Believe this was the crash he is referring to - it was major news: Air France Flight 447: Pilot Errors Mounted in Tragic Crash, Report Finds | TIME.com More in depth info on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447 >8^| ER
No, and it doesn't need to be. Competent pilots know how to fly by pitch and power when they have unreliable airspeed.
The crew also thought the stall warnings they kept getting were unreliable. But when they did do something to address the low airspeed, they kept doing the wrong thing, pulling back on the stick. -F
The stall warning programming is a bug as far as I'm concerned on the scarebus. If you get to stall the warning goes off, but if you get even slower than stall the warning disables itself because it thinks your on the ground and that you couldn't be stupid enough to fly at less than 60 knots or whatever the disable threshold is. That's dumb. The crew got the stall warning and continued to pitch up and got so slow the stall warning disabled itself which made them think that pitching up was the right thing to do which is flunky airmanship. Then when one did try to lower the nose they got the stall warning again as it re-enabled which then made them think again that continuing to pitch up was the right thing to do because it made the stall warning go away again. When you get to stall the warning should switch on and remain on until your not stalling anymore. The plane has a weight on wheels sensor to know it's on the ground. That should disable the stall warning horn if less than the cutout threshold. They basically fell flat out of the sky with no effective forward speed and 15-20k fpm descent rate. The captain figured it out when they were only a few thousand (few hundred ?) feet from hitting the ocean. Too late. If they figured it out above 10k everyone might still be alive. This is the scariest human factors accident I can think of. The crew took a perfectly serviceable modern airliner at stable cruise altitude and crashed it into the sea because they couldn't set pitch and power (a memory item) to a safe value while they sorted out the unreliable airspeed indicator.
You think it was worse than the Air France one that stalled all the way to the ocean? Lot more lives lost on that one.
= = = This seems to have nothing to do with the crash itself, but with Asiana's behavior AFTER the crash... I wonder if this is more of the "Not Admitting that we have Screwed Up" syndrome. "Officials are looking into whether some attorneys may have violated a U.S. law barring uninvited solicitation of air disaster victims in the first 45 days after an accident in connection with the crash landing of Asiana Flight 214 in San Francisco. The National Transportation Safety Board says it has received an unspecified number of complaints about solicitations since the July 6 accident that killed three Chinese teenage girls and injured 180. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) LOS ANGELES (AP) - Asiana Airlines has been penalized $500,000 for failing to assist family members of passengers on a flight that crashed last year at San Francisco airport, federal transportation officials said Tuesday. The fine announced by the U.S. Department of Transportation was a first: No airline has broken U.S. laws that require prompt and generous assistance to the loved ones of crash victims. Three people died and dozens were injured on July 6 when Asiana Flight 214 clipped a seawall while landing. An investigation by the Department of Transportation concluded that some family members had not been contacted two days after the crash, and it took five days to reach the families of all 291 passengers. "The last thing families and passengers should have to worry about at such a stressful time is how to get information from their carrier," U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a prepared statement. Many of the families live in South Korea or China, meaning the airline was their main source of information on the crash half a world away. In a statement emailed to The Associated Press, Asiana spokeswoman Hyomin Lee said, "Asiana provided extensive support to the passengers and their families following the accident and will continue to do so." According to a consent order the airline signed with the department, Asiana will pay $400,000 in a fine and gets a $100,000 credit for "costs in sponsoring multiple industry-wide conferences and training sessions in 2013, 2014 and 2015, to provide lessons learned." Federal investigators also said Asiana did not actively encourage contact from families, failing to widely publicize a toll-free help line until the day after the crash. When family members did call, they were initially routed to a reservations line rather than a crisis hotline. Asiana also lacked translators and personnel trained in crash response, the transportation department found. In the late 1990s, after airlines were roundly criticized for ignoring desperate requests for information after crashes, Congress required carriers to dedicate significant attention to families of passengers. Last fall, the AP reviewed plans filed by two dozen foreign airlines and found cases in which carriers had not updated their family assistance plans as required. Since AP's story, several airlines have updated family assistance plans and filed new paperwork with the Department of Transportation. Among them is Asiana's bigger rival, Korean Air." .
$500K is the smallest check Asiana is going to be writing over the next 5+ years as far as this negligent crash goes...
Not really. I think it depends on where and how various pilots learned to fly. I was trained by the U.S. Navy. At the minimum approach speed necessary for a successful carrier landing, the glide path is quite clearly controlled with power and the AOA with the stick. I doubt if you'll find many carrier pilots arguing with that concept. Naturally there must be some coordination between throttle movements and stick movements, but that's why the pilot is the connecting link between the two, hopefully with some sort of brain involved in the situation. Later I flew for many many years with a major international airline and I was shocked at the wide variety of piloting skills exhibited by some Captains while I served first as a flight engineer and later on as co-pilot. The worst of the lot flew way over bug speed and drove down the glide slope steering with the yoke as they bracketed the glide scope while jockeying the throttles in ways which were often quite mysterious. The worse the weather, the more difficult the approach, and the shorter the runway the more nervous they were and this usually manifested itself in even more airspeed. At some time late in the landing maneuver these guys reduced power and with some luck everything came together over the numbers. But usually these guys landed long, hot, or both. Since most runways are longer than necessary none of them ever killed me. When I got to be a co-pilot, I flew in accordance with the company directives; i.e. stabilized on the final approach at the proper speed. And I held that speed accurately with the yoke and I controlled the rate of sink (glide path) with power. This is EXACTLY how I used to fly carrier approaches. I'm retired now, but I still recall the occasional question and/or compliment from Captains (without previous military training) about this technique and the same thing from new co-pilots when I became a Captain myself. This is not rocket science. It's just a state of mind. Having said all that, I'm reminded of the wise a$$ in my naval flight training class when this way of flying an approach was explained in ground school. He said something like: "Sir, let me get this straight. Airspeed is controlled by the stick and altitude with the throttle, right? So, in order to take off, I should start at the end of the runway, leave the engine at idle, push the stick forward and wait until the airspeed increases to take off speed, and then move the throttle forward to leave the ground. Is that correct?" The instructor was not amused.
I had a similar experience when I was a student. One day out of the blue, my instructor asked me what makes an airplane " go up". I pulled back on the stick briefly. Without a word, he cut power and yelled, " Okay! let's go up." He also was an ex-Navy pilot and corrected some landing problems that I was having by making me fly around just over stall speed. Then when we were on final at minimum speed and adjusting speed with throttle the landings were on the numbers . I seem to remember coming back on the power and stick almost at the same time for a nice smooth Navy style ker-plop.
Mozella- I do not think that is different from what I said. You flew your naval aircraft (what type?) the same way we did the F-111, F-4, F-15, and F-16. But we are both old farts and sounds like neither of us flew aircraft with auto-throttles. AoA was a big deal when flying Viet-Nam era fighters, whether landing or maneuvering, but not as much for GA and commercial.
Mostly the F-8 Crusader in the late 60's and early 70's. The later models had auto-throttle. The primary input was AOA with added input from the position of the UHT (unit horizontal tail), but it didn't have any accelerometer or other fancy interface. Nevertheless, it worked pretty well if you were clever enough to help it out with some well timed stick pulses. After that I flew the Iranian version of the F-4E and the F-14, both of which had pretty good auto-throttle systems. Most of my airline flying was in the 767, again with auto-throttles. I suspect I've got more time on the glide slope with auto-throttles engaged than not.
SAN FRANCISCO —Asiana Airlines says a Boeing 777 that crashed at San Francisco International Airport had inadequate warning systems to alert the crew to problems with air speed. In a filing with the National Transportation Safety Board released on Monday, the airline says there was no indication that the plane's autothrottle had stopped maintaining the set air speed. Additionally, it says a low air speed alerting system came on too late for the pilots to avoid the crash. Asiana passengers begged 911 dispatchers for help Asiana also acknowledged that its crew failed to monitor and maintain a safe airspeed but said inconsistencies in the aircraft's automation logic and deficient warning systems contributed to the failure. The NTSB previously said the crew showed signs of confusion about the elaborate computer systems of the Boeing 777 that crashed on July 6 and resulted in three deaths.
Shouldn't the primary failsafe airspeed alerting system be one of the pilots watching the actual airspeed indicator gauge and yelling out "Hey, our airspeed is getting too low......we need to add a bit more throttle" ?
It's obviously a serious deficiency with the 777 since this was the first accident since introduction in 20 years not counting the LHR 777 engine ice incident. The blame game is weak. Those "Pilots" will kill again if they don't get proper training this time around.
I can see it now. A federally mandated warning sticker on the airspeed indicator. The same mentality brought us stickers on roll towel machines "Do not stick your head through the towel loop". Frustrating Darwin at every turn. How about a sign on the cockpit door "No stupid pilots allowed past this point".
Do the side view mirrors on a 777 say "Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear"? The sad part is some people will buy into this stupidity And they vote!
As alluded to above, Asiana is trying to place some blame on Boeing. Ugh. Asiana: Jet partly to blame in California crash - SFGate
Asiana should thank their lucky stars that Boeing built such a damn strong airliner. Smashing the plane into a seawall and still 304 out of 307 passengers survived. A lesser plane manufacturer might have had no survivors. They should suck it up and pay the victims not try to spread false blame around. I don't give a crap if it bankrupts them. That should reinforce flight departments around the World that they need to train their pilots properly.
Asiana is just perjuring themselves here...they've had 777s since 2004 - TEN YEARS, which means they've had a training and SOP protocol for quite some time. Now all of a sudden there's a "problem with the aircraft"? Tell that to the 64 other operators operating the 924 Boeing 777s flying today. Pffft....worst excuse ever.
My goodness! THAT is a clever idea. I'll have to try that some time, I have always looked at the ground to make sure that it is going by fast enough. When I'm in the clouds I always wait until the airplane shakes real funny and push on the wheel until the wind gets too loud. Then I pull back a bit until it isn't deafening anymore. Seems to work...most of the time. Now, which gauge are you talking about? There are so many of them and the needles are all pointing in different directions and nobody can make sense out of them.
I am assuming you are being facetious..... you do realize I was being sarcastic with my post --- right ??
