Posted on 01/04/2015 5:39:05 AM PST by C19fan
Too many computers and not enough “hands-on” flying mean most pilots would have fallen victim to the weather that brought down AirAsia 8501.
As searchers close in on what appears to be the main wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501 the retrieval of the airplane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders should soon follow. The wreckage lies no more than around 100 feet down in the Java Sea. Although there are strong currents and poor visibility, compounded by the high seas generated by stormy weather, divers should be able to locate the rear end of the fuselage where the flight data recorder, the black box, is located.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
I think we sometimes (?) get too big for our britches.
All I need is a flip phone ...
What ? .. milk and eggs ? .. OK ... love you
It will be determined that the weather exceeded the max severity parameters programmed into the flight control software.
And this unexpected weather severity will be blamed on global warming.
I wish I was kidding, but bet on this happening.
“And this unexpected weather severity will be blamed on global warming.”
Already happened. I read a story blaming climate change for the increasingly violent weather in that region where the plane went down
Perhaps the question is: Are today’s pilots actually qualified to fly airplanes where they can let automation do basic functions that they should have learned to do themselves. For example, practicing scenarios of ‘when the automation fails.’
I’m back to a mil-spec flipper. Going to miss QWERTY but I have very little use on one. At least it doesn’t run my life like out younger generations. Average but a few minutes a month.
I read somewhere a quote from a pilot calling flying newer planes as “Die by Wire”.
Virtually none of the current crop can safely fly Needle, ball and airspeed, or get anywhere via D, R, & P.
Thats OK by them, as their electronic marvels have triple redundancy, just like this plane had.
I am curious, more than anything else, do they still train to fly “the old way” in the Air Force?
As a retired professional pilot with 40 years and 30,000 plus hours in the air I can say NO! However, that being said the people flying the a/c and the management directing their actions..YES! The work environment today, in a word, sucks! As far as the FAA is concerned 'hours' mean experience. That is not always the case. Where and how did the pilot get those hours? Military, or some flight school diploma mill where a student never learns the basics of spins, stalls, inverted flight and such things as acrobatics on instruments. All the computer stuff is nifty but unlike your car when the chips fail you can't just pull over and call AAA. Someone up there has to know what to do and in most cases that is to hand fly the beast to a safe landing. There is an old saw that there are two special days in a pilots life, one that he knows this will be the day of his last flight and the other one is that he doesn't know it. Always be prepared for the latter.
A lot of stupidity on display from FReepers.
First, we do not know what happened to Flight 8501. Speculation is as irresponsible as that after Ferguson
Wait for facts.
Second, plenty of misinformation on pilot training on display. I will refrain from saying lies and allow ignorance to be bliss.
If pilots are not getting enough simulator time, that is the fault of the FAA primarily, who sets the minimums.
But one only has to look and see that when pilots had more manual control, more people died.
Stories like this feed the fear of those who are not intelligent enough to understand how automation makes systems better or feed the nostalgia of the ill-informed.
Flying is safer today than ever in our history and flight automation has made it so.
I’ve read that American pilots rely less on the automation than pilots from other countries.
All US airline pilots train for automation failures. The training involves reversions, layering down, and relayering automation. No one can get a job flying an airliner in the US without flying skills. Period.
As an experienced Airbus captain and check airman, I can ask when the last time you flew in an airline flight deck? Knowing how to recover from spins (which, BTW is a basic requirement for a civilian private pilot rating) is worthless in knowing how to safely fly a modern airliner, with or without automation.
You are dead on. All this hand wringing is silly at best. Informed professionals are not doing the talking with silly articles like this. Always look for the agenda.
When it is a Boeing that crashes, it is “a mystery, could be pilot error.” An Airbus? It is, “pilot error, didn’t know how to fly because those French made the airplanes too automatic.”
The fact is, the latest Boeings have the same level of automation as Airbus. The commentators are just hoping the reading public is too stupid to know...
I am an airline captain, and I train airline pilots. You are woefully ignorant.
I think it was upper level icing on the engines, as you know, there have several recent directives about this. A chunk of ice can blow out the engine and send its parts wherever.
Look the pilot’s last transmission was a request for clearance to a higher altitude due to bad weather and was denied that permission... that doesn’t sound like problem with automation or the pilot, sounds like air traffic control being a problem
However, if I had come in before your browbeating, my comment would be more terse.
There are many studies that factually frame what's going on in the cockpit. But giving pilots a pass with such abuse is completely reckless without at least referencing C.R.M. (Crew Resource Management).
The link provided by NYer contains MUCH more information than just a discussion on the so-called 'evils of automation'; I suggest everyone read it.
Because the fact is that CRM is slow to be adopted by foreign airlines and the combination of elitist, underskilled foreign pilots and highly-advanced aircraft will lead to more 'mysterious crashes'.
I'll wait for the facts of my own accord, as your own ignorance is on display referring to 'fault of the FAA' when this was a foreign-flagged flight flying overseas...there is a HUGE dichotomy between training & requirements for foreign pilots vs. US pilots. ICAO standards are not US standards and Indonesia rates a '2' under FAA's International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) Program:
Category 2 means the air carriers from the assessed state cannot initiate new service and are restricted to current levels of any existing service to the United States while corrective actions are underway.Travelers beware...FAA does not support reciprocal code-share arrangements between air carriers for the assessed state and U.S. carriers when the CAA has been rated Category 2. During this time, the foreign air carrier serving the United States is subject to additional inspections at U.S. airports
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