Posted on 01/20/2015 8:24:32 AM PST by SeekAndFind
An AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month with 162 people on board climbed at a faster than normal speed and then stalled, the Indonesian transport minister said Tuesday.
Flight QZ8501 went down on Dec. 28 in stormy weather, during what was supposed to be a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
Indonesia's meteorological agency has said bad weather may have caused the crash, and investigators are analysing the data from the jet's black boxes before releasing a preliminary report.
Just moments before the plane disappeared off the radar, the pilot had asked to climb to avoid the storm. He was not immediately granted permission because of heavy air traffic.
"In the final minutes, the plane climbed at a speed which was beyond normal," Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan told reporters, citing radar data.
"The plane suddenly went up at a speed above the normal limit that it was able to climb to. Then it stalled."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Pilot disorientation in IFR conditions?
CC
A proper recovery from what looks like it was a full stall (with perhaps double flameouts) would undoubtedly involve some rather uncomfortable maneuvers in the recovery process (some abrupt pitch, yaw, and roll changes), and possibly zero, or even negative Gs for a bit.
And, if there was a double flameout as an extra added bonus, that would increase the pilot pucker factor even more.
This would be rough for any pilot, but if those folks had been trained only in slow reacting passenger-type aircraft, they had a trying experience ahead of them.
One for which they might not have been fully prepared.
Airbus pitot tube icing?
Sudden Jihad Syndrome after finding out there were so many Christians on board?
Airbusitis
This is what happens when your inexperienced pilots do nothing except enter data unto the flight computer and do little hand flying.
Sounds like the Air France flight that pitched into the Atlantic after the speed indications failed. The pilots were so confused, they spent their final minutes doing exactly the opposite of what every new pilot is taught.
Sounds to me that they may have encountered the same problem as the Airbus that crashed off the coast of Brazil a few years back. IOW, frozen airspeed sensors giving the computer-controlled flight system a nervous breakdown. The triply-redundant FCS cannot handle more than one bad channel.
Hence reason #1 of 3 why I don’t fly at all anymore. #2 is I will not be fondled by TSA, #3 I go nowhere I cannot carry.
This points to pilot error possibly induced by misreading of or faulty instrument readings.
“Hence reason #1 of 3 why I don’t fly at all anymore. #2 is I will not be fondled by TSA, #3 I go nowhere I cannot carry.”
Amen.
What makes you think the pilot was controlling the aircraft? Airbus has a TMR computer system controlling it and false airspeed and/or pressure data could have given the system a nervous breakdown, as apparently happened to another Airbus off Brazil.
You might be interested in reading about the infamous Airbus crash at the Paris airshow. In that case, the computer crashed the plane while the test pilot was trying to stop it from doing so.
If I recall correctly, the pilot wanted to change altitude due to a large thunderstorm in his flight path. The updrafts in those conditions could have pulled the plane upwards at a high rate of speed. If the pilot then over-compensated, he could have put them into a dive for which there was no recovery.
Barrel roll?
“Watch this y’all...”
Could be, but the stalling, if true, suggests otherwise. Also, see post 11.
One thing I learned about Aibus control systems after the Air France crash is that the system sums the inputs from the control yokes together, so if one pilot was pushing forward, and the other was pulling back, the total input would be zero. In that crash, one pilot was treating the situation correectly and the other was negating his actions.
http://www.aviationtoday.com/regions/usa/More-Pitot-Tube-Incidents-Revealed_72414.html#.VL6Ij3R0yUk
Airbus pitot tube problems.
The phrase “high rate of speed” irks me to no end. Speed is distance/over time. It is already a rate, or ratio, of one data compared to another. It is the same as writing 1:3, a ratio. Speed is a ratio, and therefore a rate. To write “rate of speed” would look like this, 1:3:5, in which the third parameter would have to be a value derived from yet another ratio in order to make any sense at all, which it clearly doesn’t: DISTANCE:TIME/X?
“The pilots were so confused, they spent their final minutes doing exactly the opposite of what every new pilot is taught.”
The copilot. The pilot was not in the cockpit till too late.
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