Perhaps. And it's likely that even the command pilot would have been unable to save the situation.
But I think there's probably a great deal of truth to the theory that an inexperienced pilot faced with an extreme situation like this one, would be far more likely to make a wrong move that makes the situation worse.
And I have to wonder about the command pilot's decision to leave the cockpit, too. The plane ran into difficulties only minutes after he left; that being the case, one has to think that he missed or ignored indications of rough weather ahead, even though they should have been visible from the cockpit windows.
If I remember watching the National Geographic piece on this they maintain that there were two storm cells. The first the aircraft was approaching prevented the radar from “seeing” the second larger cell that lay ahead.
If I remember watching the National Geographic piece on this they maintain that there were two storm cells. The first the aircraft was approaching prevented the radar from “seeing” the second larger cell that lay ahead.
Here’s another take on the same story.
Reveals that at one point both pilots had their hands on their (left and right seat) ‘joystick’. In the old days, two people might have been needed to wrestle a cable- or hydraulically-controlled aircraft back to controlled flight. TWO people trying to fly a fly-by-wire system doesn’t sound good.
Read on - another perspective:
Not sure I’d call it a hatchet job, but ... here’s the WSJ/Fox version of the same story. DOES make the junior crew look like they reacted incorrectly.
*IF* the artificial horizon was FUBAR I can understand how they might get (AND KEEP) the aircraft in a 35 degree AOA **after*** a stall warning, but damn ...
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/27/air-france-captain-absent-descent-began/
“Throughout the descent, according to the report, “inputs made by the [pilot flying] were mainly nose-up” and the “angle of attack,” or the position of the longitudinal axis of the plane in relation to the airflow “remained above 35 degrees.”
Serious stall.
” ... apparently confused by repeated stall warnings, pilots of an Air France jetliner in 2009 continued to pull the nose up sharply—contrary to standard procedure—even as the Airbus A330 plummeted toward the Atlantic Ocean”
and ...
“... paints a somewhat unflattering picture of a seemingly confused cockpit, with the crew making extreme inputs to their flight controls and the engines spooling up to full power and later the thrust levers being pulled back to idle. At one point, according to the report, both pilots sitting in front of the controls tried to put in simultaneous commands.”
Not good to try to fight the controls in a fly by wire tandem.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/27/air-france-captain-absent-descent-began/#ixzz1NZ2OpLs7
Intl. overseas flight. He went back to sleep in the qtrs, so he’d be pilot on landing in France. Routine. What’s not routine is why did the computer take over, and why can’t they override it. Either way, if the airspeed wasn’t right, they couldn’t very well fix it, and the computer uh, would insist it was right.