Air France Flight 447 Report for you Aerospace Buffs

[DMOD]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/20110527-Air-France-Flight-447-Crash-Chronology-Official-English.pdf

[KA0HCP]

These guys got disoriented and weren't able to sort out the situation given the conflicting and wrong system information.

They got a speed increase so they pulled up, push down and get a stall warning, add full power and they get a descent.   As they say, there were a lot of snakes loose in the cockpit that night.

The transcript doesn't tell us what if any, attitude and vsi info was available and whether it was correct.

I think most of the weight is going to come down on Airbus regarding their pitot static systems and whether they have really solved the problem. Also whether the crews are getting reliable displayed information when the system begins to degrade.   Air France needs to review preparedness for partial panel flying and recovery from unusual attitudes.

[WBear2GCR]

If this is the same one that went down in the Atlantic, the PBS show on it said that they got screwed because they flew through one storm, but the BIG one was hidden because the radar couldn't see it because the one in front hid it, then the speed thingies got iced, then the data was useless... etc... seems like some sort of satellite weather display would have perhaps caused them to take another vector, and saved the day...

                  _-_-bear

[W2PFY]

They got a speed increase so they pulled up, push down and get a stall warning,

I have heard of these situations in the past. I am certainly not a qualified expert on these things but it would seem to me that there IS a relative position on the throttles that would tell them the percentage of power that the engines were at.

I think when it doubt on one of these large airplanes, run the throttles at 80 percent.   

[Ed/KB1HYS]

In the clouds with bad instruments = bad news.  There's not much you can do if you're primary reference is toast.  Try driving down the highway with one eye closed and the other only open for 5 seconds out of 10... won't be long before you're in the ditch or worse.

After that sounds like they got stalled and left the nose high the whole time.  never started flying again and just dropped out of the sky. 

Even small aircraft have anti-icing heaters on pitot tubes and such, and somewhat redundant instruments (Artificial Horizon is vacuum operated, and the Turn & bank is electric). I can't imagine that something as simple as an Iced over Pitot tube or static port caused it. 

[WBear2GCR]

The PBS show I saw ran down the chain of events. The icing screwed all the pitot tubes, thus the telemetry to the computers, which then proceeded to more or less freak out. The computers thought the plane was NOT moving! This is the short version.

I am unsure now, since I saw the program some months back, but I think the computers shut down, went into some sort of backup mode and since THEY control the engines, the flyability of the plane went into the dumpster - I may be wrong on this, but that's my gestalt rememberance of it...

Regardless, fly-by-wire scares the sheet out of me.

                      _-_-bear

[WB2CAU]

The PBS show I saw ran down the chain of events. The icing screwed all the pitot tubes, thus the telemetry to the computers, which then proceeded to more or less freak out. The computers thought the plane was NOT moving! This is the short version.

I am unsure now, since I saw the program some months back, but I think the computers shut down, went into some sort of backup mode and since THEY control the engines, the flyability of the plane went into the dumpster - I may be wrong on this, but that's my gestalt rememberance of it...

Regardless, fly-by-wire scares the sheet out of me.

                      _-_-bear

Yes, Bear, that PBS program was about that flight.  But that show predated them recovering the flight data recorders last month.  They learned a lot more from the data and voice recorders.  I think Airbus will have some re-engineering to do to prevent this from happening again.  Every disaster teaches new lessons.

Eric

[WBear2GCR]

Ah! I see... better go read up on the new data...

                 _-_-bear

[K3ZS]

Couldn't they have had GPS ground speed to give them an idea how fast they were going, or is the airspeed that critical?   Seems like most charts have GPS approaches for the airports so I would think most commercial aircraft would have GPS.

[WA3VJB]

is the airspeed that critical?  

The airspeed was real critical, because according to the report they went into a stall, a condition where the wings lost lift.  That meant there wasn't enough forward speed to cut through the wind and generate lift on the flight surfaces.

I remember learning about a stall from a "bird kite" I used to fly as a kid years ago. It was the kind with a vinyl skeg where the string is tied, that is perpendicular, bisecting and beneath a triangle main flight structure. You can't see the skeg very well in this shot, but the style is still being made.



As you'd run with the kite, it would climb higher at a given playout of string, sometimes approaching 75-80 degree angle from the ground, 90 degs being straight up. If I would stop, or more dramatically, run toward the kite there was this moment where the kite continued to climb, but it then fell forward, nose down, spinning and looping back down to a lower angle at whatever the wind could support.

That same nose-high attitude was what this jetliner is described as doing.  Deprived of lift by a drop in speed across the wings, it eventually began to fall from the sky, despite that the engines were running fine right up until impact, according to the report link posted.

Interesting reading. The entire plane was in flightworthy condition, it looks like, except for the instruments the pilots struggled to interpret until it was too late.

[W7TFO]

This reminds me of the trick I pulled and the resulting "blue banana" incident whilst working at KBLU-TV, Yuma, AZ back in the 70's.

Their CE felt there was no need for a window from camera control OPS to the studio, as 'everything you need to see will be on one of the monitors'

They used a bowl of plastic fruit to focus on for camera setup pre-show.  One afternoon I took the banana and painted it blue, and put it back.

The camera guys had monochrome screens, didn't notice the color.  The guy in OPS thought his color reference went haywire, so he 'corrected' it until the fruit looked OK.

At 1800 hrs the news went on with a bright-green-faced announcer.  Tee Hee.

The CE was in the lobby with the GM and saw it, they had quite the conniption and it took them a while to figure it out....but no one died. 

All that happened was I was told not to do that ever again....

Instrument data is only as good as their input and resolution....

73DG

[WA3VJB]

We still do a version of that when we check the podium mic at an event somewhere in a big hall.

Guys on the camera platform in the back are all lined up, looking at their audio indicators, and somebody will be up front mouthing words and not saying anything. The gag works when the room is big enough you wouldn't hear the person directly.

Great fun and any number can play.

[W3SLK]

Dennis said:

This reminds me of the trick I pulled and the resulting "blue banana" incident whilst working at KBLU-TV, Yuma, AZ back in the 70's.

I personally know the fellow that did this to Kaiser Broadcasting in Philadelphia. He worked for Hewlett Packard at the time. Bill Hewlett personally called him and asked him WTF??? When he told him they had jacked him around on a service call, he pulled out a spray bomb and painted the banana blue. Screwing up their picture.  Incidently, he's a ham.   

[flintstone mop]

As little as I now about flying or piloting an aircraft, it seems that all hell broke loose when they turned off the auto pilot.
When man interacts with the computer and overrides the computer, there is always disaster.

[WB3JOK]

I've read many NTSB accident reports and that happens with alarming frequency. The autopilot is gradually compensating for ice buildup (for example) so the aircraft attitude doesn't change until it runs out of range, or the stickshaker activates. Then the autopilot disconnects, and the pilot is expecting the trim and controls to be centered and they are way off center... if there isn't enough altitude to recognize the problem and get the plane flying again, it's all over.
No instruments (or worse yet, lying ones) and no horizon is tough for even the best pilot.

[W7TFO]

Yep, I stole the idea from a story in a broadcasting magazine.  The guys I worked with didn't read, their loss.

73DG

[KB2WIG]

Whats really cool is to talk, then mouth   a     words and     talk      . They start      for   intermittants. Its also        fun   talk      loud when       this.   'Count them      one,      thr      tical,   test        three.



Pins in the coax is still a no no .

klc

[WB2EMS]

I've read many NTSB accident reports and that happens with alarming frequency. The autopilot is gradually compensating for ice buildup (for example) so the aircraft attitude doesn't change until it runs out of range, or the stickshaker activates. Then the autopilot disconnects, and the pilot is expecting the trim and controls to be centered and they are way off center... if there isn't enough altitude to recognize the problem and get the plane flying again, it's all over.
No instruments (or worse yet, lying ones) and no horizon is tough for even the best pilot.

That's what happened to the commuter flight in Buffalo a few years back. Relatively low time pilots, fatigue, and the co-pilot ended up with control unexpectedly when the autopilot dumped out after running out of range, at relatively low altitude during the approach. Between her struggling with it and the captain taking over and trying to recover from the now critically low altitude, there just wasn't enough margin. 

When you are stalled, and the plane is nose down and the earth is approaching, it's really hard and counter intuitive to NOT pull up, you have to train to do that. (When flying was first starting, many pilots died when they stalled and spun, pulling up till the very end. One german pilot stalled and spun and couldn't recover and decided to end it faster and pushed - and to his amazement the plane started responding again and stall recovery was discovered)

Without visual reference, and with bad data (worse than no data) about speed, it's very hard to figure out what is going on. I haven't read all the way through the data, but it sounds like the instrumentation system was pretty integrated and that having bad speed data really messed with it's ability to tell them any of the rest of the data that might have helped them figure out what was happening. 

Not all aircraft have GPS. Many of them were setup before GPS was a large part of navigation and continue to run with the systems that preceded it. That's changing as the older aircraft get electronics refits, but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have it. Or if it was integrated into the computer displays and they were having a hard time accessing it.

An altimeter, vsi, and gyro-compass or better yet an artificial horizon independent of the computer system might have saved them.

Day VFR has much to recommend it.

[WA1GFZ]

thrust is always your friend they should have just listened to the motors and kept the nose up.. this is what happens when you lose common sense

[WB2EMS]

thrust is always your friend

Not when you're pointed downhill!! 

they should have just listened to the motors and kept the nose up..

actually, the cause of the crash was that they did keep the nose up, and kept the aircraft in a stalled condition until they hit the sea with a 10,000 fpm descent rate. If they had relaxed the yoke and let the aircraft get a more normal angle of attack and a reasonable airspeed, they might have been fine. But without visual flight conditions and bad data from the instruments they did have, they had very little chance.

John Kennedy spiraled into the sea in a 'graveyard spiral' by pulling the nose up while watching the altimeter unwind. He couldn't tell he was in a steeply banked turn and making things worse with up elevator.

Now, in an F15, F18, F22, SU-29 where your thrust to weight ratio is better than 1:1, then pulling the nose up (if you can tell where that is) and applying throttle will help. 

[W2PFY]

That's what happened to the commuter flight in Buffalo a few years back. Relatively low time pilots, fatigue, and the co-pilot ended up with control unexpectedly when the autopilot dumped out after running out of range, at relatively low altitude during the approach. Between her struggling with it and the captain taking over and trying to recover from the now critically low altitude, there just wasn't enough margin. 

It was reported that the co pilot salary was at JUST 16 K a year and she could not afford a room to slept and often slept in the waiting area. What a way to keep costs down???

[WB3JOK]

That's what happened to the commuter flight in Buffalo a few years back. Relatively low time pilots, fatigue, and the co-pilot ended up with control unexpectedly when the autopilot dumped out after running out of range, at relatively low altitude during the approach. Between her struggling with it and the captain taking over and trying to recover from the now critically low altitude, there just wasn't enough margin. 

It was reported that the co pilot salary was at JUST 16 K a year and she could not afford a room to slept and often slept in the waiting area. What a way to keep costs down???

Unfortunately the captain wasn't very good either. He kept pulling up while in the stall too despite the stickshaker. And he had a record of failing instrument flight checks...
Colgan Air 3407 report

It always gives me a chill to read the CVR transcripts.. I want to shout, "don't do that, you idiot"... I think one of the saddest was the Pinnacle CRJ crash not too far from here, back in 2004. The only good thing was that it was a ferry flight (empty) so the only deaths were the two pilots. I recommend reading this as an example, as one pilot said, of "how many things you have to do wrong in order to crash your plane".

Here's a link to the entire Embry-Riddle database of reports:NTSB report database

I fly a lot (as a passenger) so it's rather a morbid hobby 

[WB2EMS]

It was reported that the co pilot salary was at JUST 16 K a year and she could not afford a room to slept and often slept in the waiting area. What a way to keep costs down???

At the low end of the spectrum, the pay scale is dismal. In the mid 80's, my old flight instructor (and a fellow ham) got a job in the right seat of a commuter airline. He said they paid him about $10K a year. When he got to be Captain, that doubled. Pilots love flying so much, they will work for peanuts. Heck, I spent every weekend for 3 1/2 years flying skydivers for nothing, just to get experience and build hours.

He said they were paid one rate for the actual hours in the air, and a rate about 1/3 of that when they were sitting on the ground waiting to fly. Not unusual to get started at 5:45 am, to be at the field at 6:30 for a preflight, launch at 8, fly for an hour,then sit for six or eight hours, then fly two one hour legs and be back home at 8 pm to go to bed and start over again the next day having gotten paid for flying 3 hours. And the scheduling folks were always yanking his schedule around, having him on a late night arrival on night (arrive at 11 pm, clear the field at 11:30, home at midnight) and then have him back to back with an early flight the next day that would have him up at 4 or 5 am to preflight and be ready to launch on schedule. Getting on the good side of the dispatcher to minimize that kind of scheduling was a necessity, but they were so short handed that it often didn't help.

We see the stereotype of the well paid airline captain, making $100k and flying the 747's across the oceans. But only a tiny number of the pilots in the field get to do that. Most slog their way through the local routes at embarrassingly low pay scales considering what they hold in their hands every day. The stereotype was true for the ex military pilots who were the first vanguard through the industry. Years later there was a big adjustment and a 'second tier' salary arrangement was worked out for all the folks who didn't have much seniority that was much less profitable for them. Most of the crews you see now would be on that lower tier.

Keith loved to fly. We spent many happy hours in the air together during my training for my commercial ticket. But when he got into the airlines, it took all the good parts away and turned it into a drudgery. He did it for about 6-7 years, getting more cynical as he went, and when he developed a minor vision problem that offered a way to retire with a disability, he took it and turned to farming. I've heard more than once that the way to wreck a great hobby is to do it for a job (I think a few of us know that first hand in the RF businesses) - sure was the case in his case. I've lost track of him when he moved away, but hope he's found a quiet little airport out in the country to teach basic flight again, the way he loved it.

Flying - done right, its the most fun you can have with your clothes on!  

[Ed/KB1HYS]

I was pursuing a career as a pilot, got my commercial ticket (single engine) Instrument rating, and basic ground instructors ticket... I was going to head down to Embry Riddle or some such. I found out that as an entry level pilot (Feeder co-pilot) I'd be earning $28k a year, after spending as much for my training as the average doctor... not good.  As a single guy I was willing to try it. Got married & kids and needed a job to put food on the table, so now I'm a mechanical engineer.  (FWIT I also earned my A&P ticket, just no jobs worth a dang at the time again).