Posted on 07/06/2012 9:19:28 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Yes, indeed.
That doesn’t work too well. One measures air-speed, the other ground-speed. The winds encountered at high altitudes can cause a major difference.
It wasn’t really pilot error - at least two speed sensors failed, and the TMR FBW system in the Airbus was inadequate.
Try flying an airplane in a thunderstorm with no real idea of your airspeed!
How do you get your attitude right if the AI is bad and you are in a serious thunderstorm?
Mud daubers can be a problem, but they are evident on takeoff.
... in a thunderstorm at night?
Because they were stupid. While the other pilot and the captain were trying to figure out what was happening, Bonin, the third pilot on board kept pulling the stick back.The other two didn't notice what he was doing because the plane has asynchrous controls, so two pilots can be doing two different things. Finally, several minutes into the crisis, Bonin tells the others that he's been pulling back on the stick the whole time. The captain realizes what's wrong and takes the controls, turning the nose down to try to get some speed, but by that time it's too late. They're only 2000 feet from the surface of the ocean. Less than a minute later, they hit.
It wasn’t really pilot error - at least two speed sensors failed, and the TMR FBW system in the Airbus was inadequate.
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From the article: “In the agency’s final report, which was released today, investigators determined that a combination of technical failures and mistakes made by inadequately trained pilots was responsible for the crash.”
Sounds like the official report suggests there was pilot error.
I did the "Kai Tak Heart Attack" twice before they shut it down,The first time I had **no** idea that landing at Kai Tak was,shall we say,"different" than landing at most airports.The bank that we took just before reaching the runway was so steep that I honestly thought that something had gone wrong and that we were gonna crash.We leveled off and the fear subsided a bit but then I saw that we no more than a short distance from apartment buildings.Again I became afraid.We were so close to one building that I could see what the people in one apartment were watching on TV.
With God as my Judge...it's true!
When oh when, will the “experts” finally conclude that pilots need to have a raw data Angle Of Attack indication in the cockpit?
When will this simple device, without any connection to an Air Data computer, or even a video screen of any sort, be seen as a manual backup as basic and fundamental as a windscreen wiper?
How many more people need to die to convince the desk bound engineers, FAA inspectors and ‘experts’ to come to this simple conclusion?
how many competent non-error-prone pilots would have survived loss of airspeed data in a major thunderstorm at night?
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I doubt I could do it using MS Flight Simulator so you get a sense of my frame of reference.
“When it’s pilot error that ultimately brings the plane down, it doesn’t matter who built the aircraft.”
It does if the design of the aircraft controls kept the other pilots from realizing one pilot was pulling back on the stick and then taking corrective action.
No there was indeed pilot error. One pilot held the stick fully back most of the way down to the water. But it's a fly by wire system. One stick on one side can be fully deflected while the other pilot's stick senses nothing.
If you have, I salute you for competence but not good judgement. If you haven't, you have no right to call either of the two pilots a screw-up. They were put in an untenable position by the decision to fly into the TX (with known suspect pitot systems) and by the poor design of the said pitot systems.
Does FS simulate thunderstorms nowadays?
When they were stalling and the pilot maintained the stalling attitude all the way down, it’s pilot error, regardless the pitot tube, the thunderstorm, or the decision to fly into it. It matters not what else happened. It was an easily recoverable situation, but ONE GUY wrecked the plane.
I repeat: the pilot at the controls was in an untenable position, placed there by whoever decided to enter the TX (Captain or Airline flight-management staff?) with suspect pitots. The captain should have taken over the controls himself after the decision to enter the TX was made.
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