New Wreckage found in AF447 crash

RDoug said:
Well, the Airbus isn't a T-tail, so you can rule out a deep stall, and the data doesn't indicate a flat spin, so a recovery should have been at least theoretically possible. But—nighttime; no visible horizon; questionable/erroneous instrumentation; severe convective weather with probable turbulence. Not a good scenario no matter how good the pilots.
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Sorry but none of those are good excuses to pull up when the stall warning indication comes on. This is taught day one in flight school
 
Trip7 said:
From CNN:


Sadly, this looks like a mirror image of the Colgan Crash except on a larger scale. Mainline International crew, bigger plane, more altitude, and more experience. It still ended the same.

Maybe experience requirements should be raised to 15,000 hrs before you can be a ICAO 121 FO
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Well, to be fair to the AF pilots, everything on the Colgan plane was working the way it was supposed to.

Also, not having been through 330 sim, I don't know what procedures are taught for stall recovery. Nor do I have the FDR data to see what they tried to do. Nor do you.
 
Trip7 said:
Sorry but none of those are good excuses to pull up when the stall warning indication comes on. This is taught day one in flight school
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Oh, I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment, Trip7. You just have to wonder what was going through the minds' of the pilots involved on this one, and it's certainly valid to mentally try to put yourself in their situation before casting judgment.
 
Boris Badenov said:
The report rather casually comments that AOA information is "not presented to the pilots". WTF? WHY NOT? I have an AOA gauge on my twenty year old babyjet.
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If you're "exceeding" 40 degrees AOA, I wouldn't think you'd need an AOA meter to figure out whether you're getting sufficient lift. That being said, I agree with a previous post that the AF pilots found themselves suddenly hand-flying an A330 in turbulent IMC, at night, at altitude, starting at cruise speed, with erroneous pitot instruments. Tough conditions for anyone.
 
Center_Mid said:
If you're "exceeding" 40 degrees AOA, I wouldn't think you'd need an AOA meter to figure out whether you're getting sufficient lift. That being said, I agree with a previous post that the AF pilots found themselves suddenly hand-flying an A330 in turbulent IMC, at night, at altitude, starting at cruise speed, with erroneous pitot instruments. Tough conditions for anyone.
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You think that at night, in IMC, with cascading systems failures and alarms, erroneous stall warnings, and obviously unreliable (and disagreeing) airspeed indications, an AOA indicator (indicating information the plane is already collecting) wouldn't be sort of handy?
 
Boris Badenov said:
You think that at night, in IMC, with cascading systems failures and alarms, erroneous stall warnings, and obviously unreliable (and disagreeing) airspeed indications, an AOA indicator (indicating information the plane is already collecting) wouldn't be sort of handy?
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Yeah it would be, undeniable. But wouldn't the stall warnings, the VS pegged at minus 10k ft/min, and the primary and backup AI showing a nose-up attitude point to the same problem/solution? Full disclosure: I've never flown anything with an AOA indicator.
 
Well, this thread is rapidly becoming a good example of WHY we have professional crash investigators. And, while you may not have flown anything with an AOA, I haven't flown an Airbus, so we're probably pretty equal in our ignorance. I'd sure like to hear from someone who has flown an Airbus. Seems extremely strange to me that the stall warnings run off indicated airspeed rather than calculated AOA, for example, but that almost certainly must be the case, since they started getting stall warnings immediately.
 
pullup said:
Ah colganites are not the only ones.
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Trip7 said:
Sorry but none of those are good excuses to pull up when the stall warning indication comes on. This is taught day one in flight school
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Have any of you ever flown the A330? If you did y'all would know the following.

Not sure if it was a memory item then but there is currently one for "unreliable/loss of airspeed" and what you do is go to TOGO or climb thrust (in their case it would be climb thurst, says they went to TOGA so they had it covered) and hold a certain pitch attitude which seems to be what they were doing at some portion of the event.

Let us not throw the pilots under the bus yet. That is what the lawyers want done and is a over simplification of a very complex set of circumstances that caused this event.
 
Seggy said:
Have any of you ever flown the A330? If you did y'all would know the following.

Not sure if it was a memory item then but there is currently one for "unreliable/loss of airspeed" and what you do is go to TOGO or climb thrust (in their case it would be climb thurst, says they went to TOGA so they had it covered) and hold a certain pitch attitude which seems to be what they were doing at some portion of the event.

Let us not throw the pilots under the bus yet. That is what the lawyers want done and is a over simplification of a very complex set of circumstances that caused this event.
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I wasn't aware that you flew the A330 (wait...are you??), but yeah those pilots seemed to be fighting a losing battle. I'm just thinking that after going through the TOGA and holding the pitch, they wouldn't do anything different when the situation want changing.
 
I do not fly the A330 or any Airbus Products, however, I know someone who does, has a lot of experience in crash investigations, and made that point to me which I shared.

It boils my blood when general statements are made about the pilots ability, the assumed procedures they were following, or what they did when a final report has not been put out.
 
Seggy said:
It boils my blood when general statements are made about the pilots ability, the assumed procedures they were following, or what they did when a final report has not been put out.
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I think it's useful to discuss accidents, even from an uninformed position, so long as everyone is respectful and holds off on drawing conclusions about what actually happened. It's like discussing any other major event where the facts are unknown, like a high profile crime or an industrial disaster. It's somewhat unfair to speculate, but on the other hand we all wonder whether there are any risks potentially affecting us as passengers or pilots.
 
Center_Mid said:
I think it's useful to discuss accidents, even from an uninformed position, so long as everyone is respectful and holds off on drawing conclusions about what actually happened. It's like discussing any other major event where the facts are unknown, like a high profile crime or an industrial disaster. It's somewhat unfair to speculate, but on the other hand we all wonder whether there are any risks potentially affecting us as passengers or pilots.
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This seems true. I was taking Seggy's post as a response to "day one of flight school" etc.
 
Seggy said:
I do not fly the A330 or any Airbus Products, however, I know someone who does, has a lot of experience in crash investigations, and made that point to me which I shared.

It boils my blood when general statements are made about the pilots ability, the assumed procedures they were following, or what they did when a final report has not been put out.
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Fair enough but there is no reason not to discuss an accident. It presents a lot of what ifs and satisfies humans curiosity. Most of what's being discussed came right from an official report.
 
Eastern 401, United 173, now possibly this...scary to see these things happen to highly experienced crews. Never get complacent in the airplane you fly, because it can still kick your ass. That being said, the final report isn't out yet, the cvr "may point to pilot error", but I'm sure there is a lot more to it than that. I'd also be interested to hear from a heavy airbus pilot, I know we have a few on here.
 
Seggy said:
It boils my blood when general statements are made about the pilots ability, the assumed procedures they were following, or what they did when a final report has not been put out.
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Well, I guess the question is - what is AF's procedure for Airspeed Unreliable? I'm going to guess that it is a memory item, and I highly doubt it is "TO/GA power / pitch up when above 10,000'. (which is what they did). It is probably more like "CLB power, pitch up 5%, level off at MSA." (I'm just guessing at this from google'ing "airbus memory items."

I'm going to call an Airbus Captain I know and ask.
 
The pilots just kept trying to pull the nose up instead of recovering from the stall.. This is like basic 101 flying. I don't understand why this happened
 
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