[BlueLancer]

Bump to read later ...

[Haiku Guy]

Turns out that pilots of these modern airliners are very good managers, and not very good pilots. As the process becomes more and more about managing the machines as they do the flying, the “stick and rudder” instincts of the pilots becomes less and less important... until it becomes suddenly very, very important.

[CGASMIA68]

I sez...In experinced pilots not dealing correctly(overcompensating) for a stall......
For years our all pilots had loads military training,train train train...these kids now a days have zero and freak out and over compensate for all kids of crap

[texas booster]

Thanks. BTTT.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Wow, this is something I’ve wanted to hear about. When they say “earlier THIS YEAR”, do they mean this young calendar year? Incredible.

So sad. Waiting for the “Seconds from Disaster” episode.

[Barney Gumble]

Wow. I read the full Popular Mechanics article. Anyone who’s played Microsoft Flight simulator knows about stall.

I wonder if it is brain freeze or simply over reliance on technology. Per article: “The flight control computer under normal law will not allow an aircraft to stall, aviation experts say”

[Intolerant in NJ]

The proper thing for Bonin to have done would have been to keep the plane flying level...no, the proper thing to do would have been to wake the senior pilot form his nap, now that they found they had encountered a "large tropical storm" - but then I'm not a pilot, so what do I know?....

[Reeses]

Airbus features “asynchronous” controls

Even worse, it averages the two inputs, which is a terrible design. One pilot was pushing forward, while the other full back, so the airplane's computer did neither up nor down. Who designs an airplane to operate by democracy? A chain of mistakes combined to cause this accident but bad socialist engineering played a large part.

[wrench]

That wonderful GEE-WIZZ glass instrument panel is what killed those folks. That and not training and making the young pilots to fly the airplane without all the electronics.

To be certified, the aircraft must be able to fly and land safely after a total electrical failure. It can be done, but not if you neglect this configuration in training the pilots.

[SuziQ]

Air France accident ping!

[expat2]

In the case of Air France 447, it appears that Bonin, in his panic, completely forgot one of the most basic tenets of flight training: when at risk of a stall, never pull back on the controls. Instead, he held back the controls, in a kind of panicked death-grip, all the way down to the ocean. Ironically, if he had simply taken his hands away, the plane would have regained speed and started flying again.

In IMC, if the air-speed sensors voter was erroneously indicating a high A/S, then the pilot would (properly) be trying to reduce speed to avoid exceeding the NTE speed, which is much more dangerous than a high-altitude stall. Once you exceed NTE the plane will start to lose a wing or elevators and it is doomed. A high-altitude stall can be recovered from, but there is no recovery from a lost wing or tail.

The triply-redundant fly-by-wire flight control system on the Airbus is unable to handle two erroneous data streams (e.g., two bad sensors) and instruments are then lying to him.

[SamAdams76]

I wish I could remember where I saw this article but I read recently where the passenger airline industry has a long term goal of literally having the planes fly themselves from point A to point B and the cockpits will be sealed off and unmanned. Instead of pilots in the planes, they will be stationed on the ground where they will monitor multiple flights at once and have the ability to control the plane remotely if necessary.

Apparently the technology already exists to do this, the main obstacle is that most people in their right mind would never board a passenger plane without having live pilots in the cockpit. However, as we become more reliant on technology, the resistance to this will gradually get lowered.

There is already much research being done on having motor vehicles drive themselves and then we will have the same situation on the ground. During rare instances of equipment malfunction, the "driver" will find him/herself suddenly in control of the vehicle and panic/confusion will ensue.