Posted on 12/30/2014 6:08:41 AM PST by SeekAndFind
It is becoming clear that the probable fate of Air Asia 8501 is that it is at the bottom of the ocean after losing controllability at high altitude in heavy thunderstorm activity.
Fair enough, except none of those things should have made the least difference to a safe landing. Pilots encounter thunderstorms every day worldwide. It’s a routine part of the job. So why did this one make a difference?
The problem is not the thunderstorms but with modern aviation practices.
As a retired high time international airline pilot, I feel qualified to give you a look at the practices in an airliner cockpit.
A professional pilot always expects things to go wrong. Nothing is normally taken for granted in the cockpit. The fact that a flyer flips a switch is no guarantee that the selected system is going to operate. Everything a pilot does in the cockpit is checked, crosschecked by the other pilots and then monitored by all to confirm it’s indeed working -- but it is never just assumed to be working. That’s called good airmanship.
A dangerous over reliance on automation and subsequent degradation of pilot hand-flying skills has led to a change in the traditional pilot mindset. Pilots now assume everything selected will function and if it doesn’t, the computers will warn them or take care of it.
Is this a unique Asian airline problem that has no bearing on American or European carriers?
Unfortunately not. Air Asia pilots have precisely the same training and skill requirements as any other airline in the world. What happened to them can happen to any other operator. And has happened.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Was it a tail fall off Airbus?
I’m not an expert in *anything*,including flying and weather.However,I have traveled in that part of the world and I can assure everyone that thunderstorms of unbelievable magnitude are an everyday occurrence there.
After that Korean airliner botched the landing in California, I read that, while their pilots ostensibly get the same training as every other pilot, different things are emphasized, and that may be the case here as well. Additionally, although Airbus has had years to get past such problems, their aircraft have had issues before in rough weather with the onboard computer systems trying to react to spurious flight conditions (due to icing of the pitots).
I heard the other day they had 2-3 feet of rain in a few days, which is mind-blowing.
Your tag line, meet my tagline...
I always want to fly with Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger
I was recently treated to a demonstration by Panasonic of their Weather Solutions application. The idea is simple - since we already have airliners transversing the skies all around us, why not equip them to passively gather and transmit weather information to distributed collection points where the data is bundled and analyzed?
This exponentially increases the coverage of weather trends along the very routes other pilots need to travel making forecasting better for everyone.
Hoist on their own pitots, so to speak? ;)
I prefer former US, British, or German military aviators flying the plane.
There hasn’t been a crash of a plane of a major U.S. carrier since 2001. I would say that current safety systems are working very well, but Malaysia has a problem.
WaPo says they’ve found 6 bodies floating in that part of the ocean.
Author recommends manual flying twice per month, and only below 10k feet. Pilots should fly manually for a portion of each flight in order to maintain the feel of the aircraft, encompassing all flight phases. They should perform as many approaches & landings by hand as possible, to include visual approaches. U.S. still has the advantage of many pilots coming from the military, although that mix has been declining in recent years. Still best to fly only AUSCANUKUS airlines.
In the early days of home computing, computers were constantly crashing or malfunctioning. To operate one effectively, you had to know a lot about how they worked and be able to reinstall a faulty driver or tweak a glitchy system.ini or autoexec.bat file from time to time.
Now computers have gotten so reliable that when something does go wrong, the average user freezes up and panics. They have no idea what to do other than power off and on.
The author prematurely jumps to conclusions, by blaming the rash of accidents on too much reliance on automated systems. The problem is that the wreckage was just found, and we don’t know the cause of the crash. The cause might very well be that the pilot did not trust the automated systems and took over control of the plane when he should not have. The author may in fact be 100% correct, or he may be 100% wrong. Unfortunately, we may never know.
There is probable cause for additional study and pilot training, but the training should not be based on false assumptions. That could actually lead to additional crashes.
I hate it when the desire to report the story gets ahead of the facts. Just like Ferguson.
Always appreciated your past articles. always gave me something to think about and ponder. But come on, even you know under any set of circumstances human error is one element that can NEVER be eliminated.
The question is not When we will learn? Rather the question should be how did and why did the system fail
Obviously Air traffic control clearly knew weather was a factor due to other airplanes transiting the route. How hard would it have been to tell the airplane to turn to a east or west heading away from traffic and start his climb?
I could ask at least 10 question "why" about the system before I address the errors of this flight crew.
However the most important issue. Less than aircraft handling, we in the industry have forgotten to teach and train "Decision Making.
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