AF447 Vanity Fair article

I fly an Airbus, it's a great plane with some different ideas but a great plane overall. The Airbus philosophy from A318-340 is that you can fly them all with little differences here and there. Why didn't they hit TRK/FPA to see if they were level? On the Airbus we call it the bird. It gives us a little indicator that tells us what level the plane is flying at. We use it on non-precision or precision like approaches all the time after disengaging the autopilot. My thought only, if the FO did absolutely nothing and put no inputs in, they would of been fine. My last observation with regards to the weather, several aircraft before and after them deviated up to 200nm from what their track was shown. What did they see up there as regards to the wx?
 
Soul Brotha' said:
I fly an Airbus, it's a great plane with some different ideas but a great plane overall. The Airbus philosophy from A318-340 is that you can fly them all with little differences here and there. Why didn't they hit TRK/FPA to see if they were level? On the Airbus we call it the bird. It gives us a little indicator that tells us what level the plane is flying at. We use it on non-precision or precision like approaches all the time after disengaging the autopilot. My thought only, if the FO did absolutely nothing and put no inputs in, they would of been fine. My last observation with regards to the weather, several aircraft before and after them deviated up to 200nm from what their track was shown. What did they see up there as regards to the wx?
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The BEA report (Ntsb equivalent) did mention that other aircraft deviated, and that using max gain there was light green being painted at altitude with Mod turbulence at FL350 + 370. Also all had difficulty transmitting over HF and were getting St Elmos fire. It wasn't a massive storm that ripped this aircraft apart, throughout the event I don't think g-loads representative of severe turbulence was ever encountered.

Had their ND had a big red radar return on it I think they would have deviated. Unfortunately radar data isn't included in data recordings. The CVR didn't indicate them seeing lightning, nor were the g-loads indicative of being in a massive cell...Obviously they were in something that created the pitot blockage, not necessarily a cell that would destroy them but one with ice crystals at their level and perhaps not painting as they pointed the radar down?

As to why they didn't hit the TRK/FPA button...not sure. Good idea I guess, not something we typically do though right? Plus their altimeter seemed to be functioning as they plummeted downwards. I think in the report they make some mention of passing 10,000' or some lower level. They knew they were entering into the final moments they would have available to recover.
 
Oh look, a thread about a crash and @Boris Badenov is blaming automation and touting the wonders of hand flying. I'm shocked. Shocked, I say! ;)

This accident had absolutely nothing to do with a lack of hand flying skills, or an over reliance on automation. None of the regulators, the airlines, the unions, nor anyone else wants to say what the truth is, because there are just too many of these damned things out there now, so the cat is out of the bag. But the problem is Airbus flight control design philosophy. It's just flat out dangerous.

The cockpit is a scene of complete chaos in this accident. Not because of lack of experience. Not because of incompetence. Purely because of the circumstances. And in this state of chaos, you have two pilots with their hands on the controls, and neither is aware that the other is doing so. Both are pushing their idiotic "override" buttons, both are moving the stick in opposite directions, and neither is feeling so much as a tickle on the stick to let them know that the other guy is touching the controls. Even if the airplane was screaming "OVERRIDE" or something similar at them, they never would have noticed, because the cockpit is in a state of chaos. Various warnings are flashing, aural alarms are going off, and they're scared ----less. An annunciator light or aural warning telling you that the other guy has pushed his override button and is making control inputs is going to go completely unnoticed. So both of them keep pushing the button, and both of them keep making control inputs. It doesn't matter one damned bit how skilled you are in stall recovery techniques, it ain't going to end well.

It is absolutely unconscionable that there are thousands of airplanes flying around that don't have tactile feedback on both control inputs when a pilot moves the controls. It is absolutely unconscionable that we have airplanes flying around where the throttles don't move as thrust inputs change. It is absolutely unconscionable that we have airplanes flying around with different "laws" for different circumstances that make their flight controls respond differently. The only "laws" that the flights controls on an airplane should deal with are the laws of physics.

I'll get slammed for this post, and I don't care. Airbus design philosophy is dangerous and irresponsible. Ground the whole lot of them.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Oh look, a thread about a crash and @Boris Badenov is blaming automation and touting the wonders of hand flying. I'm shocked. Shocked, I say! ;)

This accident had absolutely nothing to do with a lack of hand flying skills, or an over reliance on automation. None of the regulators, the airlines, the unions, nor anyone else wants to say what the truth is, because there are just too many of these damned things out there now, so the cat is out of the bag. But the problem is Airbus flight control design philosophy. It's just flat out dangerous.

The cockpit is a scene of complete chaos in this accident. Not because of lack of experience. Not because of incompetence. Purely because of the circumstances. And in this state of chaos, you have two pilots with their hands on the controls, and neither is aware that the other is doing so. Both are pushing their idiotic "override" buttons, both are moving the stick in opposite directions, and neither is feeling so much as a tickle on the stick to let them know that the other guy is touching the controls. Even if the airplane was screaming "OVERRIDE" or something similar at them, they never would have noticed, because the cockpit is in a state of chaos. Various warnings are flashing, aural alarms are going off, and they're scared ----less. An annunciator light or aural warning telling you that the other guy has pushed his override button and is making control inputs is going to go completely unnoticed. So both of them keep pushing the button, and both of them keep making control inputs. It doesn't matter one damned bit how skilled you are in stall recovery techniques, it ain't going to end well.

It is absolutely unconscionable that there are thousands of airplanes flying around that don't have tactile feedback on both control inputs when a pilot moves the controls. It is absolutely unconscionable that we have airplanes flying around where the throttles don't move as thrust inputs change. It is absolutely unconscionable that we have airplanes flying around with different "laws" for different circumstances that make their flight controls respond differently. The only "laws" that the flights controls on an airplane should deal with are the laws of physics.

I'll get slammed for this post, and I don't care. Airbus design philosophy is dangerous and irresponsible. Ground the whole lot of them.
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Oh, and to the people trying to claim that FO Bonin was some low-time wonder who had never touched the controls of anything without an autopilot, you're dead wrong. The guy had his glider rating long before he even went to work for Air France. I'd like to see the hand flying fetishist chest beaters around here hand fly a glider.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Oh, and to the people trying to claim that FO Bonin was some low-time wonder who had never touched the controls of anything without an autopilot, you're dead wrong. The guy had his glider rating long before he even went to work for Air France.
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I did not know that.


I still stand behind the concept that a pilot needs some sort of experience building flight time before climbing into a jet full of paying passengers. However that obviously doesn't prevent even the best pilots from doing something inexpiable in a stressful situation.
 
Wow....Just because he had got his glider rating years ago doesn't mean his stick and rudder skills are sharp. Having flown a glider, yes it sharpens skills. How well that translates years later to a 200 ton aircraft at FL350 is debatable.

I don't think you realize how little "stick and rudder" time he probably actually had. Going from light aircraft, to a 320 (where he's flying 5minutes of 1/2 the legs) to a 330 where he flies 1/3 of the legs for 5 minutes. Crap he's probably got 500hrs in planes that you actually have to trim and manipulate power!

So while you're so impressed by a glider rating, the haters out there probably have spent years plugging holes in the sky in light aircraft and then hand flying their Beeches/Embraers/CRJs, trimming, adding power, getting way more hands on.

He has no concept of what a yoke looks like at altitude, how little movement typically occurs...Or what thrust levers do at altitude.

Right as the event begun, the Autopilot disconnects and he begins pulling back on the stick as the airspeed indications drop off (pg 60 of BEA report). FIVE SECONDS later he gets "Stall, Stall.....Stall, St." He keeps the stick about 1/4 back deflected even after that! I'd argue that someone with stick and rudder skills would pull back, hear "STALL" and realize they better start pushing forward.

But remember throughout the event he had so wanted to climb to FL360 and FL370.
 
You're making an incredible number of assumptions about his time. You have no idea how much time he had flying little airplanes prior to Air France. You just assume he had none, despite the fact that he had been flying for about a decade at the time of his death, had all of his ratings (including the glider rating) prior to joining AF, and had been a pilot for a few years prior to joining AF. This picture that the author tries to paint of a "baby" coming into Air France with no flying skills and being trained right from the beginning on highly-automated jets is a fantasy. This was not some MPL graduate. He got his private in 2000, his commercial/multi/instrument (or European equivalent) plus his glider rating in 2001. He wasn't selected by Air France until 2003, so the author's claim that he was an Air France ab initio guy was just a flat out lie.

This accident had nothing to do stick and rudder skills. It had to do with poor flight control design philosophy that lead three pilots to misinterpret what was going on. Stop giving Airbus a pass and throwing your fellow pilots under the bus. That's the BEA's job.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Not really the point. The point is that the haters attacking the "low time wonder" probably don't have the stick and rudder skills he did.
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ATN_Pilot said:
Oh, and to the people trying to claim that FO Bonin was some low-time wonder who had never touched the controls of anything without an autopilot, you're dead wrong. The guy had his glider rating long before he even went to work for Air France. I'd like to see the hand flying fetishist chest beaters around here hand fly a glider.
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Dude, tell that FO to get a tailwheel rating on a clipper or that Ag Cat that towed him up and come talk to me!

1NLE06PXA9TIA.gif
 
ATN_Pilot said:
You're making an incredible number of assumptions about his time. You have no idea how much time he had flying little airplanes prior to Air France. You just assume he had none, despite the fact that he had been flying for about a decade at the time of his death, had all of his ratings (including the glider rating) prior to joining AF, and had been a pilot for a few years prior to joining AF. This picture that the author tries to paint of a "baby" coming into Air France with no flying skills and being trained right from the beginning on highly-automated jets is a fantasy. This was not some MPL graduate. He got his private in 2000, his commercial/multi/instrument (or European equivalent) plus his glider rating in 2001. He wasn't selected by Air France until 2003, so the author's claim that he was an Air France ab initio guy was just a flat out lie.

This accident had nothing to do stick and rudder skills. It had to do with poor flight control design philosophy that lead three pilots to misinterpret what was going on. Stop giving Airbus a pass and throwing your fellow pilots under the bus. That's the BEA's job.
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So what was he flying in the meantime before his AF selection? They list the vast experience of the CA prior to joining AF. THere's no indication that this FO instructed, received any other type ratings or was employed as a pilot prior to joining AF.

He had 2936TT. 807 hrs in type means 2129 hrs in non-A330 flying.

He flew the A320 for approx 4 years. So after 4 years on the A320, plus his light aircraft time he had 2129hrs. The bulk of that time had to be A320 time.

The probability is much higher that he had very limited experience before getting on the A320.

If you can point to us where he flew before AF and in what capacity that would be great. Maybe his dad had a Pitts that he took out every day right?

The BEA report doesn't throw him under the bus, they're critical of Airbus as well.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
This accident had nothing to do stick and rudder skills. It had to do with poor flight control design philosophy that lead three pilots to misinterpret what was going on. Stop giving Airbus a pass and throwing your fellow pilots under the bus. That's the BEA's job.
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Ok, you are smarter than that and you flat out know better than that to say some accident had "nothing" to do with some aspect. While we can debate how much their inexperience and piloting skills played a part, it doubtless played some part. The incident was recoverable, therefore pilot skills were a factor. Period. There had been 20 some other pitot tube icing events prior, none of which resulted in a crash. So to say that there was nothing to do with stick in rudder skills is being just like the air france officials quoted in the article saying that the pilots were never wrong. You arent a union rep any more so dont be a union shrill anymore and talk about throwing pilots under the bus just because.

I look forward to discussing this over a cold drink in vegas in a couple of weeks
 
Baronman said:
So what was he flying in the meantime before his AF selection?
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I don't know, and neither do you or the author. The BEA report didn't seem to go into extreme detail on that. But that's the point: the author and all of the haters here are making a hell of a lot of assumptions about this guy's flight time, experience, and skill level. Assumptions are for low rate journalists. As fellow professional pilots, we should give the guy more respect than that.

The BEA report doesn't throw him under the bus, they're critical of Airbus as well.
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Bull. Read the "Causes of Accident" section of the BEA report and show me where Airbus's atrocious flight control design philosophy is taken to task. The closest they get is mentioning the pitot tube issue in passing. Nothing at all about anything else.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
You're making an incredible number of assumptions about his time. You have no idea how much time he had flying little airplanes prior to Air France. You just assume he had none, despite the fact that he had been flying for about a decade at the time of his death, had all of his ratings (including the glider rating) prior to joining AF, and had been a pilot for a few years prior to joining AF. This picture that the author tries to paint of a "baby" coming into Air France with no flying skills and being trained right from the beginning on highly-automated jets is a fantasy. This was not some MPL graduate. He got his private in 2000, his commercial/multi/instrument (or European equivalent) plus his glider rating in 2001. He wasn't selected by Air France until 2003, so the author's claim that he was an Air France ab initio guy was just a flat out lie.

This accident had nothing to do stick and rudder skills. It had to do with poor flight control design philosophy that lead three pilots to misinterpret what was going on. Stop giving Airbus a pass and throwing your fellow pilots under the bus. That's the BEA's job.
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Assumptions work both ways. Having a glider rating does not make automatically a pilot Captain Sullenberger either. Since you are the one insisting that he had so much "experience" before he was hired into the training program at AF, would you care to to post exactly how many hours of experience that he had (flight hours) and in what sorts of air frames (specific aircraft) and doing what types of flying exactly?

Professional pilot’s FCL license (CPL) issued on 23 April 2001
Multi-engine instrument type rating (IR ME) issued on 16 October 2001
Following his selection by Air France, pilot training course at the Amaury de la Grange
piloting school in Merville from October 2003.
Line oriented flight training completed 9 June 2008
Airbus A330 type rating issued on 1st December 2008
Line oriented flight training completed 22 December 2008
He received his ATPL License on 3 August 2007.
Prior to the event:
Flying hours: total: 2,936. On type: 807. In the previous six months: 368 hours, 16 landings, 18 take-offs.
In the previous three months: 191 hours, 7 landings, 8 take-offs
In the previous thirty days: 61 hours, 1 landing, 2 take-offs.
He had performed five rotations in the South America sector since arriving in the A330/A340 division in 2008, including one to Rio de Janeiro. His oceanic route qualification was valid until 31 May 2010.

Interesting that on this flight he did not even recognize a St. Elmo's phenomenon when he saw one and asked the Captain what it was, could not identify a stall condition nor how to remedy it, no capability to realize what the aircraft was doing and no ability to discern the consequences of pilot action in this situation. This could have been and should have been a recoverable event.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Fair warning, I'm likely to get pretty animated when discussing my intense hatred for all things Airbus. :)
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If you can do it intelligently and with facts and not just emotions we will do just fine. We can discuss the airbus vs boeing thing on any level you like.
 
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