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Air Asia Pilot Response Leads To Plane Crashing (wsj.com)
hcs_$reboot writes: The investigation took a year, but we finally know why Air Asia Flight QZ8501, en route to Singapore from the Indonesian city of Surabaya on December 28 last year, crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 162 people on board. The crash was caused by a combination of system malfunctions and improper pilot responses to cascading electrical and rudder-system problems. A cracked solder joint on the Airbus A320 resulted in an electrical interruption that caused computer-generated warnings of a rudder malfunction. The problem occurred four times during the flight. The first three times, the flight crew responded according to standard procedure, investigators said. The fourth time, however, the flight-data recorder indicated actions similar to those of circuit breakers being reset. That led the autopilot to disengage. Investigators said the crew was unable to react appropriately to "a prolonged stall condition," ending in the crash. The investigation points to weaknesses in pilot training in dealing with upsets, or when an aircraft is angled greater than 45 degrees.
However whilst the mistake the pilots made is serious it is just as serious in my view that the plane was permitted to fly in this condition in the first place. It seems the problem with this particular plane was well known and had been happening (at least) for a number of days since but had not been fixed.
They had the problem 23 times in the last 12 months it says. For real? Maybe it might have been a good idea to fix it?
I love how the headlines on CNN (and now WSJ) lead with "Pilot Error" but the BBC leads with
Faulty equipment was a "major factor" in the AirAsia plane crash last December that killed all 162 people on board, Indonesian officials say.
AirAsia crash: Faulty part 'major factor'
Yes the crew were not fully trained, but according to Airbus the plane couldn't get into the situation it was in, so why train pilots for that? Also the faulty part had been faulty for a significant amount of time. This flight was not the first flight that had issues with the particular equipment.
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And you'll have a good idea on the skill level of many international commercial jet pilots. Air France 447, Asiana 214, and now Air Asia QZ8501.
I believe avionics is still exempt from RoHS rules. It was in the original regulations but the EU has removed exemptions as new versions have been adopted.
Trouble is: There are very few shops left that will do lead solder work. And if they do, the price will reflect the dedicated production tooling and handling procedures needed. Since there are no FAA or JAR requirements to use leaded solder, some avionics equipment is built on RoHS production lines.
But think of the children! How about you keep the kids from chewing on the flight controls instead?
Have gnu, will travel.
It's called unusual attitude training and even the lowly private pilot has to go through it before getting the VFR ticket. Attitudes in excess of 45 degrees don't crash a plane. The anomaly sounds like a perfect case of distraction that consumed the pilots' attention and they crashed a malfunctioning, but flyable plane.
The AirAsia pilots had not been trained for that scenario, [the investigator] added, because the manual provided by the plane's manufacturer said the aircraft, an Airbus 320, was designed to prevent it from becoming upset and therefore upset recovery training was unnecessary
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
OK I have a few issues with your post:
a) you're being extremely racist
b) the copilot was actually French, and not Asian.
c) it was the copilot that pulled back on the stick, while the stall warnings were on
d) they were both pretty experienced- thousands of hours flying
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"as more and more planes fall out of the sky
Wrong.
they will continue to always scapegoat the pilot / train operator / whatever
Who is "they"? Anyway the investigation that took a year was performed by rather independent parties. Plus, Airbus interest is to put the blame on the airline / pilots (Air Asia), Air Asia interest is to blame the aircraft (Airbus)... So after a year when all of those people having conflicting interests come up with an agreed outcome, it's likely to be not far from the truth.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Are you sure it cracked because of lead-free solder? Instead of, say, poor soldering process, impurities in the solder, wrongly designed PCB, stress from bad installation? Or perhaps that the should redesign the PCB specs for a new solder composition, but didn’t? It sure could be specifically because of lead-free solder (hard to get the same elasticity or such) but I just don't see that from The Fine Article linked above.
During the interview with the Indonesia AirAsia management, one of the discussion topics was related to upset recovery training. The approved Operation Training Manual covers the upset recovery training in Chapter 8. The module consisted of ground and simulator training. The ground training provides the flight crew with the background, definition, cause of aircraft upset, aerodynamic and aircraft systems in relation with aircraft upset. Recovery methods consider various aircraft attitude and speed including post upset conditions.
The upset recovery training had not been implemented on Airbus A320 training, since it is not required according to the Flight Crew Training Manual and has not been mandated by the DGCA.
worse.......
The Airbus A320 QRH chapter Computer Reset stated that: In flight, as a general rule, the crew must restrict computer resets to those listed in the table, or to those in applicable TDUs or OEBs. Before taking any action on other computers, the flight crew must consider and fully understand the consequences. The consequences of resetting FAC CBs in flight are not described in Airbus documents. It requires good understanding of the aircraft system to be aware of the consequences.
So we have a case of...
1. Alarm keeps going off
2. Reboot computer, hoping it will shutoff pesky alarm, but instead we don't understand consequences and knock out autopilot.
3. Without autopilot plane rolls and stalls, both human pilots do opposite things and make condition uncoverable.
Training issue....
Planes break, computers fail, and humans spill coffee. Pilots need the training to respond with automaticity when bad things happen We see this time and time again.
Yes each aircraft has specific procedures. And training to go with, it's called type certification. Nothing special here. Quit playing with the circuit breakers and fly the damn plane. That's pilot error.
Flight 447 went down fundamentally because the two of the tree pilots ( one in particular) didn't know the fundamentals about flying and held the aircraft in a stalled state until it hit the ocean.
It amazes me that neither of these pilots owned a license for a light aircraft which is mandatory for all Airliner pilots in my country (Australia)
The other issue on the airbus is if you pull the stick back until the stall warning goes off then keep it there until the aircraft pitches further up, the stall warning stops when the pitot tubes can no longer get a reliable wind speed.
Does anyone know if these pilots had light aircraft licenses?
Avionics were excluded from the initial lead-free requirement. And even if they aren't now, unless the plane was literally brand new, it will be using leaded solder because chances are the equipment predates the exclusion removal, if not RoHS.
Air France certainly does train for it now. They didn't use to (and neither did other Airbus operators) because Airbus did not include it in the curriculum. They said their airplanes couldn't stall so it was pointless to train for it. The most we did was an "approach to stall" and recovery without actually stalling.
I'm sure Air Asia must have trained for it as well since Airbus has updated the curriculum after AF 447 and included stall recovery as a mandatory exercise, sending lots of communications about it to Airbus operators and requiring those exercises to be performed asap during recurrent training or even in separate, dedicated extra sessions.
But there's something weird going on here. The first officer apparently pulled his stick all the way back and made the plane climb at a rate of more than 10,000 ft/min before it stalled. That's a pretty insane maneuver and I can't find a rational explanation for it no matter what his training was. It's not an "inappropriate response" but rather a completely unprovoked action for no good reason whatsoever.
It might have been a technical malfunction in the flight control computers. There have been a few cases where Airbus pilots were accused of incorrect inputs in certain incidents where they luckily did live to tell, and where the pilots involved were adamant they did not give those inputs. Maybe there's a bug when the FAC circuit breakers are pulled. I remember one procedure that's sometimes performed on the ground, where such a reset also resets the stabilizer trim so it's vitally important to set the correct trim again. Maybe something like that goes on in the flight control computers during flight as well. Maybe the flight recorder confuses a flight control input with a trim input resulting from a FAC reset? Or maybe some integer overflowed?
the manual provided by the plane's manufacturer said the aircraft, an Airbus 320, was designed to prevent it from becoming upset and therefore upset recovery training was unnecessary
This is patently false. Fly-by-wire planes have multiple levels of degraded flight envelope protections, predicated by degraded sensor inputs, lost redundancies, etc. All of this is in the fucking manuals, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Stalls that initiate at high altitudes and continue all the way to the ground are a recurring problem and the pilots are to be blamed. If you're in any sort of a plane and there's no reaction to prolonged stick-up input, you have to let go and figure out what the fuck is happening. A mental reset, if you will. Perhaps people who are too easily confused by flight automation shouldn't fly the damn planes.
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