Plane down near Moscow

Negative_G · 14-02-2018 5:25pm

Candamir wrote: »

Absolutely would. That’s why pilots learn instrument flying. I would assume most transport catagory aircraft have pitch and power settings in case of unreliable airspeed. Eg after T/O 15degrees and TOGA power.

I think you need to read a little about what I referred to.

Power and pitch is all well and good if you believe your instruments. There has been plenty of accidents because the PF believed one thing, while their instruments are telling them a different thing.

There is rarely one singular cause of an accident. The suggestion that power and pitch is the one stop shop for a problem solving is a bit naive and insulting to flight crew considering how little we know at this stage.

Candamir · 14-02-2018 6:50pm

Negative_G wrote: »

I think you need to read a little about what I referred to.

Power and pitch is all well and good if you believe your instruments. There has been plenty of accidents because the PF believed one thing, while their instruments are telling them a different thing.

There is rarely one singular cause of an accident. The suggestion that power and pitch is the one stop shop for a problem solving is a bit naive and insulting to flight crew considering how little we know at this stage.

Ehhhhh........ In the context of unreliable airspeed - which is what was being discussed. All that’s required to set power and pitch is N1/ epr and a standby horizon. Do you mean you should believe the seat of your pants before your instruments? That has been the cause of many accidents, yes. And yes of course we know very little at this stage, but unreliable airspeed is what was being postulated, and that is what I was replying to. I wasn’t being insulting to pilots at all! Not sure where you got that from.

Negative_G · 14-02-2018 10:43pm

Candamir wrote: »

Ehhhhh........ In the context of unreliable airspeed - which is what was being discussed. All that’s required to set power and pitch is N1/ epr and a standby horizon. Do you mean you should believe the seat of your pants before your instruments? That has been the cause of many accidents, yes. And yes of course we know very little at this stage, but unreliable airspeed is what was being postulated, and that is what I was replying to. I wasn’t being insulting to pilots at all! Not sure where you got that from.

"Postulated", "discussed". Heres a more appropriate layman word - speculation.

Do I believe you should believe the seat of your pants before your instruments? What a stupid question. So stupid in fact I am not going to addresss it as you already know the answer.

Here is a question for you, have you done any UPRT? Have you ever experienced the leans? I expect the answer to both is a firm no. I have carried out and experienced both.

As I said previously, aviation has more than its fair share armchar experts. If only all the armchair sullenburgers out there were actual pilots, sure there would never be another accident or incident again.

If you want to address a point while quoting me, perhaps you might want to include your context or perspective on your post. Don't assume I will re-read the thread to gain your ascertain or your opinion. I dont have the time or the inclination.

View Profile · 14-02-2018 11:22pm

Negative_G wrote:

And if the PF is experiencing somatogravic illusion? Will power and pitch help then? Maybe it would, equally it could exacerbate the problem.

A commercial pilot will experience somatographic illusion regularly and learn to ignore it. So yes, pitch and power will always help in this case.
I don't see how it would exacerbate the situation.

View Profile · 14-02-2018 11:29pm

Negative_G wrote:

Here is a question for you, have you done any UPRT? Have you ever experienced the leans? I expect the answer to both is a firm no. I have carried out and experienced both.

Instrument rated pilots will trust their instruments. To have all 3 attitude indicators fail is quite unlikely. That's your primary reference. If airspeed is deemed unreliable, pitch and power will keep you flying safely until touchdown.

Negative_G · 14-02-2018 11:31pm

View Profile wrote: »

Instrument rated pilots will trust their instruments. To have all 3 attitude indicators fail is quite unlikely. That's your primary reference. If airspeed is deemed unreliable, pitch and power will keep you flying safely until touchdown.

Thank you for stating the obvious.

Any other infinite words of wisdom since we are going down that road?

Why not throw in "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate" aswell.

L1011 · 14-02-2018 11:41pm

Calm down, please.

Candamir · 14-02-2018 11:44pm

Negative_G wrote: »

"Postulated", "discussed". Heres a more appropriate layman word - speculation.

Do I believe you should believe the seat of your pants before your instruments? What a stupid question. So stupid in fact I am not going to addresss it as you already know the answer.

Here is a question for you, have you done any UPRT? Have you ever experienced the leans? I expect the answer to both is a firm no. I have carried out and experienced both.

As I said previously, aviation has more than its fair share armchar experts. If only all the armchair sullenburgers out there were actual pilots, sure there would never be another accident or incident again.

If you want to address a point while quoting me, perhaps you might want to include your context or perspective on your post. Don't assume I will re-read the thread to gain your ascertain or your opinion. I dont have the time or the inclination.

Seriously? What’s your problem? I think you may have gotten the wrong end of the stick here.

BTW, a firm ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ to the above.

View Profile · 14-02-2018 11:47pm

Negative_G wrote:

Any other infinite words of wisdom since we are going down that road?

Yeah. Learn to relax. You might live a little longer.

Candamir · 14-02-2018 11:48pm

View Profile wrote: »

Yeah. Learn to relax. You might live a little longer.

Good advice

Irish Steve · 15-02-2018 12:16am

I think we need to put a bit of context back into this discussion.

Not that long ago, an A330 in the cruise suffered an unreliable airspeed incident, and for all sorts of reasons, the flight deck crew were unable to deal with it correctly, and the aircraft and all on board were lost, at a relatively relaxed phase of the flight, all it needed was for them to recognise the issue, and apply appropriate pitch and power and the aircraft would have continued to fly, rather than making a very big splash into the Atlantic as a result of stalling all the way down.

The Antonov was departing, and the standard departure process goes along the lines of checking that both sides are reading the same airspeed during the ground roll, then using the airspeed to determine V1, (the go/nogo decision speed), V2, (rotate) and then the appropriate climb speed, and both pitch and power are adjusted during that phase to maintain the speed, which will then be increased as flaps and slats are stowed, and then increased as the climb rate is reduced once the initial departure climb out has been completed.

More than somewhat simplified, that's the standard that's pretty much universal for departure.

What's the critical number 1 item that's been referred to a number of times during that paragraph? Yup, got it in one, speed.

Now, make the mental transition to even recognise that the speeds have gone screwy.

First, you have to recognise that there's a problem with the speed, which because of the rarity with which it happens, may take a few moments.

Next, you have to make the mental transition to ignore the speed indication that's wrong, and start to fly the aircraft using the other cues that are available to you, but remember, the departure climb out is a time of high work load, and flying without a reliable air speed during that phase of flight is not something you would choose to do, and if forced to do it, the information about what pitch and power settings to use are not likely to be figures that you can instantly recall from memory, as the chances are you have never had to use them, so the first problem will be finding the right page in the QRH to get the relevant figures, and remember, this is an already high work load part of the flight, as your going to be dealing with heading changes, course changes, possibly ATC level off instructions, and the changes of speeds caused by the normal departure reconfigurations that happen all the time.

And that's assuming that you've been able to find the mental capacity to actually analyse that you're trying to fly the aircraft with unreliable airspeed, and depending on how unreliable the airspeed it, and how quickly you've copped it, the aircraft may already be doing things that you're only partially prepared for.

Yes, it's possible that for reasons as yet unknown, the crew didn't turn the pitot heat on at the appropriate moment during the check lists. At this stage, we don't know what they did, or why, or if there was a technical issue with the aircraft that meant there was a failure.

Recognising that failure and dealing with it sounds easy, but believe me, at that phase of the flight, with the high workload, recognising and appropriately managing the problem may well turn out to have been more complex than the crew was capable of dealing with, which resulted in the crash.

So, on that basis, can we all please recognise that sitting comfortably in our chairs behind a keyboard is a very different scenario than being behind the controls of an aircraft that has suddenly started doing things that you are not expecting, and in ways that you've not planned for, and for reasons that are not completely clear or predictable.

That's why commercial pilots fly a significant number of hours before they get their licence, and why they spend time in simulators on a regular basis, it's preparation for the time when they may have to deal with something that's outside of their experience, and all we can do is hope that their training and intuition enable them to arrive at a valid analysis of what's wrong before things are too out of control to be able to recover.

So, let's get back to having a reasonable discussion, without the sniping and other comments that are coming in to the thread.

Candamir · 15-02-2018 9:22am

Yeah, except that pitch and Power settings would be fairly standard for immediate departure, and up to the end of the acceleration phase, so if something doesn’t look right, it’ll be fairly obvious. Of course it’ll take a few seconds/ maybe a minute to figure out what’s going on. Also pitch and power settings for unreliable airspeed are memory recall items - for airbus anyway (the type I fly), I presume there’s similar recall checklists for other types, so there’s no routing around in the QRH. (Tbh, I’m not familiar with flying antonovs, so taking in general terms here!)
In the AF situation, if all the crew had done were apply a reasonable pitch and Power, it’s very likely the situation would have resolved itself within a few minutes (as it did in other similar incidents). So it’s odd that some people seem very resistant to the idea of setting a reasonable pitch and power which will keep you safe while you figure out what’s going on.

martinsvi · 15-02-2018 1:15pm

to deal with unreliable speed indication you first have to recognize that indeed the speed is unreliable. When pitot ices up the indicated speed goes down with the rate of climb, and builds back up with a decent making you believe that everything is correct

If you overreact and push the nose down, it will in return cause momentary weightlessness even further making one believe that you are in a stall and as such the recovery should be initiated.

at just 6000ft up in a jet, I don't think there's a lot of time to initiate a stall recovery and then change your state of mind for an unreliable airspeed scenario

I don't think anyone here is resistant to the idea that pitch and power can save the day, commander had 23 years of flying behind him, I'm fairly sure he knew the pitch and power mantra as well if not better than anyone here.

I think what Negative_G and myself are trying to say, is that being in the same scenario the chances of us ending up with the same result are fairly high..

In the meantime something popped up in the Russian aviation forums that might be of interest - it's a crews experience summary, I don't know how accurate it is. What it says there is that the captain has flown 60 hours since the beginning of the month and that before the flight he had 134 rest hours. That would indicate a fairly awkward roster to say the least. This also indicates that he qualified as a captain at the end of last year and has 58 hours in the left hand seat. The FO was quite fresh, 812 hours, all on type

Candamir · 15-02-2018 1:51pm

martinsvi wrote: »

I think what Negative_G and myself are trying to say, is that being in the same scenario the chances of us ending up with the same result are fairly high..

If you’re professional pilots, I’d bloody hope not!

I’m going to assume that the vast majority of pilots could handle an unreliable airspeed situation such as what’s being suggested here - a quick search of Avherald’s reports of similar incidents would seem to confirm my suspicions. Thankfully.

(Disclaimer: Again, we’ve no idea what actually happened in the Moscow incident, so I’m in no way referring to it)

martinsvi · 15-02-2018 2:09pm

you missed my point - you can only handle unreliable airspeed if you know your airspeed is unreliable. Throw some turbulence in the mix, some other distractions (troubleshooting a completely different issue perhaps?) and whoila - the holes on the swiss cheese align

PukkaStukka · 15-02-2018 2:52pm

martinsvi wrote: »

you missed my point - you can only handle unreliable airspeed if you know your airspeed is unreliable. Throw some turbulence in the mix, some other distractions (troubleshooting a completely different issue perhaps?) and whoila - the holes on the swiss cheese align

The reports on the day were that the cloudbase was low, so if they were in cloud when the problems became acute, the lack of visual reference would probably have been a factor.

Brennus335 · 15-02-2018 2:58pm

martinsvi wrote: »

you missed my point - you can only handle unreliable airspeed if you know your airspeed is unreliable. Throw some turbulence in the mix, some other distractions (troubleshooting a completely different issue perhaps?) and whoila - the holes on the swiss cheese align

Agree with you 100% there.
Recognising you have an unreliable airspeed condition is the most difficult bit, and sometimes it not as obvious as you might think.

I've often sat in the back of the sim, and watched the 2 guys screw up am unreliable airspeed after lift off problem, even though we discussed it in the briefing room beforehand, and they knew it was coming.

Candamir · 15-02-2018 3:24pm

martinsvi wrote: »

you missed my point - you can only handle unreliable airspeed if you know your airspeed is unreliable. Throw some turbulence in the mix, some other distractions (troubleshooting a completely different issue perhaps?) and whoila - the holes on the swiss cheese align

No, I take your point. However, if it doesn’t look right, you do something, right? So in that critical after T/O phase, when the sh1t is hitting the fan, knowing what a reasonable pitch and Power setting is will give you time, and keep you safe, while you diagnose the problem.

Brennus335 wrote: »

Agree with you 100% there.
Recognising you have an unreliable airspeed condition is the most difficult bit, and sometimes it not as obvious as you might think.

I've often sat in the back of the sim, and watched the 2 guys screw up am unreliable airspeed after lift off problem, even though we discussed it in the briefing room beforehand, and they knew it was coming.

And I presume the 2 guys went back and did it again, and again and again, as many times as was necessary, until they had the hang of it?
Yes it’s confusing, and yes people mess up, which is why having some idea of what pitch and power is reasonable at various stages of flight will keep things aloft until you’ve figured out what’s going on. I think that’s been drilled into us all since AF447.
The notion was put forward earlier that ‘pitch and power’ was of limited used because ‘ somatographic illusion’ something. That’s obviously nonsense.

Negative_G · 15-02-2018 3:42pm

Candamir wrote: »

The notion was put forward earlier that ‘pitch and power’ was of limited used because ‘ somatographic illusion’ something. That’s obviously nonsense.

You are picking and choosing what you read to suit your own narrative. Weak.

Another poster said "power and pitch lads", implying that this simple advice can get an aircraft out of most sticky situations.

I then addressed that directly saying thats all well and good but if a the PF was suffering somatographic illusion, power and pitch may not help as the PF might not be 100% aware or sure of what the aircraft is actually doing.

The 'notion' as you call it was merely to address that another 'notion' that power and pitch isn't the answer to all problems and I put forward a logical example (which has caused many CFIT accidents) where power and pitch may not have a desirable outcome.

It really isn't that hard to understand.

Brennus335 · 15-02-2018 3:46pm

Candamir wrote: »

No, I take your point. However, if it doesn’t look right, you do something, right? So in that critical after T/O phase, when the sh1t is hitting the fan, knowing what a reasonable pitch and Power setting is will give you time, and keep you safe, while you diagnose the problem.

And I presume the 2 guys went back and did it again, and again and again, as many times as was necessary, until they had the hang of it?
Yes it’s confusing, and yes people mess up, which is why having some idea of what pitch and power is reasonable at various stages of flight will keep things aloft until you’ve figured out what’s going on. I think that’s been drilled into us all since AF447.
The notion was put forward earlier that ‘pitch and power’ was of limited used because ‘ somatographic illusion’ something. That’s obviously nonsense.

The pitch & power settings are not the issue here.
The issue is the difficulty in actually identifying an unreliable airspeed scenario. Sometimes it can be so incidious, that it's very hard to diagnose.

Knowing pitch & power settings is useless, if you don't realise you're in a situation where you need to apply them.

Brennus335 · 15-02-2018 4:05pm

Candamir wrote: »

.. Also pitch and power settings for unreliable airspeed are memory recall items - for airbus anyway (the type I fly), I presume there’s similar recall checklists for other types, so there’s no routing around in the QRH..

Pitch & power settings for Unreliable Airspeed were only introduced as a memory item on my type about 12 months ago.

Now it's:

Flaps Down...... 85%.....10'
Flaps Up............70%.......4'

And those figures apply to all weights, altitudes, temperatures, engine types, type variants etc.

Candamir · 15-02-2018 4:11pm

Brennus335 wrote: »

The pitch & power settings are not the issue here.
The issue is the difficulty in actually identifying an unreliable airspeed scenario. Sometimes it can be so incidious, that it's very hard to diagnose.

Knowing pitch & power settings is useless, if you don't realise you're in a situation where you need to apply them.

I’d argue that knowing what pitch and power are required will allow you to understand that you maybe in a situation that is going off the rails. So for example, after take off, if you find that take off Power with 15 degrees pitch up in takeoff configuration is resulting in a speed increasing towards an over speed, then something is wrong, and you need to address it. It’s kind of the reverse of what you’re saying. If you know what’s a reasonable pitch and Power, you will know when something is not right. If you don’t know what’s reasonable, it will be a much longer time before you realise something is wrong. Everybody really should have an idea of what pitch and Power is reasonable for various stages of flight. That’s all I’m trying to say here, not that the underlying issues are necessarily easy to diagnose, but knowing what to expect will allow you to quickly see if you’re not getting it!

Candamir · 15-02-2018 4:13pm

Negative_G wrote: »

You are picking and choosing what you read to suit your own narrative. Weak.

Another poster said "power and pitch lads", implying that this simple advice can get an aircraft out of most sticky situations.

I then addressed that directly saying thats all well and good but if a the PF was suffering somatographic illusion, power and pitch may not help as the PF might not be 100% aware or sure of what the aircraft is actually doing.

The 'notion' as you call it was merely to address that another 'notion' that power and pitch isn't the answer to all problems and I put forward a logical example (which has caused many CFIT accidents) where power and pitch may not have a desirable outcome.

It really isn't that hard to understand.

If you’d like to make a point without being insulting, go ahead.

Candamir · 15-02-2018 4:17pm

Brennus335 wrote: »

Pitch & power settings for Unreliable Airspeed were only introduced as a memory item on my type about 12 months ago.

Now it's:

Flaps Down...... 85%.....10'
Flaps Up............70%.......4'

And those figures apply to all weights, altitudes, temperatures, engine types, type variants etc.

Airbus have them for a good bit longer than that - can’t recall exactly when they were brought in as memory items, but I was always taught to have an idea of what reasonable pitch and Power settings were - right back as far as flying twins in flight school. I think it’s a good habit, regardless if it’s recall or not.

Irish Steve · 15-02-2018 8:06pm

It is reasonable to assume that during the take off roll, the airspeeds agreed, otherwise they would (should anyway) have aborted take off. The weather reports are implying that the cloudbase was around 2600 Ft, so even though the air temperatures were below zero, icing should not have been significant until they entered cloud, unless they flew into precipitation, which is possible. That would have been the governing factor in the point where the airspeed became unreliable in the absence of Pitot heat, the implication is that things started going bad at about 1300 Mtrs. Yes, I know, I'm mixing feet and metres, but that is unfortunately how it's being reported.

The aircraft was not heavily loaded, so I find myself wondering why they had only made 6000 Ft at the point where things all went wrong, unless there were ATC or SID restrictions that prevented them from climbing at a rate that would seem more normal for a short haul flight, most of the short haul flights that come over Ashbourne are usually above 9000 Ft at that stage, some are higher depending on the winds. The other possibility is that there were other issues in play that distracted them from flying the standard departure, but there has been no indication from reliable sources that any sort of communication of problems had been made,

It is altogether possible that dealing with the unreliable airspeed became all consuming, in terms of attention, and that for reasons yet unexplained, they were unable to continue to operate "normally", and didn't have the spare capacity to let the people on the ground know that they were in trouble.

And yes, dealing with unreliable airspeed is a lot simpler in the sim than it is for real, for all sorts of reasons, and it's hard enough to get it right in the sim. I think quite a few of us could probably say, quietly to ourselves, "there but for the grace of God go I".

Negative_G · 15-02-2018 8:30pm

Irish Steve wrote: »

And yes, dealing with unreliable airspeed is a lot simpler in the sim than it is for real, for all sorts of reasons, and it's hard enough to get it right in the sim. I think quite a few of us could probably say, quietly to ourselves, "there but for the grace of God go I".

What about "power and pitch" though?

If only the the crew had done this, all their problems could've been solved.

You are correct though, dealing with an abnormal situation in the sim or even just talking about it over a coffee in no way compares to dealing with something similar in the air when the multitude of other factors come into play also.

View Profile · 16-02-2018 12:05am

Irish Steve wrote:

And yes, dealing with unreliable airspeed is a lot simpler in the sim than it is for real, for all sorts of reasons, and it's hard enough to get it right in the sim. I think quite a few of us could probably say, quietly to ourselves, "there but for the grace of God go I".

Yeah I agree. We all hope if we face such a situation we'll react correctly.

After facing a few minor non-normals on the line I try to break the situation down to the basics.
Fly the plane first- refer to the attitude indicator. That looks good?
How's pitch and power?
Check speed. Is it within limits?!
Engine indications ok?
Electrics/hydraulics/pressurisation?

The rest is unimportant until you figure out what's going on.
Let the FO fly ( if appropriate) while you troubleshoot the bigger picture.

Sim training helps, but much more important is hand flying. You learn much more about your aircrafts traits that way.

smurfjed · 17-02-2018 11:22am

it will in return cause momentary weightlessness even further making one believe that you are in a stall and as such the recovery should be initiated.

I assume that you are talking about general aviation aircraft?

I've sat beside a very experienced instructor in the sim where we were given a pitot heat failure, the situation deteriorated as we were climbing, speed increasing to reach the aural VMO warning, so he reduced power, we got the stall warning, he increased power once again we got the aural VMO warning, this continued a few times, as this was happening we were descending quite rapidly. The guy couldn't identify the situation that he was in. All of the causes and changes were quite benign, but the result was bloody nasty.

The training centre had developed this scenario in response to AF. The corrective action was power and pitch and my type had a FMS page with altitude and airspeed, so this was used to identify which set of instruments were giving the correct information.

And to answer a previous question, i doubt that many airlines allow their crews to practice such manoeuvers multiple times as sims cost money with a packed syllabus.

martinsvi · 17-02-2018 8:39pm

smurfjed wrote: »

I assume that you are talking about general aviation aircraft?

not sure what you mean? Avherald reported that the vertical load was 0G at certain point

BowSideChamp · 18-02-2018 1:00am

As usual, pilot error to blame.

The pilots of a Russian airliner that crashed and killed 71 people failed to switch on a heating unit — leading speed sensors to ice up and provide wrong information, investigators said Tuesday.

https://nypost.com/2018/02/13/pilot-error-blamed-for-deadly-russian-passenger-jet-crash/

Plane down near Moscow

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