Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-30 Thread Randy Bennell

On 28/05/2011 8:59 PM, Peter Frederick wrote:
I believe the recorders indicated repeated stalls as the plane 
descended, and ti was slighly nose down on impact.  Probably not 
complete data yet, anyway.


The biggest problem, I think, is that these planes fly themselves, the 
pilots are just along for the ride much of the time, with the result 
that they are out of practice at the worst possible time.  Manual 
flying burns more fuel, I'd guess, so is discouraged.


I'm sure there are some lessons in this event if the people in charge 
are wise enough to look for them.


Peter



Bear in mind, that the bean counteres are thinking of a scenario where 
there will be no pilots, and pushing the design in that direction. 
Cheaper not to have to pay employees etc.


Also, the actuaries have no doubt calculated the risk and are prepared 
to accept some losses as being unavoidable.


Randy

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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-30 Thread Peter Frederick
Yes, it can be flown, but getting it to the correct trim/thrust  
settings isn't easy when you have severe turbulence, endless alarms,  
flashing screens, warning horns, etc.


I want to know why the AUTOPILOT doesn't engage the "safe flight  
mode" settings when it disengages rather than just going "oops, you  
got it!" and going off line.


As I said before, the throttle levers will have to be manually reset  
to work -- they do NOT move in autothrust, they stay wherever they  
were when last manually moved.  Not something I'd recommend, as it's  
fairly critical to maintaining correct speed and a false position  
indication ain't gonna help anybody when the world has gone crazy.


I believe the weather radar was fooling the pilots, as they were  
flying through a mild thunderstorm just before encountering the  
monster (and it was a monster).  The supposition by the PBS assembled  
experts was that the big storm was masked by the smaller one they  
were in, and there was not time to evade when the local storm  
backscatter cleared and there was a monster storm in front of them,  
full of supercooled water mist.  Hard to dodge when it's everywhere,  
and you are actually seconds away from flying into it.


I would assume Air France pilots avoid monster thunderstorms and  
hurricanes, daredevil behavior isn't high on the list of commercial  
passenger pilots qualifications.


Joystick flight controls don't excite me either, there is no body  
position feedback.


I'm curious to see what the flight deck conversation was, especially  
after the autopilot kicked out.


Peter

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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-29 Thread Allan Streib
Peter Frederick  writes:

> Personally, I question the design philosophy here -- if the plane
> cannot be flown without accurate air speed signal, you'd damned well
> better insure that you NEVER lose that data stream.

>From what I've been reading, it is the automated control that requires
the airspeed data.  When the pitot tubes freeze up, or the computer
detects conflicting data from different tubes, the auto pilot and auto
thrust systems disengage and drop control back to the pilots.  The plane
can be flown without airspeed data: the procedure is supposed to be
setting a specified pitch and thrust to maintain safe airspeed.

However flying an Airbus by hand at 35,000 feet is apparently a fairly
touchy business.  The "joystick" controls give the pilot no tactile
feedback.  Further, it's not something they are practiced at doing
because the computer flies the plane in all normal situations.

Also they had flown into a severe storm (why?), at night, bouncing
around, possibly not trusting their instrumentation or knowing what
conflicting alarms to believe.

Speculation is that they pitched up too far, stalled but couldn't
recover or perhaps didn't even realize it because on the airbus the
STALL alarm self-cancels below a 60-knot indicated airspeed, and simply
fell out of the sky.

Allan
-- 
1983 300D

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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-29 Thread Peter Frederick
I saw one on the PBS program, and it's labeled something like 20A  
240V -- a little compressor bleed isn't gonna do diddly for keeping  
one above freezing at 500 mph in temps around -60C.


i believe the new design has much more heating power.

Peter

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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-29 Thread Barry Stark
Peter -
With as sophisticated as the rest of the airplanes are these days it seems
outrageous to me to even have to think about having a large commercial
aircraft to be put at risk by an iced up pitot tube. How about having 4 or 5
of the things with maybe two at a time out and available and the others
retracted back for safe harbor in the airframe for some "R&R". As an
alternative it would seem as simple as directing some nice warm compressor
bleed air via a nozzle appropriately aimed at the pitots. Yes I imagine the
warm air will introduce some error but it would seem that some error would
be better than no data.  With the capabilities that exist today and the
typical layers of redundancy in other areas it just seems inexcusable to
lose a airplane due to things as critical as having clogged pitots or static
ports.


Barry 



Personally, I question the design philosophy here -- if the plane cannot be
flown without accurate air speed signal, you'd damned well better insure
that you NEVER lose that data stream.

Peter



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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-29 Thread Rich Thomas
I would think that a back-up sensor of some sort, like a laser doppler 
velocimeter, might be useful on aircraft.


--R

On 5/29/2011 11:49 AM, Peter Frederick wrote:
All pitot heaters were on, but AirBus was in the process of replacing 
them with a newer design that did not ice up as easily.  Pitot icing 
is a know problem on that design under icing conditions, and they are 
blue from running very hot, just like when tempering steel.


The suppositions is that they encountered large amounts of supercooled 
water mist that overwhelmed the heaters ability to keep the pitots 
open.  Supercooled water mist at -60C is a scary idea.


Personally, I question the design philosophy here -- if the plane 
cannot be flown without accurate air speed signal, you'd damned well 
better insure that you NEVER lose that data stream.


Peter

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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-29 Thread Peter Frederick
All pitot heaters were on, but AirBus was in the process of replacing  
them with a newer design that did not ice up as easily.  Pitot icing  
is a know problem on that design under icing conditions, and they are  
blue from running very hot, just like when tempering steel.


The suppositions is that they encountered large amounts of  
supercooled water mist that overwhelmed the heaters ability to keep  
the pitots open.  Supercooled water mist at -60C is a scary idea.


Personally, I question the design philosophy here -- if the plane  
cannot be flown without accurate air speed signal, you'd damned well  
better insure that you NEVER lose that data stream.


Peter

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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-29 Thread WILTON
'Don't remember reading anything about pitot heat in the AF accident ('cept 
to assume that it must have been OFF).  You'd think that with all of that 
computer automation, they'd have some quick and easy way to get some pitot 
heat on whenever the airplane is anywhere near a cloud and temp. near or 
below 0C; at the very least, maybe, a simple ON/OFF toggle or rocker switch 
labeled, "PITOT HEAT" or "CHALEUR PITOT," or is that too Boeing-like or 
Benzesque for such sophistication francais?


Wilton

- Original Message - 
From: "John Reames" 

To: "Mercedes Discussion List" 
Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2011 9:41 PM
Subject: Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash



I thought it was:
Boeing--you decide
Airbus--the computer is your friend (trust the computer)
 (I think someone has done too much reactor shielding duty-- refer to the 
"paranoia" RPG)


--
John W Reames
jream...@verizon.net
Home: +14106646986
Mobile: +14437915905

On May 28, 2011, at 14:56, Rich Thomas 
 wrote:


It's not clear that the flight control system would allow them to 
override what it thinks it needs to do to the airplane.  Also unclear 
that they had the proper information to determine what exactly they 
needed to do, whether the FCS would allow them to do that or not.


Airbus.  Boeing.  You decide.

--R

On 5/28/2011 2:43 PM, Allan Streib wrote:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/05/blaring-alarms-confused-doomed.html

Apparently with the aircraft in a stall, the pilots (in manual control)
maintained a nose-up attitude and attempted to climb.




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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-28 Thread Rich Thomas
The Wall St Journal had a pretty good article today, showed the plane 
was at +16deg pitch up when it hit the water, descending rapidly, wings 
were rocking back and forth the whole descent, and it appeared to be in 
positive pitch the whole time.  Don't think it was a spin.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304066504576349112775425674.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection

--R

On 5/28/2011 8:45 PM, Max Dillon wrote:

  I also wonder if they were in a
flat spin and no force on earth could have saved them.

-Max


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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-28 Thread Peter Frederick
I believe the recorders indicated repeated stalls as the plane  
descended, and ti was slighly nose down on impact.  Probably not  
complete data yet, anyway.


The biggest problem, I think, is that these planes fly themselves,  
the pilots are just along for the ride much of the time, with the  
result that they are out of practice at the worst possible time.   
Manual flying burns more fuel, I'd guess, so is discouraged.


I'm sure there are some lessons in this event if the people in charge  
are wise enough to look for them.


Peter

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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-28 Thread John Reames
I thought it was:
Boeing--you decide
Airbus--the computer is your friend (trust the computer)
  (I think someone has done too much reactor shielding duty-- refer to the 
"paranoia" RPG)

--
John W Reames
jream...@verizon.net
Home: +14106646986
Mobile: +14437915905

On May 28, 2011, at 14:56, Rich Thomas  
wrote:

> It's not clear that the flight control system would allow them to override 
> what it thinks it needs to do to the airplane.  Also unclear that they had 
> the proper information to determine what exactly they needed to do, whether 
> the FCS would allow them to do that or not.
> 
> Airbus.  Boeing.  You decide.
> 
> --R
> 
> On 5/28/2011 2:43 PM, Allan Streib wrote:
>> http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/05/blaring-alarms-confused-doomed.html
>> 
>> Apparently with the aircraft in a stall, the pilots (in manual control)
>> maintained a nose-up attitude and attempted to climb.
>> 
>> 
> 
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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-28 Thread Peter Frederick
"Protection from overstress" also appears to have contributed to the  
AriBus crash shortly after 9/11 when a pilot managed to tear the tail  
off correcting for jet wash.


Pretty dubious design if over-vigorous rudder pedal application can  
cause the tail to fail at low speeds


Peter

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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-28 Thread Max Dillon
I think that the sad truth is that the quality of the pilots is decreasing
(starting salaries of 30K or so, I believe, for all airlines) and so much
more sophisticated air planes are required to prevent pilot error.  All of
you are assuming these pilots are perfect and the aircraft is the problem.
What we are not reading about are all the instances of pilot error which the
Airbus systems prevent from turning into a crash.

I remember a near-crash in the 80's, was a DC-9 or DC-10, at high altitude,
exceeded the flight envelope in terms of altitude vs. speed, and the wings
simply lost lift. It was an asian airliner, Korean or Japanese I think.
Plane began to plunge.  Someone in the cockpit dropped the landing gear,
which stabilized the plane, and allowed the pilots to regain control.  I
wonder if dropping the landing gear would have helped this Air France flight
(if the computers would have allowed it).  I also wonder if they were in a
flat spin and no force on earth could have saved them.

-Max

-Original Message-
From: mercedes-boun...@okiebenz.com [mailto:mercedes-boun...@okiebenz.com]
On Behalf Of Allan Streib
Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2011 7:21 PM
To: Mercedes Discussion List
Subject: Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

Peter Frederick  writes:

> I'm not sure how much more "out of the flight envelope" you can be
> flying a full sized jetliner out of a cloud going almost straight down
> with the never exceed speed warning blasting!  This happened to both
> Boeing 707s and Douglas DC8's at least once in the 60's, and both
> survived -- the 707 pilot firewalled the throttles (nose comes up
> because the engines are so far below centerline and the speed of sound
> is higher the lower you are), the DC8 pilots put all four engines in
> full reverse thrust at Mach .98.  Bent both planes into junk. but they
> landed safely with all the passengers and crew essentially un-injured.

Of concern, then is some of the motivation for FBW aircraft (quoting
Wikipedia): 

"Since these systems can also protect the aircraft from overstress
situations, the designers can therefore reduce over-engineered
components, further reducing weight."

So here you have a philosophy that because the plane "cannot" exceed its
design parameters, we don't have to engineer for the worst case that it
actually does.

Allan
-- 
1983 300D

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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-28 Thread Allan Streib
Peter Frederick  writes:

> I'm not sure how much more "out of the flight envelope" you can be
> flying a full sized jetliner out of a cloud going almost straight down
> with the never exceed speed warning blasting!  This happened to both
> Boeing 707s and Douglas DC8's at least once in the 60's, and both
> survived -- the 707 pilot firewalled the throttles (nose comes up
> because the engines are so far below centerline and the speed of sound
> is higher the lower you are), the DC8 pilots put all four engines in
> full reverse thrust at Mach .98.  Bent both planes into junk. but they
> landed safely with all the passengers and crew essentially un-injured.

Of concern, then is some of the motivation for FBW aircraft (quoting
Wikipedia): 

"Since these systems can also protect the aircraft from overstress
situations, the designers can therefore reduce over-engineered
components, further reducing weight."

So here you have a philosophy that because the plane "cannot" exceed its
design parameters, we don't have to engineer for the worst case that it
actually does.

Allan
-- 
1983 300D

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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-28 Thread Peter Frederick
That particular mode of operation has been somewhat controversial  
since Airbus started using total computer control on the A320 way  
back when.


Sure, the computer can keep the pilots from exceeding the flight  
envelope, but what in tarnation do you do when the aircraft is OUT of  
the envelope?  The French have always maintained that the aircraft  
cannot be put out of normal flight envelope except by pilot action,  
so if you prevent the pilots from making a mistake the plane cannot  
exceed the flight envelope.


Circular logic, again, what the h... does a pilot do when he NEEDS  
nose down full throttle and the computer "thinks" that's not OK?   
Severe turbulence in thunderstorms has been known to invert large  
jets, fling them up or down thousands of feet with zero indicated  
airspeed, and send them out of the bottom of a downdraft in nearly  
vertical drives.  I'm not sure how much more "out of the flight  
envelope" you can be flying a full sized jetliner out of a cloud  
going almost straight down with the never exceed speed warning  
blasting!   This happened to both Boeing 707s and Douglas DC8's at  
least once in the 60's, and both survived -- the 707 pilot firewalled  
the throttles (nose comes up because the engines are so far below  
centerline and the speed of sound is higher the lower you are), the  
DC8 pilots put all four engines in full reverse thrust at Mach .98.   
Bent both planes into junk. but they landed safely with all the  
passengers and crew essentially un-injured.  Both lost an engine, and  
possibly part of a wing, but still flew.  It was already known that  
if you pulled back on the stick and tried to lift the nose with the  
elevators the tail would come off.


There was an interesting program on PBS a while back on the Air  
France accident, where the producers got a bunch of retired accident  
investigators together and used the computer transmitted data and  
weather data to figure out what happened.  The conclusion they came  
to was the the flight crew was surprised by the intensity of the  
storm because it was masked by a smaller storm in front of it, and  
when they cleared that they were facing a monster storm too close to  
avoid.


Once things got hairy, they were flying an aircraft with a very  
complex flight control system in pitch darkness at high altitude, no  
visual references at all, and no working electronic instruments (just  
big flashing red fault screens with a cocaphany of horns, alerts, and  
buzzers going off.


As noted, the speed range for safe flying is quite narrow, and while  
the pilots slowed the plane as is normal for entering a thunderstorm,  
there are several characteristics of the Airbus  avionics that cause  
serious trouble in sudden upsets similar to what this flight  
encountered:


Wee dinkums manual instrumens that are NOT directly in front of the  
pilots


"Joystick" manual controls with minimal feedback and absolutely no  
positional reference (just like a PC flight controller -- more built  
in feedback, I would assume, but nothing like a floor hinged stick).


Very large computer displays scrolling messages too fast to read

Throttle levers that do NOT move under computer control, giving a  
totally false sense of engine power (only the digital readout is  
accurate)


The "safe flight mode" for use when the airspieed indicators all  
fail, involving specific elevator trim, power settings, and flap  
settings must be manual selected after manually resetting the  
throttle levers.


There have been several dozen incidences of pitot tube failures, and  
most of them resulted in similar autopilot shutdown.  In most of  
them, the flight crew was very slow to initiate the "safe flight  
mode" settings, and while there were no accidents, this failure to  
put the controls in the correct settings very quickly indicates a  
failure of both flight crew training and computer programming.


My personal take is that the autopilot and flight computers should  
automatically initiate "safe flight mode" immediately when the  
airspeed detectors fail.  It burns a lot of fuel, but that's vastly  
preferable to being unable to determine the flight status of the  
aircraft in the middle of twenty eleven horns blowing, computers  
talking, and red flashing lights all over the instrument panel!


I also think the throttle levers should move all the time so that  
changes in setting and selected power output are obvious at a glance  
-- after all, when the pilots need this information they are well  
bast the "oh sh.t" point.  Having to remember to manually reset the  
throttle levers ain't gonna happen the one time in 5000 flights they  
need to!


And last, manual flight instruments need to be big enough to SEE in  
the midst of all the chaos -- I'm quite certain the pilots can read a  
gyro pitch indicator right in front of them, and that alone might  
have been enough to save them.


The pilots also need standard "old fashioned" con

Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-28 Thread Allan Streib
Been reading some other blogs about this, apparently on the fly-by-wire
Airbus even in "Alternate Law" the pilot is not fully in control.  Some
conjecture that if he pushed the stick forward to try to get the nose
down the pitch trim (still under computer control in the Alternate Law
mode) could have gone backwards based on the (false) air speed reading.  

It appears that the Airbus system will only give up control to the pilot
as it thinks it should, not based on what the pilot wants.

A lot of good technical discussion (which is way over my head and
contains a lot of acronyms and domain-specific language, but I enjoy
reading it) at this link:

  
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/447730-af447-wreckage-found-30.html#post6477527

Further speculation that FBW pilots are forgetting how to fly; what
does 2,000 hours mean if it's all under computer control and you're
basically just sitting there watching the pretty screens?

-- 
1983 300D

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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-28 Thread Mitch Haley

Allan Streib wrote:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/05/blaring-alarms-confused-doomed.html

Apparently with the aircraft in a stall, the pilots (in manual control)
maintained a nose-up attitude and attempted to climb.



I like this comment:


JB on May 28, 2011 4:00 PM

Any Airbus pilot knows the significance of the aircraft pitch-up and then the 
comment by the pilot of "Alternate Law." It's a chilling implication. In "Normal 
Law"(which is regular operations), the Airbus has an electronic protective 
envelope created by the 5 flight control computers where the airplane can't 
over-bank, pitch up and stall, fly too slow and most importantly in this case, 
fly too fast. When these two pilots decided to fly into the tops of 
thunderstorm, they elected to chance the heavy downdrafts that do occur. If the 
Airbus hit a big downdraft initially, the autopilot would kick off, the 
autothrust would go idle and when the airspeed got over the Vne (Do Not Exceed 
Speed), the Airbus, under Normal Law, is programed to PITCH UP automatically 
(even with the autopilot off), to lower the airspeed back into regular range. At 
35,000, the range of airspeed between too slow and too fast is a narrow 
one...depending on the weight of the airplane, perhaps 10-12 knots. The Airbus 
could very quickly exceed either of those limitations, unless decisive, 
corrective action is taken immediately by the pilots using manual pitch and 
thrust controls. But, can this be accomplished when the pilots have just elected 
to fly into the tops of a thrunderstorm ?


It's possible that right at that moment, with heavy turbulence and lightening 
all around, the aircraft pitot sensors finally iced over, disabling the 
airspeed/altimeter instruments and causing the Airbus flight control system to 
default to "Alternate Law" (no protective envelope)...just at the worst moment. 
Remember, this all was happening in a blur with heavy turbulence, lightening and 
alarms in the cockpit...and perhaps the Captain pounding at the locked cockpit 
door, wanting back in.


The Airbus at this moment is at nose high attitude, thrust idle, faulty airspeed 
readings, multiple fault alarms and automatically into Alternate Law fight 
control (which a pilot only experiences in the training simulator) and which 
does NOT provide stall protection like in Normal Law. The "STALL" audio warning 
is heard on the cockpit tape...that's never heard in Normal Law but deadly 
serious at 38,000 feet in Alternate Law. The airplane was falling, losing 
altitude, in a deep stall at this point, nose high, heavy turbulence and the 
pilots overloaded and task-saturated...unsure what was happening and why. Just 
five minutes prior, they were eating their dinner, autopilot "on", and in level, 
normal flight. Now, they were fighting for their lives, looking from screen to 
screen, trying to make sense of the conflicting indications and a long list of 
"faults" and alarms in the cockpit, while being tossed from side to side in the 
core of the thunderstorm.


All of this because the pilots thought they could "top" an Atlantic thunderstorm 
in the dark, instead of going 50 miles around it...like the other airliners on 
same route. A perfectly good airplane lost with all of its crew and 
passengers...a pity.



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Re: [MBZ] OT: mystery deepens in Air France crash

2011-05-28 Thread Rich Thomas
It's not clear that the flight control system would allow them to 
override what it thinks it needs to do to the airplane.  Also unclear 
that they had the proper information to determine what exactly they 
needed to do, whether the FCS would allow them to do that or not.


Airbus.  Boeing.  You decide.

--R

On 5/28/2011 2:43 PM, Allan Streib wrote:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/05/blaring-alarms-confused-doomed.html

Apparently with the aircraft in a stall, the pilots (in manual control)
maintained a nose-up attitude and attempted to climb.




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