[lbryce]

Interactive 360 degree/ zoom Airbus 380 Cockpit.
Uses flash player.

Awesome 360 degree Zoom Viewer/A 380 cockpit

The fact of the matter is that for many years airlines have been very anxious to have all flight data transmitted in real time to prevent just this very tragedy but the pilots' union has vehemently opposed just such measure because they did not want higher-ups questioning their judgment, decision-making process, and instead have opted for the "black box" approach that is mindbogglingly useless in saving lives.

The passengers are dead. It's very comforting to know the precises circumstances in how the passengers died. Instead of having provided live data that would have certainly saved flight 447, all that there is to show for it is Vive la France.

[al baby]

live data that would have certainly saved flight 447 I don't believe that for a second.

[GnuHere]

Wow.

[UB355]

dashing 32-year-old junior pilot runs a $190 million plane and it’s passengers into a free fall. Hopefully his dashing co-workers take note and pay attention to their training.

[spodefly]

It is hard to fathom how 3 pilots could have essentially ridden a stall from FL380 to the ground (sea) ... the combination of no external ques, and contradictory instrument information had to be confusing, but after a minute or 2 of holding a nose high AOA with no improvement, it seems at least they would have tried something different, like pointing the nose down. Very bizarre incident.

[OrangeHoof]

Does Rio ice over in June? Since they are south of the equator, this is the equivalent of December 1st for them but I’ve always thought of Rio as being South America’s Miami.

[Gamecock]

the aircraft no longer having enough air flow over its wings to remain aloft

I am no pilot, but even I know that is bad.

[saganite]

So you’re saying ground controllers could have intervened and saved the aircraft if the proper ground links were operational? How, precisely?

[canuck_conservative]

So Air France places greater importance on a “dashing appearance” than actual experience and expertise?

How typically French.

[expatpat]

Was the aircraft in VFC or IFC at the time of the incident? If in VFC, the true horizon was there to fly the correct pitch by, so it was presumably in IFC, flying only on the instruments. In IFC at 30,000 ft, it was probably in a thunderstorm. Why did it fly into a thunderstorm when TX cells can be seen from miles away before you reach them? Of course, if the storm was a severe squall-line, they may have had no choice.

If the pilot was getting high airspeed readings from the computers, then he did the correct thing to raise the nose if he didn't trust the other instruments (the plane must not be allowed to go into a dive and exceed NTE speed, because it will start to break up).

A quad-redundancy FCS might well have allowed it to sort out the mixed signals, but that's another story. I know Boeing was interested in using quad-R, but I don't know whether they have it in their production aircraft.

[Grut]

A 32-year old with a year in type ought to be pretty competent at flying a particular plane. Co-pilot landings are notorious, of course, but just boring holes ought to have been well within his abilities.

Unless his skills were way deficient, I don't see his 'inexperience' as being a factor.

[theBuckwheat]

Just as with the crash in which Secretary Ron Brown died (notice the careful use of words) could have been avoided if the crew had had a simple and inexpensive VFR GPS as a third reference, it appears that for all the fancy gear, this Airbus could not supply the flight crew with the simple raw attitude, groundspeed and groundtrack information that my Garmin 496 provides while running on independent internal battery pack.

I am willing to bet that Air France would forbid a flight crew member from even carrying a 496 in his bag just in case.

In both instances, the deaths could have been avoided.

[Othniel]

Crichton's book "Airframe" dealt with something similar. An inexperienced pilot porpoised a big jet when a faulty sensor told him something that wasn't true. He didn't check the backup, panicked, and stalled. Good book; the lamestream media drones get theirs in the end.

[Erasmus]

I see that the left seat is all set up for the Bamster.

[RckyRaCoCo]

Could the tail(vertical stab.)have broke off....

...nah, that could never happen again....

[magellan]

The attitude indicators (artificial horizon) are driven by the Inertial Reference Units (IRUs, a.k.a. INS), not the pitot static system. Stalling is only dependent on angle of attack, so they knew they were in a nose up situation, and based on the cockpit voice recorder, they knew airspeed indications were unreliable.

This was suicide by ignorance. Get the nose down, break the stall, level the airplane, and fly it by power settings (instead of airspeeds). Once out of the icing environment, the ice wil sublimate off of the pitot static system.

I trust U.S. airline pilots more than foreign airline pilots.

[cynwoody]

The fact of the matter is that for many years airlines have been very anxious to have all flight data transmitted in real time to prevent just this very tragedy but the pilots' union has vehemently opposed just such measure because they did not want higher-ups questioning their judgment, decision-making process, and instead have opted for the "black box" approach that is mindbogglingly useless in saving lives.

I can see how that would have saved a lengthy aquatic search, but how would it have saved the airplane? If the instruments were not working for the guys in the cockpit, would have they have been working some controller in Paris?

[july4thfreedomfoundation]

Reminds me of the old saying, “If it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going.”

[bootless]

In general, this is a ridiculous bit of yellow journalism. Pilots and co-pilots of commercial aircraft must have an ATP (Airline Transport Pilot) rating, or the international/ICAI equivalent. This was no student pilot in the cockpit. Because of the nature of long international flights, both pilots must be qualified in commanding the aircraft. The overdramatization and sheer creative writing I read in this report is reprehensible.

As to what happened with this particular flight, that’s another thing altogether, but their representation of the co-pilot’s qualifications should have been left on the cutting room floor.

[Hacklehead]

Doesn’t this 200 million dollar airliner have a GPS that could have given them their speed? My $100 Tom Tom can do that.

[Flavius]

The new procedure is designed to cover all stall conditions. It recognises that recovering the angle of attack might instead require a reduction of thrust, to regain pitch-down authority, as well as a loss of altitude.
It removes the need to prioritise take-off/go-around thrust in favour of restoring lift to the wing by reducing angle of attack. The procedure also points out that thrust should be re-applied smoothly, particularly because aircraft with under-wing engines have a tendency to pitch up, increasing the angle of attack, when power is applied.