Posted on 12/12/2013 11:51:55 AM PST by Zhang Fei
Years ago the airlines began recruiting from the ranks of computer game players instead of trained pilots as from the military.
They may be skilled in understanding those computer screens but they probably lack an understanding of the aero-dynamics behind them.
“Isn’t being able to fly by looking out the window and reading the instruments the most basic of all for pilots?”
Reminds me of the Air France crash a few years ago where the air speed sensors froze. Not being able to determine the airspeed the pilots stalled the plane. I still dont understand why they couldnt get the speed from their GPS.
I learned from the movies that guys wearing blue tights and red capes can fly without mechanical assistance.
“So there is a speed indicator, a audible warning, and the stick shakes to tell them there is something wrong.”
All that is true but my question was why the system ALLOWED them to fly below minimum landing speed without automatically compensating. I realize there may be conditions where you want to fly at lower speed but you should then have to deliberately turn the system off.
He used to fly 747's. My guess is that the flight management systems were different enough on the older plane that he got confused.
the auto-thrust is supposed to do that, which is what he turned off apparently
If the engines were set on idle he’s lucky they didnt nosedive into the Bay.
Don’t they have some engine monitor gauges that tell them the RPM is dangerously low ? Oil pressure ?
Sounds like he reilied on auto throttle too much. It did what he told it to do which was wrong, but he didn’t know that.
Unfamiliar with that particular planes protocol perhaps.
If I remember correctly the “stall” horn went off some 70 times before the plane slammed into the ocean with wide open thottles and zero forward speed. One of the pilots was pulling back on the yoke during almost the entire trip down.
"Flight" was completely fictional. The Alaska Airlines crash was real, and everyone on board died. Here's a critique (by someone who claims to be an airline pilot) of what "Flight"'s movie pilots did:
The cockpit scenes otherwise range from borderline realistic to preposterous. The checklists, the procedural callouts, the chatter with air-traffic control, etc., are occasionally rendered correctly, if a bit over the top. But mostly they’re peculiar, and at times they are outright silly.
The early-on segment where Whitaker and Evans are battling through a storm is particularly egregious. I cannot begin to describe how wrong it is, from the absurd idea that you would actually increase to maximum flying speed to race between storm cells to Whitaker’s impetuous descent, which for some inexplicable reason he believes will help lead them safely through the weather—all without permission from air-traffic control. Are you kidding?
Minutes later we see the jet, its pitch controls jammed, nosediving unstoppably toward the ground. Whip saves the day by turning the plane upside down, then rolling it right side up again in time for a semisuccessful crash landing in a field. The aerobatic magic here is something that escapes me, but what do I know? I’m just an airline pilot. The sequence is clearly based loosely on the crash of Alaska Airlines 261 in January 2000, when a jammed stabilizer jackscrew forced the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 into an unrecoverable dive. (Whitaker’s plane is a fictionalized version of the same—an MD-90, it looks like to me, with some digitalized winglets attached.) The crew of Alaska Air 261 briefly attempted to regain control by flying inverted. Whatever aerobatic and aerodynamic possibilities exist here aren’t anything I can vouch for. If they do exist, surely Flight has overextended them.
I can let that one go, actually, though I loved it when Whitaker, seconds away from impact, actually radios air-traffic control with the news: “We are in a dive!”
Thanks, Whip. I can only imagine a perplexed controller staring haplessly into a radar screen, not really sure what to say or do, wondering if perhaps he ought to have called in sick that day. In the real world, pilots in the throes of such an emergency wouldn’t be all that worried about what ATC has to say, and such a radio call would be about the last thing on their minds. For most of the film I was too mortified to actually laugh out loud, but that one got a cackle from me.
There is my best bet what actually happened but they won't admit it.
And the reason the pilot got confused in the transition from the 747 to the 777 is probably something that the alleged American flight instructor who worked at Asiana alluded to - the systematic gaming of the aircraft-specific tests by exchanging test questions on an Asiana bulletin board. They learned the answers mechanically without really internalizing them, much as someone would cram the night before for a test, and then forget everything committed to short-term memory minutes after the test. For tests unrelated to an occupational specialty, that's a little lame, but not such a big deal. Considering that they were being entrusted with a $100m plane and the lives of hundreds of passengers, if this is how the pilot passed the test, he ought to be in prison for negligent homicide.
No, you don’t crash. You stall.
At that altitude, there’ is very little difference......................
Most asian pilots don’t know how to manually fly a plane.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3041469/posts
GPS provides ground-speed.
Airplanes fly on airspeed.
In strong winds, there will be a big difference between the two.
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