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 . .

globemaster1986

Dravokivich wrote: »

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.

I think you are referring to the infamous Bob Hoover clip below. His Autobiography "Forever Flying" is a fascinating read of an astounding career!

Dravokivich

That's it yeah.

SeaFields

Saw this documentary too and found it very interesting.

Can i ask for a expert opinion tho as I don't think it was mentioned in the doc but I had thought of it a few times after....there was the constant stall warning in the cockpit. But then the altitude warning started to sound too.

What exactly was their point of no return? i.e. by the time the altitude warning sounded would there have been enough altitude to get the nose down, get the speed back into the engines and start climbing again before hitting the water? Was it too late by the time the altitude alarm started for them to rescue the situation? If it was too late, how far were they from rescuing the situation had they figured out what was happening sooner.

cml387

SeaFields wrote: »

Saw this documentary too and found it very interesting.

Can i ask for a expert opinion tho as I don't think it was mentioned in the doc but I had thought of it a few times after....there was the constant stall warning in the cockpit. But then the altitude warning started to sound too.

What exactly was their point of no return? i.e. by the time the altitude warning sounded would there have been enough altitude to get the nose down, get the speed back into the engines and start climbing again before hitting the water? Was it too late by the time the altitude alarm started for them to rescue the situation? If it was too late, how far were they from rescuing the situation had they figured out what was happening sooner.

The ground proximity warning was far too late (an expert will know more but it would be less than 3000 feet). At their rate of descent, nothing could be done.

John_Mc

GPWS doesn't really come into it though, they always knew their altitude.

I think the fact that they were exceeding angle of attack of 40 degrees and falling at 10,000ft a minute passing FL100 was the point of no return.

Even if they did push down to the full stop at that point, the trim up of 13 degrees would have probably meant that it wasn't enough.

Maybe the real pilots on here can correct me though

Wibbs

mike65 wrote: »

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.

Or a good old fashioned joystick/wheel. Actually can any of the knowledgeable folks explain to me why Airbus went for the little hand joystick instead of the traditional between the legs joystick, something that worked so well for so long and continues to do so? If they'd had those and got a stick shaker, they might have been more likely to think "shít! stall, get the nose down!". The physical might have been listened to more than than the audible warning? PLus would you not be more likely to feel the other guy on the controls fighting your inputs?

Regardless you would think - and this coming from a complete outsider who just has a lifetime interest in aviation - you would think falling like a housebrick + stall warning + dropping wings + holding back on stick = Eh maybe it's effin stalling Ted, get the bloody nose down. I have to say like others Im impressed at how stable the plane was in such a situation and didn't flip into a spin or pitch over.

IIRC I caught the end of another documentary on this incident and again IIRC they stuck some French air force pilots into the Air France simulator and ran the same scenario and all of them recovered the aircraft. More used to actually flying a plane beyond take off, level flight and approach and landing I suppose. Should pilot training now do similar to advanced driving type courses where drivers are taken on skid pans to get a feel for what a skid feels like and how to recover? 99% of the time they'll never need it but if they do...

petersburg2002

Just saw it on Channel 4. Scary stuff.

brennarr

Just watched the program. Scary stuff of how it went down.

Just wondering had this happened in the daylight would it made any difference?

Hondo75

This tragic accident is covered by Nat Geo on monday 9pm.

Locker10a

Hondo75 wrote: »

This tragic accident is covered by Nat Geo on monday 9pm.

WHat time? Il get mammy to record it for me .

thomasj

Locker10a wrote: »

WHat time? Il get mammy to record it for me .

The clue is in the post you quoted!

Looking forward to this episode, with the black boxes found and the report released, we should get a better account and reconstruction of what lead to this tragedy.

St. Leibowitz

This episode of Air Crash Investigation was really bad. Very disappointing, as it's usually a good and well researched program. They spent two thirds of the program scene setting and dealing with the search for the recorders, and then just explained the crash by saying the pilots didn't understand the problem and stalled it into the sea.

This is an incredibly important acccident, with repercussions for the whole industry. They should have spent two minutes on the the crash and the search for the recorders, and spent the rest of the time on the analysis.

oceanfroggie

Training seems the real underlying cause, numbing crews into procedure and automation dependancy away from common sense thinking and old hand flying skills. They had 3 working attitude indicators, could see their thrust levels, and had ground speed data. What happened to 'fly the plane'? Set power and pitch, fly the horizon, and then calmly diagnose and analyse the problems. Seems an over dependancy on systems and automation which is how they were trained.

cson

My opinion of it is that Dubois should immediately have relieved Bonin and the two most senior flight crew attempt to rectify the situation the aircraft was in. You can tell by the transcripts the lack of communication in the cockpit is ridiculous; you've Robert trying to push the nose down and Bonin trying to pull up.

fletch

I found that such a frustrating episode to watch, I was literally shouting instructions at the telly. I'm not a pilot but I'd be pretty confident I could have recovered the plane given the warnings they were receiving. Quite shocking that they didn't recover given the amount of altitude they had to play with.

St. Leibowitz

fletch wrote: »

I found that such a frustrating episode to watch, I was literally shouting instructions at the telly. I'm not a pilot but I'd be pretty confident I could have recovered the plane given the warnings they were receiving. Quite shocking that they didn't recover given the amount of altitude they had to play with.

The real point is, that they didn't have to recover the aircraft. The aircraft was in stable trim, albiet they had added more power. If the two (later three) of them had said, "feck this, I don't know what's happening here, let's go back to the galley and have a coffee and discuss it", and then come back five minutes later, the aircraft would still be flying and all OK. By Bonin holding the stick back, he was causing the stall.

My thoughts are that he didn't understand that the aircraft had reverted to Alternate Law, or if he did (Robert stated Alternate Law when the auto pilot dropped out, but Bonin didn't acknowledge this), he didn't realise the implications of what this meant. He was still in the marketing mindset of "you cannot stall an Airbus. The computers won't let the pilot stall it". We've all seen the old Farnborough and Paris videos of the various Airbusses doing low and slow max alpha passes down the runway ... pilot with stick hard back and all very safe. Of course, with the reversion to alternate law from normal law, the alpha floor protection was removed, and it could stall like any other aircraft. He was fixated with holding the nose up and the computer doing everything else for him. That is one of the reasons that this crash is so incredibly important, but none of this was covered in the program. Going further, the the issues around sidesticks vs columns didn't even get mentioned. For covering such an industry affecting crash, this program was way too simplistic.

cson

fletch wrote: »

I found that such a frustrating episode to watch, I was literally shouting instructions at the telly. I'm not a pilot but I'd be pretty confident I could have recovered the plane given the warnings they were receiving. Quite shocking that they didn't recover given the amount of altitude they had to play with.

I think that's a little bit facetious tbh.

You can imagine the confusion in there; concentrating on flying through a turbulent weather system, the St Elmos fire phenomenon, the smell in the cockpit. You can deduce from the transcript that Bonin is very very unnerved by it all. By the time the pitot tubes freeze over he's already probably on edge.

Ultimately in my opinion the crash is down to two factors; (a) Both pilots not immediately summoning Dubois when they start losing major altitude, and Dubois not asserting and taking control of the aircraft in that emergency situation and (b) the complete and utter failure of the crew to engage in communication and CRM during the incident. Granted they were likely concentrating on trying to keep the aircraft in the air manually but ironically this is what downed AF447.

It was pointed out in an article thats been posted on this forum somewhere already but the fact is they had a fully functioning aircraft not in any danger from when the pitot tubes froze over. Had they consulted checklists instead of panicking then they'd likely have recovered the situation easily.

Bonin's lack of communication is criminal, but so too is Dubois failing to take adequate control of the situation and leaving the least experienced pilot in charge of the aircraft when flying through what they knew to be a very turbulent weather system.

adamski8

I think people are a bit harsh, the programme is called air crash investigation, so it told the story of the investigation!!

lomb

Its easy to make mistakes -thats the moral of the story. Happens every day of the week. And it will keep happening.

adamski8

lomb wrote: »

Its easy to make mistakes -thats the moral of the story. Happens every day of the week. And it will keep happening.

i dont think that was the moral of the story at all!