That's scary. If I was the pilot I'd make sure air traffic controllers heard alot of expletives coming from me if that was happening.
I'm thinking what would Scotty do?
Boeing allows for direct input of control movements outside the FC control laws in an emergency. That's a little over-simplified, but it is a major difference between the two company's design philosophies.
In this episode...it’s got a strange twist. The minute that the plane starts to come over land (from the Med)...this descent starts...steady and continuous three thousand feet per minute.
Normally, ninety percent of accidents occur at the beginning or ending of a flight...few occur mid-way unless there’s another plane which intercepts it or a wing falls off. Because of the continuous and steady descent...there’s no wing issue.
In an emergency situation...a pilot/co-pilot team reacts for the first thirty-to-sixty seconds to stabilize the plane and gauge the immediate issue. After sixty seconds, they automatically contact radar control and request an immediate landing point. Nothing occurs in this case with contact.
Minute-by-minute will tick by....it’s descending on a steady rate. No action by the pilot or co-pilot to contact anyone? In a normal situation, especially if you have not established stable control....you alter the course, and if necessary...establish your nearest landing point (they were within five minutes of Nice (Nice Cote d’Azur, 9,000 ft long). Or you could have turned west away from the Alps and get to flat areas within five minutes.
They made no attempt to change directions. No attempt for contact.
I’m no rocket scientist, but it makes no sense unless the computer took over...eliminated the radio...put the auto-pilot on an absolute locked descent with no way to unlock the system. It wouldn’t surprise me if they get the black boxes and find that most of the data for the final ten minutes of the flight simply isn’t there...never recorded. When you hear that comment made...the rest of the story is easy to figure out...but the question is...who?
And no, I’m not buying into NSA or the Russian KGB, or ISIS. You’d have to rig up a ton of by-passes and get through their firewall to plant some type of virus that would do all the nifty things required in this case. For what? Simply to demonstrate they can do it?
This was discussed on Hannity’s radio show yesterday, and a few people who seemed to know what they were talking about said the same thing.
Since “pilot error” is ruled as a major contributing factor in so many crashes, Airbus set their aircraft up so that the computer can override the pilot at any and all times, where in Boeing planes, the pilot controls the aircraft and can easily override the computer.
They also said that a major reason Airbus did this was simply to be different from Boeing. It’s a bit bothersome to me, who has only the most basic knowledge of aviation. Oh, and Airbus is a stupid name, IMO.
That's scary. If I was the pilot I'd make sure air traffic controllers heard alot of expletives coming from me if that was happening.
I'm thinking what would Scotty do?
Exactly. It is not that it is fly-by-wire. It is that the way the control laws are set up seems questionable. Without looking at the detailed design data I can’t speculate more than that, but their is a disturbing pattern of this sort of thing from airbuses.