a serious and maybe fatal situation. The lesson from these incidents is that as the level of aerodynamic technology increases so does the complications with the same. My personal take would be to have an artificial intelligence system which realises that the parameters governing flight have been crossed and the computer takes over to maintain control of the aircraft till such time that it decides that it is now safe to hand it back to the pilots.
PPK, Some sort of solution like that may well be necessary; but it wouldn’t suffice in a situation that threatened to turn imminently fatal, such as an icing situation at low altitude. And it raises the question: if the computer always has to be monitoring the pilots to make sure they’re flying correctly, is there a point in having pilots at all?
O RLY?
NASA guy that operates the Vomit Comet would like to have a talk with you.
[QUOTE]The plane had taken off from Rio de Janeiro at 7.30 in the evening, local time, and had been flying for about four hours when it first encountered the weather system that would precipitate the final crisis. It was nearly midnight, then, by the internal clocks of most of the passengers; a few were probably reading, or watching a video, while the majority were probably sleeping, or lightly dozing. The captain himself had just left the cockpit to go take a nap[/QUOTE]
4 hours and the captain went to take a nap? Why? Did he return?
The can put a shuttle in space withstanding heat and freezing temps but Airbus can build a plane which sensors can function properly.
Another thing is. Pilots these days too rely to much on electronic systems. I have a PC and it fails at times. No back up in aplane to give you readings? What happen to that old ball they use to have in the planes?
It’s one thing commenting what the pilot should have done when you’re sitting in front o a fire with your feet up.It’s another matter when your in the cockpit seat trying to give attention to the multiple warnings that are being signalled to you.The timeframe of events was very short.Yes the crew should have diverted however many airlines want to keep to the time schedule and major diversions cost the airlines money and disgruntled passengers.in this case there was no excuse and the flight should have gone around the thunderstorm.Aviation technology has brought us to a point where pilots are no longer one with the craft they are flying.These unfortunate pilots probably had sufficient experience in flying a craft manually at high altitude.The crashes in most cases where these high tech aircraft are involved invariably boils down to human error.What is clear is that noone in that cockpit took control of the situation and the co pilots did not give the captain sufficient accurate information as to what had unfolded whole he was out of the cockpit.
I hope these people did not perish in vain and that all crew training is taken up a notch with all airlines flying.Increase the severity of dangerous situations in simulators and emphasise that the aircraft is so small and insignificant when facing a major thunderstorm.best avoided at all costs regardless of inconvenience and financial cost.
Late poster here . . .
Curious as to what the Airbus engineers and/or flight crews see as the benefit of asynchronous controls? There must be some “pros” to this design feature, or it wouldn’t have made it into the A330’s cockpit. Anyone?
Also, I agree with @Richard Troy that including the transcript is most valuable to the reader, as it brings to us all the human element.
Excusez-moi, but 15 years ago some of us college kids and wannabe pilots used to call Airbus “Scarebus.” I wonder how the French referred to Boeing (besides arrogant.) 😉
After reading the posts by pilots and so-caled scientists im at a loss why no one asked why the pilots did’nt refer to their instruments, since they were in an IFR condition. They all knew they were loosing altitude, thats a given. The artificial horizon (a gravity dependent instrument) would have told them they were in a dangerous nose up condition, and secondly the GPS would have told them their ground speed within 3 to 5 knots that would have confirmed a stall coondition while the pitot tubes were still iced up, allowing them a safe margin of altitude to recover. Lastly of their thousands of hours of flight time, how many hours were in that model of Airbus? The Captain may not have been able to see the instruments from his vantage point, but the voice recorder does not indicate he was barking orders for the seated pilots to read them. It seems that through the European system of patronege and popularity these men were allowed to be pilots, when they should have been reservation clerks.
I have not piloted a plane in over 30 years but once got into a situation where I could not even see the propeller.
Even a new pilot should know that pulling back on the stick is a deadly decision. I had a ball and needle and knew what to do with it. No problem.
Asynchronous controls. This is the key to the crash. Pilot #3’s presence was neutralised by this. He had no idea what the other pilot was doing. What idiots came up with this? As one earlier poster mentioned, if it’s not Boing I’m not going.
Cause of crash: airbus. Secondary cause: pilots/
Ascending in an elevator feels nothing like an elevator at rest. What are you talking about? You can’t feel that?
Pilots lack of familiarity and training along with system malfunction contributed to this terrible accident.
This Airbus A330-203 did not have multiple independent systems for detecting airspeed such as a GPS based system that would at least cross check the readings being given by the pitot tubes and then provide a cockpit warning that the airspeed could be wrong, or another safety mechanism whereby the pitot tubes are heated (as long as this would not impact the reading) so that ice could not occlude them.
To recover from deep stall is to set engine to idle to reduce nose up side effect and try full nose down input. If no success roll the aircraft to above 60° bank angle and rudder input to lower the nose in a steep engaged turn. Practicing recovery from “Loss of Control” situations should be mandatory part of recurrent training
Il y a peu de doute que ce soit l’action incomprehensible de Bonin qui a maintenu une angle d’attaque sans songer qu’il fallait retrouver la vitesse relative de l’avion. En fait tous les pilotes de grand ligne ont le probleme d’avoir un controle tres indirect de leur vehicule. A mon avis, il faudrait forcer tous les pilotes professionnels de faire de vols de training en avions civils (Cessna, Tobago, etc..) rien que pour raffraichir le bon sens et la comprehension de l’acte de pilotage direct d’un avion.
L’idee exprime par certains commentaires ignorants par rapport a une arrogance particulier du “French” est plus que stupide – c’est meme arrogant! De plus les pilotes en general ont tendance d’etre arrogants eux-memes. Mais l’arrogance doit etre remplace par l’humilite et une attitude scientifique.
Is it not possible or even likely that at least some of the passangers tuned in to the entertainment system where basic flight parameters are represented (such as speed and altitude) and thereby concluded that something was terribly wrong. And if this was the case one could assume that the information surfaced around the cabin. I guess it is also somewhat likely that the flight attendants would be quite worried that something was wrong and that this could also affect the atmosphere in the cabin on flight 447s path to the atlantic ocean.
Lets hope no one really knew what whas happenning but i fear that the scenario above, at least to some extent, took place.
According information from to the Flight Data Recorder released in the BEA’s final report in July, the pilot flying the plane engaged in all kinds of wild roll oscillations, as well as big nose up and down commands; for the passengers it must have been a wild, terrifying ride.
The arrogance of the French… Despite all the info re af447 they STILL try to excuse their FANTASTIC French pilots. This is why they will NEVER learn and why I would NEVER fly Air France EVER! 100% pilot error and only 17.5k compo paid out per passenger = jokers!
@Constantine: what you feel in the elevator is the vibrations from irregularities in the mechanism, but not whether it is going up or down.
Newton already knew that almost 400 years ago. Our bodies can feel acceleration, but not speed. So, in the elevator, you will feel the initial jerk up or down, but once the speed stabilizes, it is physically impossible to determine if you are moving from the movement itself.
Wow look at all those scientific kids who think you cant feel wether you descend or not. Guys, make clear to yourselfes that your body is accelerated at any time with 1G. Which results in force that you feel in your bones. Now imagine you are free falling. You are not accelerated any more, resulting in NO force. Descending is a state in between, it results in 0 < acceleration (force) < 1G. Go figure…
Any passengers watching the inflight map on their personal entertainment system would have seen the altimeter reading dropping…and dropping…and dropping, all the while the craft is undergoing intense buffeting and tubulence as desctibed by the author.
That is an amazing observation: Any passenger observing this video display figure probably figured out the aircraft’s condition better than the three pilots in the cockpit!
Amazing… G.
Regarding stall recovery skills… shouldn’t proper training include recovering from an actual stall in a large airliner? Why not throw trainees into extreme situations and let them recover from it?
In a simulator, yes! And not just stall recovery skills, every aspect of hand-flying, in my opinion. The crash at SFO seems to have been caused by pilots who lacked the skills to land a plane by themselves.