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How Pilots Wrestled In Vain to Save Air France Jet
Reuters ^ | Tim Hepher

Posted on 07/31/2011 9:31:55 AM PDT by lbryce

"What do you think? What do you think? What should we do?"

The 37-year-old Air France co-pilot with over 6,000 flying hours was running out of ideas as a stall alarm bellowed through the Airbus cockpit for the sixth time in exactly two minutes.

His junior colleague with two years on the job was already in despair as he battled to control the jet's speed and prevent it rocking left to right in pitch darkness over the Atlantic, on only his second Rio de Janeiro-Paris trip as an A330 pilot.

"I don't have control of the plane. I don't have control of the plane at all," the younger pilot, 32, said.

The captain was not present and it was proving hard to get him back to the cockpit, where his more than 11,000 hours of flying experience were badly needed.

"So is he coming?" the senior co-pilot muttered, according to a transcript released on Friday. Light expletives were edited out of the text here and elsewhere, according to people familiar with the probe into the mid-Atlantic crash on June 1, 2009.

The 58-year-old captain and former demonstration pilot had left 10 minutes earlier for a routine rest. In his absence the plane had begun falling at more than 200 km (125 miles) an hour.

"Hey what are you --," he said on entering the cockpit.

"What's happening? I don't know, I don't know what's happening," replied the senior co-pilot, sitting on the left.

With the benefit of black boxes hauled up 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) from the ocean floor just two months ago, investigators now say the aircraft had stopped flying properly and entered a hazardous stall, as its 3,900 square feet (362 sq metres) of wings gasped for air.

(Excerpt) Read more at in.reuters.com ...


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: airbus; airfrance; disaster; flight447
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To: Steely Tom
You're right! He's totally in the clear!

Dude, I'm not saying he is in the clear - he may have well fouled up when he returned to the cockpit. And yes, kudos to your astute observation that he is indeed dead. What I'm commenting on is your inference that he took his scheduled break in spite of the peril the aircraft was in - and that does not appear to be the case. Crashes like this are an aberration, and the normal routines and procedures, including breaks for pilots, are executed without incident many thousands of times every single day. It's easy to armchair quarterback in situations like this, but this could simply be attributed to poor training for aberrant situations, as some other posters have said.

61 posted on 07/31/2011 10:50:37 AM PDT by ExpatCanuck
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To: skeptoid
I appreciate your comments, article links. Regarding the pilots' handling of the A330, the letter of the week you referenced was indeed enlightening. I stand corrected and much better-informed. Thank you.
62 posted on 07/31/2011 10:54:41 AM PDT by lbryce (BHO:Satan's Evil Twin)
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To: wardaddy

Yes, I think you’ve got it. :-)


63 posted on 07/31/2011 10:57:49 AM PDT by lbryce (BHO:Satan's Evil Twin)
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To: hattend
I wasn’t there and I have no idea what was going on in that cockpit on a 4 minute/ten mile plunge from cruise.

There is a very precise record of what happened that essentially puts us in the cockpit.

But I have a feeling they were going by the book and the plane was telling them something different.

Well trained and competent pilots would have made through the situation.

64 posted on 07/31/2011 10:59:28 AM PDT by Moonman62 (The US has become a government with a country, rather than a country with a government.)
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To: Steely Tom
Hey, when it's time for your break, it's time for your break.

Union rules?

65 posted on 07/31/2011 11:01:45 AM PDT by gitmo (Hatred of those who think differently is the left's unifying principle.-Ralph Peters NY Post)
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To: Phil Harmonic
No, they didn't, thanks to the lousy flight data that was coming from the computerized flight-control/air-data system. However, they should have realized (and probably did?) that they were descending, since the altimeter is a simple and fairly reliable instrument. However, they faced a huge dilemma:
was the actual, real air-speed low or high? If low, they needed to lower the nose. However, if it was really high, lowering the nose could easily put them past not-to-exceed airspeed and the wings could break off. Certain death.
If they raised the nose, the speed would go down, accentuating the stall.

The computerized flight-control system certainly thought the plane was stalling, even if it wasn't, and it perhaps wasn't letting the pilots raise the nose to pull out of a dive, which they may have needed to do to maintain alitude.

66 posted on 07/31/2011 11:05:21 AM PDT by expatpat
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To: DanMiller
Does anyone else see a metaphor here for the current debt limit debacle? President Obama as the captain dozing in the back...

No, I see more of a comparison to the Air Egypt flight that went down with the pilot yelling Allah Akbar! as he held the nose down.

Our Alinksyite in chief wants the biggest crash possible so he can rebuild America. So he wants to keep spending for a while until we are totally blown away by debt/inflation. Whether he gets his way on spending or not, his next primary wish is to blame it all on the Republicans.

67 posted on 07/31/2011 11:06:13 AM PDT by slowhandluke (It's hard to be cynical enough in this age.)
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To: SkyDancer

Maybe. No talk of lightning strike, but that would explain heat not working. Or more likely, partially working, or intermittently working.

Even the less experienced guys would know not to sit there with the yoke all the way back, but they both did it and held it there. They weren’t stupid. There had to be a reason for that.

I’m gonna guess the airspeed indicator read something very high, they had no vertical speed indicator function, attitude indicator was also broken and the altimeter was partially working with delay, jumps, and intermittent.

I’d pull back too if the only thing that looked reliable was airspeed and it said I was nose down vertical. The stall warning would be astonishing in that situation.

The Captain, you can tell, was disbelieving it all and told the guy to push the stick forward, but the instruments may have that very second jumped around suggesting stick forward caused something they didn’t want.

There was no BS going on. All three of them were working to solve the problem every second of the event.

They may have been unsaveable with no instruments, at night, in clouds, in turbulence.


68 posted on 07/31/2011 11:08:03 AM PDT by Owen
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To: A_perfect_lady
Are you sure it’s not a testament to not getting on a plane more than once every 2 years?

Ah, a person after my own heart.

When I was younger I flew with glee, but one trip across the Atlantic in a severe storm left me with an almost paralyzing fear of flying. I only do so as a necessity, and fortified by an alcoholic beverage or two---and usually one before a flight. The thing is, I have no doubt that if something went seriously awry during a flight, I would quickly revert to a sober state in a major panic.

My husband has developed the same fear after many years of flying on a regular basis. He told me about a terrifying flight home from Virginia Beach in which he was sure he would die; all he could think to do was scan the plane for the heaviest woman in case he needed to rip her dress off for use as a makeshift parachute. Illogical, but indicative of a panicked mind. We laugh about that now, but we fly infrequently and with trepidation.

69 posted on 07/31/2011 11:08:42 AM PDT by Calliecat
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To: Moonman62
There is a very precise record of what happened that essentially puts us in the cockpit.

Where is that? I must have missed it. I'd love to read it.

Well trained and competent pilots would have made through the situation.

Obviously not. Six thousand hours sounds pretty competent to me. Of course, I have no idea how much time in type he had.

Once again, We weren't there. Unless there is a second by second transcript that tells us exactly what they were seeing on the screen and hearing in their headphones, I'll blame the airplane.

70 posted on 07/31/2011 11:13:24 AM PDT by hattend (As always... FUJM.)
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To: lbryce

I’ve never piloted anything beyond a RC aircraft, but if I heard the stall warning horn going off I’d push throttles to full power and the stick forward.


71 posted on 07/31/2011 11:14:13 AM PDT by Zman516 (muslims, marxists, communists ---> satan's useful idiots)
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To: Moonman62
1. The data record you feel so confident about, was produced by the very same air-data system that was clearly screwed up, and is totally unreliable.

2. Well-trained and competent pilots cannot 'make it through' if the flight-control computer has taken over flying the plane and is getting erroneous data from the ADS. That's what happened with the famous crash at the Paris Air Show -- the FCS flew the aircraft into the ground despite attempts by their top test pilot to climb.

72 posted on 07/31/2011 11:15:40 AM PDT by expatpat
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To: Phil Harmonic
I don’t think these guys had a clue what their airspeed was.

Yeah but they must have known they were in a stall. The alarm was going off. Nose down, increase power.

73 posted on 07/31/2011 11:16:25 AM PDT by SeeSharp
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To: Zman516

You might well kill yourself then, if the stall warning system were erroneous (as is most probably the case here). You put the nose down at cruise speed and you soon hit NTE speed and lose a wing. That is very hard t recover from....


74 posted on 07/31/2011 11:18:48 AM PDT by expatpat
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To: SeeSharp

Not true. If the stall warning provided by the pitots were in error, due to the pitot icing problem, death would be inevitable once the nose-down at cruise-speed sent the air-speed past NTE.


75 posted on 07/31/2011 11:25:28 AM PDT by expatpat
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To: lbryce
"... the aircraft had stopped flying properly and entered a hazardous stall, as its 3,900 square feet (362 sq metres) of wings gasped for air."

Probably one of the poorest lines I've ever read in a news story.

Who in the hell are the journalists these days?

76 posted on 07/31/2011 11:32:09 AM PDT by The KG9 Kid
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To: definitelynotaliberal

The pilots were too poorly trained to recognize and deal promptly and correctly with a stall. In the event of any in-flight malfunction such as this, the first reference should have been to the attitude gyros rather than to airspeed. Airbus airplanes are designed to fly at cruise with the center of gravity located relatively close to the aerodynamic center in the interest fuel efficiency; the trade-off being reduced static stability, i.e., the tendency to easily recover from a stall. There was an incident years ago where another poorly trained crew flew a DC-10 from the US to Spain with the aircraft stalling repeatedly most of the way but they survived because the high static stability of the DC-10 allowed the aircraft to recover repeatedly on its own, albeit with substantial structural damage.


77 posted on 07/31/2011 11:34:54 AM PDT by charleywhiskey
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To: The KG9 Kid

Good point, Kid. The tops of the wings were seeing too much air, not too little.


78 posted on 07/31/2011 11:35:10 AM PDT by expatpat
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To: ExpatCanuck

Irony, Dude. Irony. People use it all the time here. You even used it in your post.


79 posted on 07/31/2011 11:37:05 AM PDT by Steely Tom (Obama goes on long after the thrill of Obama is gone)
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To: Owen

I think the best thing is to wait for the release of the CVR transcripts and the black box data to see what really happened.


80 posted on 07/31/2011 11:37:22 AM PDT by SkyDancer (You know, they invented wheelbarrows to teach government employees how to walk on their hind legs.)
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