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Posted on 10/27/2011 5:32:39 AM PDT by pabianice
The French BEA (Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses) is livid, over the leaking of the cockpit voice recorder transcript from Air France's Flight 447, which crashed in the South Atlantic in June of 2009. After reading the transcript, which was revealed in unknown entirety in a book called Erreurs de Pilotage, by Jean-Pierre Otelli, it's easy to see why.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the transcript reveals a degree of cluelessness and abrogation of command that you don't often see in the professional airline world.
But it's not as if what the transcript reveals is a shocking revelation, although the degree of confusion is disturbing. In preliminary findings revealed last summer, The New York Times reported that the pilots in the two command seats were, improbably, never trained in hand flying a jet transport at high altitude. They were evidently intended to be system monitors and radio minders while the captain was temporarily out of the cockpit on a break. They got into trouble when the autopilot and autothrust dropped offline because of faulty airspeed data from iced-over pitot tubes.
But BEA also said the bogus airspeed data lasted for no more than a minute of the Airbus's four-minute descent. In other words, once the Captain returned to the cockpit, they had nearly two minutes to recover from the persistent stall they appeared to be holding the aircraft in. Why the Captain didn't forthrightly either issue decisive commands or take control is one of the mysteries BEA will have to sort out.
(Excerpt) Read more at avweb.com ...
Training for airlines and for civilians cuts corners to increase profit. That's ok for teaching Majhong but not for flying. In the 28 year span -- during which I navigated Navy P-3s for 17 years -- navigation went from sextant and DR to an automatic system that made the NAV basically a systems monitor (a la 447). When the system failed, we were always current in jumping back to basic instruments and a DR plot. But I have given BFRs during which I suddenly fail the GPS. Most pilots immediately lose situational awareness and have little idea of where they are.
Navigators are long gone in the civil world, of course. Too expensive and hey! The system is now fool-proof, right? Just let the FMS do the work. So why train pilots to recognize and recover from a stall -- something they first practiced during their third hour of flight instruction? I've been in a stall/spin entry in a P-3 once and it was no fun at all. But the co-pilot knew how to recover before we hit the waves.
We are approaching the beginning of commercial aircraft that will be unmanned -- no pilots, just passengers and cargo. These aircraft will be very reliable, right up to the time of the first unmanned A380-replacement crash. It's a fact of business. Nothing evil, just an exercise of "The Dismal Science."
The P-8 -- the Navy's replacement for the P-3 that won't actually be built as Obama guts the military -- will still carry two navigators and three pilots who can recover from a stall. Too bad the airliner you'll ride on won't.
Just because it is new doesn’t mean it is always better. One of my profs banned calculators when they first came out (the lowly HP35) because he felt you should be able to use paper, pencil, and slide rule. After all batteries run out.....
Mine banned calculators in class “unless I bought one for every member of the class.” Marxist asshole, Finance class, Business School, UMass/Amherst, 1974. School hasn’t changed except that all admissions now are done through pure affirmative action. Class makeup is kept under 35% white male, despite student qualifications. Coming to your state if Obama wins reelection.
It seems that airline protocols now simply assume the computers are correct.
Funny, I was the only female in most of my mech eng classes....still the same percentages these days. The ;argest non white group were the Iranians sent over by their parents to learn something (except they all cheated on exams). University isn’t to educate it is to indoctrinate...unless you are in the trades of some sort ( medicine,chemistry, etc)
yup I agree...one ought to know the order of magnitutde of things...if DC practised this maybe we wouldn’t be TRILLIONS in debt
Seriously, do you actually believe a commercial airliner will in in the near or even almost near future, say the next 50 years or so, be allowed to carry passengers without a qualified pilot up front?
Personally I would not board an aircraft to fly anywhere if I knew it was not being at least watched over by a qualified pilot. Some airliners already have the capability to take off, fly to the destination observing all way points and land without a pilot ever touching the controls.
I remember the United flight that crashed in Sioux City, IA more than a decade ago. Hundreds of lives were saved by flying skills of the pilots in a situation that no computer could have handled.
And never forget the Gimli Glider
You don't have to go back that far. Just remember the USAirways A320 that water-landed in the Hudson.
Most airline pilots would have tried to make Teterboro or turn back to LaGuardia....both fatal decisions.
(Which makes the whole "glass cockpit" argument one for another day).
I flew for my entire USAF career and was an instructor pilot both for undegrad pilot training (UPT) and also at the TPS at Edwards.
Nothing, nothing, nothing can replace situational awareness.
And it appears that those Air France pilots didn’t possess it at the time when it was most required.
As for upcoming pilots...the electronics are nice...but I always want those basic steam gauges (attitude, turn and slip, A/S, VVI, and altitude) available.
1. Doesn't the NTSB always release cockpit transcripts as part of its investigations? I understood that the actual VOICE tapes are NEVER released ( for obvious reasons)..but how can the BEA object to the transcripts made public?
2. Don't understand why you feel that modern jets need a navigator. Today with GPS and all other systems, isn't it redundant, and an unnecessaary expense. In the early days of transoceanic flight, navigators used to shoot the stars to determine their position..but today?
BTW..Reading the article, everytime it said BEA, I kept thinking of the old British European Arways, and it's then sister airline..BOAC...times have sure changed.
Have you seen "Pan Am?" Great job of showing the 60's..( I dated a PanAm stewardess for a few years..69-70..and it takes me waaay back) and all the 707 cockpit scenes show three crew in the cabin. Is it a flight engineer? Did he also double as the navigator?
The first time I heard about that was in the early 1980s when Boeing was trying to get the 757 and 767 certified without having a flight engineer in the cockpit. Of course, the APA was up in arms about this prospect but the FAA allowed Boeing to proceed with its demonstration. Boeing then said that it would not only show that these planes could take off, maneuver, and land safely with no flight engineer, they could do all of that safely with nobody in the cockpit. The demo was a success, and the FAA certified both planes with a two-pilot cockpit.
Sounds like my husband’s profs. Dear hubby did almost all of his Engineering Physics degree work with slide rules.
When I was in college, acquiring my first circular slide rule was a move to ‘high tech’, to me.
>>1. Doesn't the NTSB always release cockpit transcripts as part of its investigations? I understood that the actual VOICE tapes are NEVER released ( for obvious reasons)..but how can the BEA object to the transcripts made public?
Different country, different sentiments, different rules. My experience with France and French culture informs me that the French don't want their personal misbehavior known to others and that extends to such events as this crew's fatal screw-up.
>>2. Don't understand why you feel that modern jets need a navigator. Today with GPS and all other systems, isn't it redundant, and an unnecessaary expense. In the early days of transoceanic flight, navigators used to shoot the stars to determine their position..but today?
Modern aircraft don't need two pilots, either, but public sentiment and fear of lawsuits keeps them there. For long flights a third pilot is carried to relieve one of the other two. Flight engineers' jobs have been replaced by automation and so has the navigator's. This, of course, introduces additional risks to a flight but the sentiment is that an emergency is so unlikely that they are not worth the expense. Airlines are operating so close to bankruptcy that any cost cutting is to be appreciated.
>>BTW..Reading the article, everytime it said BEA, I kept thinking of the old British European Arways, and it's then sister airline..BOAC...times have sure changed.
Yeah. My last BOAC flight was to Bermuda and back in 1974. Upon landing back home the BOAC baggage carousele disgorged my torn and mashed suitcase, split-open and drooling shredded clothing. I never figured-out what happened. BOAC paid me off IAW their insurance. I got a check for $4.10.
>>Have you seen "Pan Am?" Great job of showing the 60's..( I dated a PanAm stewardess for a few years..69-70..and it takes me waaay back) and all the 707 cockpit scenes show three crew in the cabin. Is it a flight engineer? Did he also double as the navigator?
I haven't seen it. Is it a movie? 707s began service in 1958 (?) and for overwater flights carried both flight engineers and navigators. In the early 70s aboard the P-3A and -B, the third pilot served as an unwilling, "latrine navigator" because the Navy was so short of NFOs/qualified navigators and the one NFO was the ASW tactical coordinator at his own station. They hated being NAV and had been given only one month's "power-fueled" fast training, leading to some really awful navigation and the problems that created.
Well yes - how about right now in lots of places!
Plane or train?
Trains are quite different since if a system fails or there is a loss of power they simply stop instead of falling from the sky resulting in a sudden and deadly stop when it hits the ground.
You know about this, right?
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