Comment by NooneAtAll3
17 hours ago
it's the crash where pushing nose of the plane down (correct enough-altitude stall response) caused alarms to activate, while pulling nose up caused alarms to silence
no wonder airbus was found guilty
17 hours ago
it's the crash where pushing nose of the plane down (correct enough-altitude stall response) caused alarms to activate, while pulling nose up caused alarms to silence
no wonder airbus was found guilty
Airbus kind of embodies the "trust the computer" mentality; and if you're going to do that the computer damn hell better be right all the time - it must not have "backwards" failure modes.
Boeing, in similar situations "in the past" would just sound a "computer is giving the fuck up, fly this pig dog" bell and leave it to the pilots to figure it out.
As a computer person the airbus approach (and Boeing adopting some aspects of this in the max8) is terrifying
Comparing Boeing's compliance hack and Airbus' system that's pushing 40 years now is very questionable. Airbus planes don't get in the way of flying, and there's extensive procedures and redundancies for everything that could go wrong. It's a proven system, and events like these are the exception proving the rule, especially since there was also a human factor here.
As another computer person, I'd trust aviation more than any other field, especially when it doesn't involve the modern US. Computers can't be perfect, but they can be almost always good at integrating and helping humans that remain in control. Advocates against including any fly-by-wire or computerization in aircraft at all fail to consider all the accidents that said computerization has helped avoid. Putting a billion steam gauges and blinking lights in front of pilots and asking them to correlate and understand everything themselves is actually not simpler, easier or safer.
4 replies →
You made me laugh out loud! Very well put.
The behaviour you describe above only occurred after the pilot flying stalled the plane. There was a procedure for unreliable airspeed indication. Had the pilot flying performed it, the situation would have been resolved without incident.
AF could perhaps be held liable for insufficient training on high-altitude stalls or recognising and responding to reversions to alternate law. But it's hard to see how Airbus can be responsible for a pilot ignoring the most basic first response.
The article from this subthread contradicts this, though. Regarding recoverability of the situation, it says this:
> By now the airspeed indications had returned to normal, but the pilots had already set in motion a sequence of events which could not be undone.
That was before the prolonged stall warnings. But maybe this phrasing is just an embellishment?
But further down, the article is pretty clear that the training was inadequate for this type of unreliable airspeed indication:
> Although procedures for other phases of flight could be found in the manual, the training conditioned pilots to expect unreliable airspeed events during climb, to which they would respond with a steady nose-up pitch and high power setting that would ensure a shallow ascent. Such a response would be completely inappropriate in cruise.
Once the aircraft was stalled there was a narrow window to recover from it, which obviously did not occur. But the stall was entirely caused by pilot input of full nose up! The procedure for unreliable airspeed (which was in both the QRH and the FCOM) was simply to fly a known safe power / pitch from the tables provided in the QRH.
At no time was any of the pilot's Attitude Indicators (Artificial Horizons) inoperative -- all they had to do was maintain straight and level flight at a known power setting and everyone would have come home safely.
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Thank you, this accident reminds me a bit of the McDonald's coffee lawsuit, where the popular narrative of "be less of a dummy" is not really fair
Edit -- to wit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253931
While true, pilots aren’t trained to just “respond to the alarm” they are trained to fly the plane.
Once there were multiple alarms that made no sense at all (petty early in the event), the pilots should have ignored them as per the checklist.
But the most damning thing is the one pilot pulling the stick back and holding it back for almost the entire event. There aren’t any flying conditions where that’s an appropriate input. Not to mention being told to give up control and ignoring that request.
I agree Airbus has some blame in terms of the computer system not adequately communicating when it drops out of normal mode.
> There aren’t any flying conditions where that’s an appropriate input.
It's the procedure for various GPWS cautions and warnings on Airbus planes, and can also be done in a windshear.
Yeah the computer is never flying the plane it is always the pilots who have final decision. Which is ofcourse also why the computer will let you fly into a mountain if you want.