Posted on 07/29/2011 10:38:19 AM PDT by magellan
“I had no aptitude for them and worked 10 times as hard as the kid with an aptitude to get the same grade.”
At least you can say you gave it a good try and found you really weren’t meant for each other and now have an appreciation for those that do. Those that get it find it easy and enjoyable. Those that don’t, usually quit in frustration.
” I have never heard a control input to cause structural failure before, if it does it’s a design flaw.”
Airbus A300-600, American Airlines flight 587. 12 November 2001. Rudder use caused the tail to break off. Airbus knew of this design flaw. American Airlines retired all their Airbus A300-600 about 8 years later.
.......have read a dozen articles on this event and have never seen names published............this causes me to start wondering PC, gender, affirmative action, muzzie ?????????????????
we will probably never know..........
remember when the muzzies, taxing for take off, drove a brand new one of these things into a barrier on the run way and totaled it?! Same thing.........names witheld!
Not when the airspeed indicators are given erroneous indications. Power and pitch play the role at that point, with the Altimeter and Vertical Speed Indicator (or ladder) giving an indication of recovery. That said, it is very difficult to control an airplane at high altitude. Controlling the angle of attack to ensure the plane stays out of stall is difficult at high altitude.
The other problem these pilots had was that they were flying over a major storm. Imagine not wanting to descend an inch and trying to control that airplane at altitude. I can imagine many pilots controlling the airplane but needing to descend to do it and running into a nasty storm that does them in anyway. We can second guess if they should have regained control of the airplane from the stall, but we can only guess if they could have kept control through that storm.
I’d like to know what the aircrew was doing for the 4+ minutes that the aircraft was in a stall. I’m not familiar with Airbus pilot manuals, but I am familiar with Boeing procedures: 1. Disconnect autopilot. 2. Disconnect auto-throttle. 3. Aggressively apply maximum thrust. 4. Roll wings level and rotate at 3 degree/second to +20 degree pitch. 5. Retract speed brakes. 6. If altitude is still dropping, continue rotation up to the pitch limit indicator (if available) or stick shaker or initial buffet. The pilot not flying checks maximum thrust, speed brakes off, and verifies all required actions have been taken, and calls out any omissions.
In all fairness to this aircrew, maybe they had multiple bad instrument readings that contradicted each other. If this was happening at night with no visible horizon, that radically complicates the problem. The article does seem to imply that the aircrew did not respond to the stall warning. That’s bad, but we don’t know if there were other simultaneous warnings/horns or if multiple instruments were contradicting.
I don’t believe that the average pilot would not be able to recover from something like this with a fully functioning airplane and 1 or 2 erroneous instruments.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.