Posted on 01/30/2015 7:23:35 AM PST by george76
The pilots of AirAsia Bhd. Flight 8501 cut power to a critical computer system that normally prevents planes from going out of control shortly before it plunged into the Java Sea..
The action appears to have helped trigger the events of Dec. 28, when the Airbus Group NV A320 plane climbed so abruptly that it lost lift and it began falling with warnings blaring in the cockpit..
The pilots had been attempting to deal with alerts about the flight augmentation computers, which control the A320’s rudder and also automatically prevent it from going too slow. After the initial attempts to address the alerts, the flight crew cut power to the entire system, which is comprised of two separate computers that serve as backups to each other..
While the information helps show how a normally functioning A320’s flight-protection system could have been bypassed, it doesn’t explain why the pilots pulled the plane into a steep climb
...
The co-pilot, with 2,247 hours of flying experience, was at the controls and communicating with the ground while the captain, who had 20,537 hours, was monitoring
(Excerpt) Read more at airlive.net ...
OK. I didn’t even know why it had happened until I looked it up a few hours ago. :-(
OK. I didn’t even know why it had happened until I looked it up a few hours ago. :-(
And I have a tendency to speed-read, so there’s that.
What would that prove? That’s not the point although I’ll bet that many aircraft designers are also pilots. I posted a video of an aircraft designed by committee who think they know better than pilots and programmed the plane that way.
Your inability to do so would demonstrate what every body in the industry knows:
All aircraft are "designed by a committee" of engineers, pilots, technicians and a host of others.
I thought they were trying to avoid a horrible storm
“This is looking like pitot freeze up.
The air trapped in the system expands with altitude, effectively fooling the autopilot that an over-speed has occurred, and commands a climb to reduce speed. That only causes the trapped air to falsely shows a additional speed increase, thus commanding more pitch up.
Finally the Autopilot gives up, and disengage.
Leaving the pilot hauling back on the yolk to reduce the false over-speed.
The angle of attack is so large the they get an engine compressor stall and the airplane,yaws into the dead engine, with a swept back wing then stalls and the plane enters a flat spin, possibly on its back.”
^This +1 Air data sensors conflicting with other attitude data sensors confusing fly by wire systems. Airbus has a problem. I’m glad I gave up travel by air. I won’t get on an Airbus again unless it’s a dire emergency. If it ain’t Boeing, I’m not going.
Back in 1958 I was running some experiments at Wright Field. One of the issues was how much bending there was in an airframe in rough weather (too much bending and the aircraft couldn't transfer heading data from the inertial guidance system to a long-range missile correctly). I rode as test engineer on a B-50, one of the last "rigid" aircraft in the Air Force's inventory. The B-47 and the B-52 airframes were far more flexible. Even the wings of the B-36 would "oilcan" in flight.
The pilot deliberately flew NEAR but not THROUGH thunderstorms so I could get my data. Even so, we bounced around quite a bit. However, I got my data, and it showed that we needed to take airframe flexure into account when aiming missiles at distant targets.
The pilots had been attempting to deal with alerts about the flight augmentation computers, which control the A320's rudder and also automatically prevent it from going too slow. After the initial attempts to address the alerts, the flight crew cut power to the entire system... it doesn't explain why the pilots pulled the plane into a steep climb...Actually, it does. This was explained in a thread back at the time this crash happened.
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