Thread: AirAsia Flight From Surabaya to Singapore Loses Contact

^ That's right sticks not a yoke but HB didn't catch it did he?
Another shit feature of the A 320 that contributes to overall shittiness
I have read reports from pilots that a yoke is preferable to a stick with a heavy- forgive me, bird, as the input is more controlled.

Sticks are for fighter jets not passenger airliners.

Air France Flight 447: 'Damn it, we?re going to crash? - Telegraph

But there is another, worrying implication that the Telegraph can disclose for the first time: that the errors committed by the pilot doing the flying were not corrected by his more experienced colleagues because they did not know he was behaving in a manner bound to induce a stall. And the reason for that fatal lack of awareness lies partly in the design of the control stick – the “side stick” – used in all Airbus cockpits.

Like all other aircraft in the modern Airbus range the A330 is controlled by side sticks beside pilots’ seats, which resemble those on computer game consoles. These side sticks are not connected to the aircraft control surfaces by levers and pulleys, as in older aircraft. Instead commands are fed to computers, which in turn send signals to the engines and hydraulics. This so-called fly-by-wire technology has huge advantages. Doing away with mechanical connections saves weight, and therefore fuel. There are fewer moving components to go wrong, the slender electronic wiring and computers all have multiple back‑ups, and the onboard processors take much of the workload off pilots. Better still, they are programmed to compensate for human error.

The side sticks are also wonderfully clever. Once a command is given, say a 10-degree left turn, the pilot can let the stick go and concentrate on other issues while the 10-degree turn is perfectly maintained. According to Stephen King of the British Airline Pilots’ Association, it’s an admired and popular design. “Most Airbus pilots I know love it because of the reliable automation that allows you to manage situations and not be so fatigued by the mechanics of flying.”

But the fact that the second pilot’s stick stays in neutral whatever the input to the other is not a good thing. As King concedes: “It’s not immediately apparent to one pilot what the other may be doing with the control stick, unless he makes a big effort to look across to the other side of the flight deck, which is not easy. In any case, the side stick is held back for only a few seconds, so you have to see the action being taken.”

Thus it was that even when Bonin had the A330’s nose pointed upward during the fatal stall, his colleagues failed to comprehend what was going on. It seems clear from the transcripts that Robert assumed the plane was flying level or even descending. Robert himself was panicking: “We still have the engines! What the hell is happening? I don’t understand what’s happening.” Ninety seconds after the emergency began the captain was back in the cockpit demanding: “What the hell are you doing?” To which both pilots responded: “We’ve lost control of the plane!”

“People are aware that they don’t know what is being done on the other side stick, but most of the time the crews fly in full automation; they are not even touching the stick,” says Captain King. “We hand-fly the aeroplane ever less now because automation is reliable and efficient, and because fatigue is an issue. [The side stick] is not an issue that comes up – very rarely does the other pilot’s input cause you concern.”
Boeing has always begged to differ, persisting with conventional controls on its fly-by-wire aircraft, including the new 787 Dreamliner, introduced into service this year.

Boeing’s cluttering and old-fashioned levers still have to be pushed and turned like the old mechanical ones, even though they only send electronic impulses to computers. They need to be held in place for a climb or a turn to be accomplished, which some pilots think is archaic and distracting. Some say Boeing is so conservative because most American pilots graduate from flying schools where column-steering is the norm, whereas European airlines train more crew from scratch, allowing a quicker transition to side stick control.

Whatever the cultural differences, there is a perceived safety issue, too. The American manufacturer was concerned about side sticks’ lack of visual and physical feedback. Indeed, it is hard to believe AF447 would have fallen from the sky if it had been a Boeing. Had a traditional yoke been installed on Flight AF447, Robert would surely have realised that his junior colleague had the lever pulled back and mostly kept it there. When Dubois returned to the cockpit he would have seen that Bonin was pulling up the nose.

Originally Posted by thailazer

Originally Posted by Necron99

Originally Posted by YOrlov

^ PPRuNe still letting wanna be amateurs clog up the forums and pick up irrelevant pilot lingo?

"Normal law" Please...

That link has nothing to do with pitot tubes freezing up and pilots faced with bad horizon info.
Which way is up is what a pilot is faced with as every single flight indicator is a computer generated graphic that goes bad with bad input.

What part is bollocks in my post please tell us ? I admit there is a glaring error, can you point it out it?

A toy compass will not give you a horizon.
The pitot tubes determine airspeed and have nothing to do with the artificial horizon working or not.
The flight controls still respond to pilot input regardless of whether the pitot tube is blocked or not.
The flight assistance given by the system can if needed be dialed down to a minimum.

In the AF-447 incident, a lot of flight information was taken away from the crew when the system determined there was some sort of error state. Angle of attack (AOA) was one of those systems taken away, and it could have conceivably let them know they were in a stalled condition, provided it was not also iced up, and if they could have ignored the flood of alarm messages the system was creating.

According to the boxes, the co pilot was continuously pulling back on his stick and they only lost AOA indication once the plane pitched past 40 degrees. He also ignored 75 stall warnings.

Originally Posted by Necron99

Originally Posted by thailazer

Originally Posted by Necron99

Originally Posted by YOrlov

^ PPRuNe still letting wanna be amateurs clog up the forums and pick up irrelevant pilot lingo?

"Normal law" Please...

That link has nothing to do with pitot tubes freezing up and pilots faced with bad horizon info.
Which way is up is what a pilot is faced with as every single flight indicator is a computer generated graphic that goes bad with bad input.

What part is bollocks in my post please tell us ? I admit there is a glaring error, can you point it out it?

A toy compass will not give you a horizon.
The pitot tubes determine airspeed and have nothing to do with the artificial horizon working or not.
The flight controls still respond to pilot input regardless of whether the pitot tube is blocked or not.
The flight assistance given by the system can if needed be dialed down to a minimum.

In the AF-447 incident, a lot of flight information was taken away from the crew when the system determined there was some sort of error state. Angle of attack (AOA) was one of those systems taken away, and it could have conceivably let them know they were in a stalled condition, provided it was not also iced up, and if they could have ignored the flood of alarm messages the system was creating.

According to the boxes, the co pilot was continuously pulling back on his stick and they only lost AOA indication once the plane pitched past 40 degrees. He also ignored 75 stall warnings.

Dig a little deeper, and I think you'll find a bit more about what was actually being displayed. Another factor on -447 was the tail plane ended up being auto-trimmed to the full 13 degrees up trim for the back pressure that was being applied, keeping the aircraft stalled at the power setting that was being used. (You have to reduce power on many low engine slung wings to get out of a stalls, and this is a whole other can of worms on an Airbus and its systems.) There were several times that forward stick was applied by the human, but there was an inadequate elapsed time waiting for the auto trim to respond before back stick came back in. There is virtually zero training on these regimes, so the outcome is not very surprising.

Originally Posted by YOrlov

^ That's right sticks not a yoke but HB didn't catch it did he?
Another shit feature of the A 320 that contributes to overall shittiness
I have read reports from pilots that a yoke is preferable to a stick with a heavy- forgive me, bird, as the input is more controlled.

Sticks are for fighter jets not passenger airliners.

This is the 24th hull loss for the A320 family of planes, and that seems quite high in comparison to other planes made both by Boeing and Airbus.

Originally Posted by runner

Indeed, it is hard to believe AF447 would have fallen from the sky if it had been a Boeing.

[/QUOTE]






If it's a Boeing, I'm not fucking going.

Originally Posted by YOrlov

Sticks are for fighter jets not passenger airliners.

Tend to agree but Airbus uses on nearly all their aircraft. The pilot can override copilot side stick but in an emergency pilots often don't as they are busy trying to keep the plane in the air.

I was involved in transition training for the F16. Mastery of the side stick controller and near total control of the aircraft by the flight control computer was one of the most difficult bits in the training.

What happened in this case will be sorted when the analysis of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder are completed.

Originally Posted by Norton

The pilot can override copilot side stick but in an emergency pilots often don't as they are busy trying to keep the plane in the air.

On the Airbus there is a button on the sidestick for priority control. If pressed, that sidestick input will be used alone. There is a warning light and Nagging Nora to provide a clue which sidestick has control.

The sidestick may take a little time to get used to but it is a definite improvement on the yolk when it comes to room in the cockpit. I would have thought flying under a permanent SAS controller with no phugoids to deal with and simply having to point the stick is a far more dramatic change in flying technique.

I doubt the sidestick was an issue in this incident. I imagine they were expecting the clearance for higher altitude to come sooner rather than later and got too close.

Tony Hayward said:I'd like my life back.
Tony Fernandes said:The past few weeks have been the most difficult weeks of my life since starting AirAsia 13 years ago.
Another PR disaster from a CEO. It's not about yourself, it's about the victims and their families.

I do sympathize with tony he seems like a good dude with the best intentions.
His staff think very well of him but it seems he is on the roller coaster which is going down'

Tony is indeed a good dude and well respected in the Industry.

Airasia will carry on and continue to be a success story, He has handled the PR head on and been visible through out this disaster.

The average Joe punter can take on Board that flying can be a terminal activity and one can't do much about the plane being brought down by weather conditions.

Life goes on.

Just got an e-mail from Tony.
Saying sorry for the crash!!!!!

Originally Posted by BobR

Originally Posted by YOrlov

^ That's right sticks not a yoke but HB didn't catch it did he?
Another shit feature of the A 320 that contributes to overall shittiness
I have read reports from pilots that a yoke is preferable to a stick with a heavy- forgive me, bird, as the input is more controlled.

Sticks are for fighter jets not passenger airliners.

This is the 24th hull loss for the A320 family of planes, and that seems quite high in comparison to other planes made both by Boeing and Airbus.

Why on earth did you write that shit without checking?

As of November 2014, a total of 341 aviation accidents and incidents involving all 737 aircraft have occurred, including 158 hull-loss accidents resulting in a total of 4,293 fatalities.

Now everyone can die?

Indonesian investigators said they had not found any evidence so far that terrorism was involved in the crash of an AirAsia passenger jet last month that killed all 162 people on board.

Andreas Hananto told Reuters that his team of 10 investigators at the National Transportation Safety Committee had found "no threats" in the cockpit voice recordings to indicate foul play during AirAsia Flight QZ8501.
When asked if there was any evidence from the recording that terrorism was involved, Hananto said: "No. Because if there were terrorism, there would have been a threat of some kind."

"In that critical situation, the recording indicates that the pilot was busy with the handling of the plane."

Investigators said they had listened to the whole of the recording but transcribed only about half.

"We didn't hear any voice of other persons other than the pilots," said Nurcahyo Utomo, another investigator.

"We didn't hear any sounds of gunfire or explosions. For the time being, based on that, we can eliminate the possibility of terrorism."

Screw Airbus and their computers and toy plane controls. This should have been the end to the ridiculous philosophy of giving computers the final say over pilots.

They've done everything they could to make the pilots passengers, then blame them for anything that goes wrong.

^ Relevance?

The pilots did a slow speed pass with the aircraft unstabilised and well below the minimum altitude briefed. They also failed to disconnect the alpha protection, which was also briefed, to ensure the software didn't go into stall protection.

If you want to start a Boeing vs Airbus thread then go ahead but be warned as there are many, many Boeing problems as well.

Originally Posted by Joe45

Indonesian investigators said they had not found any evidence so far that terrorism was involved in the crash of an AirAsia passenger jet last month that killed all 162 people on board.

Andreas Hananto told Reuters that his team of 10 investigators at the National Transportation Safety Committee had found "no threats" in the cockpit voice recordings to indicate foul play during AirAsia Flight QZ8501.
When asked if there was any evidence from the recording that terrorism was involved, Hananto said: "No. Because if there were terrorism, there would have been a threat of some kind."

"In that critical situation, the recording indicates that the pilot was busy with the handling of the plane."

Investigators said they had listened to the whole of the recording but transcribed only about half.

"We didn't hear any voice of other persons other than the pilots," said Nurcahyo Utomo, another investigator.

"We didn't hear any sounds of gunfire or explosions. For the time being, based on that, we can eliminate the possibility of terrorism."

All people are interested in is the bit that says "Oh fuck we're going to crash!", etc.

An AirAsia plane that crashed last month with 162 people on board was climbing at an abnormally high rate, then plunged and suddenly disappeared from radar, Indonesia's transport minister said on Tuesday.

Ignasius Jonan told Parliament that radar data showed the Airbus A320 was climbing at about 6000 feet a minute before it disappeared on December 28.

"It is not normal to climb like that, it's very rare for commercial planes, which normally climb just 1000 to 2000 feet per minute," he said. "It can only be done by a fighter jet."

He said the plane then plunged and disappeared from radar.

Jonan did not say what caused the plane to climb so rapidly.

In their last contact with air-traffic controllers, the pilots of AirAsia Flight 8501 asked to climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission because of heavy air traffic. Four minutes later, the plane disappeared. No distress signal was received.

An excessively rapid ascent is likely to cause an airplane to go into an aerodynamic stall. In 2009, an Air France Airbus A330 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean in bad weather while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Investigators were able to determine from the jet's "black boxes" that it began a steep climb and then went into a stall from which the pilots were unable to recover.

Airbus spokesman Justin Dubon said on Tuesday that it was too early to comment on possible similarities between the two crashes.

Survey ships have located at least nine big objects, including the AirAsia jet's fuselage and tail, in the Java Sea. The plane's black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - have been recovered but are still being analyzed.

"So far, we've managed to download and transcribe half of the cockpit voice recorder," said Nurcahyo Utomo, a commissioner with the National Transportation Safety Committee. "It is too early to draw any conclusion yet because we don't know what is in the remaining half."

Originally Posted by Seekingasylum

As I understand it, the A320 - 200 is fly-by-wire and operating in Normal Law it would be impossible to stall.

Certainly, travelling at the quoted speed of 353 knots at that height with a full load there is no question of the aircraft stalling.

A B29 with roughly the same gross weight of 150,000lbs cruised at 220 mph and had a maximum speed of 320 mph with a service selling of 32,000 ft. Not many of them were reported lost through air turbulence induced stall and they flew within a military envelope.

I missed this little gem when I read through the thread the last time. How a little bit of knowledge is dangerous is the only way to interpret such rubbish from thegent. Stick to writing and leave flying (and crash investigation) to the experts is all I can say.

Point 1: you fly by IAS and navigate by TAS/GS. At 32,000ft and GS of 353kts in STD ISA the IAS will be around 220kts ignoring the wind.

Point 2: The stall speed is determined by wing area and maximum lift coefficient as well as the weight and air density. This means the stall speed of a B29 is irrelevant to the discussion. The air density at 32000 ft is such that the difference between stall speed and max speed is very narrow.

Left in A/P and A/T and setting a vertical speed to climb over a storm can easily lead to a very high climb rate with a reasonable headwind. Remove the headwind component and you have a possible stall condition. In storm conditions that headwind can become a tailwind very quickly and you can lose a safe climb speed in no time.

Well, I rather think from what my chum told me and from what one can gather from the professional pilot sites, it seems that getting five pilots to agree on a scenario outcome is as challenging as, say, my wife choosing from a menu in any thing less than a glacial age.

Anyhow, one does not attempt to climb above a cell in that region since the cumulo nimbus can attain heights of 65,000'plus. As they say in yachting terms, what does one do when driven onto a lee shore with the wind behind you? Don't find yourself in that position.

Originally Posted by BobR

Screw Airbus and their computers and toy plane controls. This should have been the end to the ridiculous philosophy of giving computers the final say over pilots.

They've done everything they could to make the pilots passengers, then blame them for anything that goes wrong.

Might be a reflection of the age in which we exist...
More dependent and controlled [perfectly accepted by the masses] by computer and electronic selection over human logic.

The captain of the AirAsia jet that crashed into the sea in December was out of his seat conducting an unorthodox procedure when his co-pilot apparently lost control, and by the time he returned it was too late to save the plane, two people familiar with the investigation said.

Details emerging of the final moments of Flight QZ8501 are likely to focus attention partly on maintenance, procedures and training, though Indonesian officials have stressed publicly that it is too early to draw any firm conclusions.

The Airbus A320 jet plunged into the Java Sea while en route from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore on Dec. 28, killing all 162 people on board.

It had been suffering maintenance faults with a key flight control computer for over a week, and one person familiar with the matter said the captain had flown on the same plane with the intermittently faulty device just days before the crash.

AirAsia said it would not comment while the matter was under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) of Indonesia.

Reuters reported this week that maintenance problems on the Flight Augmentation Computer (FAC), and the way the pilots reacted to them, were at the heart of the investigation.

After trying to reset this device, pilots pulled a circuit-breaker to cut its power, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.

People familiar with the matter told Reuters it was the Indonesian captain Iriyanto who took this step, rather than his less experienced French co-pilot Remy Plesel, who was flying the plane.

The outage would not directly upset the aircraft but would remove flight envelope protection, which prevents a pilot from taking a plane beyond its safety limits, leaving the junior pilot to fly the jet manually in delicate high altitude conditions.

AirAsia captain left seat before jet lost control: sources - The Hindu

Pprune or the Professional Pilots Rumor Network has some fascinating posts from professional pilots, may of who fly the A320. Starting at the last page and going backwards it makes for some of the best reading anyone will find on the subject.

Air Asia Indonesia Lost Contact from Surabaya to Singapore - PPRuNe Forums

Apparently the Captain shut down the computer as the plane was in a stall and dropping and the flight controls would not let the First Officer bring the nose back down in a frantic last chance effort to reset it. The pilots in the thread give much better detail than that
This guy had 20,000 hours of flight time, he certainly must have known what he was doing.