Autopilots often make things more difficult for a pilot because, in some circumstances, the autopilot simply adds a new workload layer that can sometimes interfere with operations.
That is exactly how we are trained with regard to the use of automation: If its increasing your workload, turn it off. We are encouraged to occasionally fly not only without the autopilot, but also without flight directors and autothrust off. The idea being to maintain proficiency.
Bullshit! The cause of the crash was the product of poor decision making, poor training, and mechanical failure. Every mishap is the product of a chain of events, so to say "the pilots were the cause of the crash" is completely wrong and misleading.
The cause of the AF442 mishap is detailed here.
And it says that the pilots flew into an area of weather that they knew about, lost air data, and entered a stall from which the did not recover. You're overemphasizing the pilots role, under emphasizing the mechanical failure and exaggerating the capability of automation.
If you know any pilots put this to them and watch the response;)
WTF does that mean? Am I supposed to react with giddy agreement that my profession is pointless? Using your logic, humans need never do anything that can be automated- surgery, programming, procreation...
No artificial intelligence can replace the versatility of the human mind. Pilots are there for the ability to make decisions under widely varying conditions. The automation is there to lessen the work load.
The vast majority of heavy aircraft losses are due to pilots.
Yeah, and when your idea of the pilot-less cockpit is attained it will be "The vast majority of heavy aircraft losses are due to lack of pilots."
While it gets regular maintenance that includes depot level refurbishments, they fly an average of 10 hours per day. The oldest I've flown, that is still in operation, was delivered June of 1997. It is rare that they are taken out of service. The oldest of all aircraft I've flown still in operation is a P-3C delivered in 1985- soon to be retired. This model has seen a good deal of press coverage of late for the missions it has flown in search of MH370 in the Indian Ocean.
Still working since the day it was acquired in fall of 1985. This despite having been immersed in water (covered the circuit board but left the floppy drives dry) after a basement flooding a year ago. Its a bit reluctant to boot sometimes but after a power cycle or two, loads up to DOS 3.1 or basic.
As far as the commercial pilots saying this will fail,
1 You have a professional bias, get over it
2 FAA is under pressure to ensure that GA doesn't fail
3 If this is demonstrably "non-commercial" it should succeed
Citation needed...
As for statement number 1, don't confuse industrial expertise for "professional bias". After 20 years in the field I'd say it will draw unwanted attention from the FAA. I'd also say it's not economically feasible with Avgas at $6 a gallon.
Avgas is about $6 a gallon so unless you were going somewhere close enough to drive anyway, it would not likely be cheap. Further, a real airline ticket is still historically VERY cheap (just aggravating to use sometimes), and a great deal more safe compared to civil accident rates.
It was also said that the aircraft underwent several course changes as well as altitude changes (climbs and descents), though admittedly information has been unreliable thus far. This theory doesn't explain these changes and they can't be ignored. The aircraft had to remain at cruise altitude to transit the distance involved as fuel consumption would be too great at low altitudes. If they did experience an emergency and lost navigational ability over time, they still could have used the wet compass to determine that they were headed on a southerly course for hours.
The CVR only records radio, interphone and cockpit conversation. It provides context to data recorded on the FDR which holds 30 hours or so of a minimum of 88 flight parameters. Either or both would likely answer the majority of investigators questions.
And millions of people are under-impressed by the fact that Obama signed us all up as customers for giant health insurance companies instead of actually doing something to ensure that people get something useful out of the venture.
If by that you mean you would have preferred a single payer approach, I would agree. This was a result of compromise (a concept not well understood by House Republicans, BTW) due to the exhaustive lobbying efforts of the insurance industry, and is a prime example of the need to remove money from politics.
Every military person I've known have done it for the free college money they give out.
During the Regan expansion, I chose to sign a contract with the Navy. My path did not involve any contribution on their part towards my college education; AOCS is not a scholarship program, and like a fool, I decline to participate in the GI Bill.
People are inherently selfish but I will admit there are a small percentage that do things because they mean well and desire nothing in return. A dying breed for sure.
I truly did it because I thought it would be exciting (it was, mostly), but we were not (formally) at war with anyone until Desert Shield/Storm came along. As an added bonus, I learned to fly and got to play with really fascinating machinery- "something in return". I would concur that my motivation was indeed selfish from a strict interpretation, but not exclusively so. And most of my peers came from the same frame of mind. Despite a minority that saw it as a path to the airlines, most of us "mean(t) well and desire(d) nothing in return" save the pay and adventure. I would conclude the percentage might not be that small, even today. OTOH, I would strongly encourage my son to choose any branch other than Army or Marine Corps as the chance of getting fired upon is much greater than in the others.
He must not have ever heard of Jon Burge. There are corrupt cops out there and "Anything you say can and will be used against you."
BTW, James Duane's video does not argue the merits of the 5th Amendment. It merely argues that one should exercise this right to the maximum extent possible.
Would you want to fly in the back of one? Pilots do more than push buttons. They're paid for their judgement and experience- something an autopilot will never replace. I've got 25 years of what I contend is priceless professional experience the majority of which is not related to manipulation of flight controls- that's what you you should be filling the cockpit with.
With judgment and experience, a pilot can know whether a climb is better than a descent, what route is best to avoid, if taking extra fuel is more harmful than helpful, understands winds aloft, tropopause, and orographic phenomenon and their effect on turbulence, and a myriad of other vital information.
Most importantly, incidents like AF447 would be more likely and recovering from that type of upset would be impossible by remote pilot.
Is there a structural problem with computer-aided pilot's ability to fly visual approaches?
Not sure of the specifics of this incident (VMC or IMC), but there's no "structural problem" with automation and visual approaches. It is more likely simply an issue of training- about limits of automation and flying a visual flight path.
The automation can be used as a aid during a visual approach, but one must be familiar with how to set up the FMGC/FMC. Training costs money. Sim time is a limited and costly resource and managers are always looking to save a buck. Safety and profit are often opposing metrics.
You make it sound as though every contingency can be eliminated by engineers, by picking the obviously perfect design. I think you're ready for pilot-less commercial transport.
I'll do this one at a time. The incident lasted roughly 4 1/2 minutes. They had no visual reference to the horizon (IMC) and it was night time- these initial conditions made for a greater degree of difficulty in general. Their first mistake was in failing to avoid the weather by a wide enough margin. The second was in stall recovery. I can attest to the difficulty in recovering from stall in a heavy, swept wing aircraft at high altitude from my sim training. It takes patience and airspeed- the air is very thin. The less experienced pilot (PF) raised the nose at one point to beyond 10 degrees up which greatly reduced their energy state. Setting pitch attitude is distinctly complimented by vertical speed indications which were absent. Level pitch would be 2.5 degrees. He had total time of less than 3000 hours- low from my perspective but enough to be qualified.
the critical information relating to the flight situation of the aircraft was being withheld by the "smart" cockpit
The pilots were challenged by degraded systems: no air data meant they had no information about airspeed, vertical speed or altitude. It was attitude only during night IMC. No information was "withheld", per say, some simply wasn't available to them. They were all trained to standards, including stalls, and alternate law. Alternate law means that most protections are lost: pitch and roll limits, overspeed and stall prevention- you cannot stall newer Airbus in normal law, it won't let you. The aircraft still "flies" the same way. Boeing's cockpits are smart too, but are most definatley not immune to failures and connected yokes is not Here's a summary of Airbus flight control laws: http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm
If the former is true, what airline should I be flying on?
Like picking a surgeon or hospital, pick an airline that has quality training and experienced pilots. I would suspect that AirFrance has revisited their stall training for the better. Low pilot pay usually indicates low experience and poor training. High paid executives is a meaningless metric.
...the lack of any angle of attack gauge, a stall warning that does not sound when the airplane is so stalled as to be falling from the sky, and the lack of something making an enormous deal about the switch from normal law to alternative law flight mode.
Boeing doesn't present AOA either- it is not deemed relevant anymore with advanced flight display systems. Stall warnings (derived from AOA) are considered relevant and they did receive stall warnings: "At around 2 h 11 min 42, the Captain re-entered the cockpit. During the following seconds, all of the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped, after having sounded continuously for 54 seconds." As for alternate law, I suspect your view of it is overly complicated. Direct law, however, is much like flying a paper airplane. The pilots will always be advised of what flight law the aircraft is operating in. Nonetheless, to get into that state requires multiple failures of redundant systems. With out any electrical power, the airplane cannot be flown- battery only is a greater emergency than fire.
Regarding the dual sticks with a dual input light, the key problem is this: when would averaging the joystick inputs actually be desirable?
Never. Its meant to be one stick at a time- just as pilots are trained on yokes. If the other pilot is fighting me on a yoke, I am the aural warning: 'I have the controls". In an Airbus the computer is the warning. We still must communicate on either plane.
Do both pilots frequently fly at the same time and average it out?
Never intentionally. That's why the system alerts them aurally and with a red warning light which can't be canceled and won't go away until the dual input is resolved. Few th
If a pilot is panicking to the point that he is flying wrong, he will be hitting the lockout button because he will think he is right.
Look, I'm not arguing that pilots, humans, aren't capable of panicking and melting like butter. But the profession is not meant to resemble the movie Airplane. Nothing stops the scenario you describe from occurring in a Boeing with the yokes fixed to one another, with both pilots overcome like knuckleheads, pulling in opposite directions. This is why you want well trained and experienced pilots at the helm. Again its not a flaw, its a philosophical choice. Either way, the humans need to be trained to operate the machine.
We do indeed have access to and benefit from mishap reports. Procedure are often altered as a result of information obtained during investigations. AF447 resulted in a change to stall recovery requiring idle thrust and de-emphasizing altitude loss. I disagree, but that was Airbus' recommendation. In fact, at the end of every NTSB report, conclusions are made as well as recommendations to prevent further disasters. They are not always implemented. If medicine embraced the same philosophy, we'd lose fewer people to medical accidents.
Look, I know that pilots in the U.S. are really paid peanuts and probably just want to unwind and don't care about anything when they are not flying.
True dat. Yet here I am on/. talking aviation stuff on a day off.
Aircraft often earn nicknames. B777's are known as Bigfoot for the main gear (the aft two wheels on the truck pivot during turns). B787 has become known as "Sparky"- you can guess why.
All the alarms and blinking lights are listed in the actual accident investigation report here:http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601.en/pdf/f-cp090601.en.pdf To sum up, they unwisely flew into an area of weather that they were painting on radar. Lost air data systems (not attitude or inertial info) that provided airspeed, vertical speed and altitude, the autopilot which relies on this info disconnected leaving the aircraft to be flown by the only entity capable- the pilots, who then allowed the aircraft to stall from which they never recovered.
Aircraft design is a collaborative effort that includes pilots among many others, not just engineers. Not sure what your point is. If you're suggesting that they were overwhelmed by warnings and such, I would concur. That is the point of training and systems knowledge. All ECAMs are prioritized to allow the pilots to deal with the most pressing emergency (as a user, I think it fails from being needlessly complicated and unintuitive). This notwithstanding the fact that one must "fly the airplane first" at all times. The parent's point that Airbus have design flaws because the sticks are independent, is as I said, incorrect. He could say he he has issues with design philosophy, but its not a flaw to have independent sticks, and no machine yet can make judgments on what info the pilots need about systems failures. Perhaps you are advocating aircraft have a neural connection to the pilot's brain- sadly that is only science fiction as yet.
Certainly this would have been the only alarm they were hearing or blinking light they were seeing, you know in a stalling aircraft
Yes I do know. I think I'm qualified to make the argument that this is not a "flaw", or make observations on the AF mishap. I have over 7700 hours on Airbus and over 14000 total flight time as a commercial pilot, including training in stall recovery in large swept wing aircraft, and I've heard this argument made many times.
Mr Gatwood, I commend you for your insight. I suspect that the lack of glideslope information will become an important factor during the accident investigation. BTW, how did you know this. Navaid outages would normally be disseminated via NOTAMs and are not generally known by non-flying public. I received this information only within the last two weeks from my company and union about the impending construction.
BTW, in addition to inop GS, they also did not have any visual approach path indicators as the PAPI is out of service:
ILS RWY 28R LOCALIZER/DME U/S
RWY 28L ILS LLZ/DME U/S
RWY 10L/28R CLSD
RWY 10R/28L CLSD
RWY 28L PAPI U/S
The communication problem was largely caused by an major Airbus design flaw: the sticks between the left and right seats aren't linked. In other planes, the pilot would have known the copilot had the stick pulled back because the action would make his own stick move back as well. On AF447, the pilot saw nothing other than the copilot's hand on the stick and assumed he was doing the right thing, and in the understandable confusion as they struggled to gain control of the plane the copilot never verbally corrected the misconception.
Incorrect, there is no design flaw. As designed, if both pilots make a flight control input simultaneously, they will receive an aural warning: "Dual Input". They will know about it and either pilot can take priority over the other by pushing a button on the stick which will lock out the other.
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Autopilots often make things more difficult for a pilot because, in some circumstances, the autopilot simply adds a new workload layer that can sometimes interfere with operations.
That is exactly how we are trained with regard to the use of automation: If its increasing your workload, turn it off. We are encouraged to occasionally fly not only without the autopilot, but also without flight directors and autothrust off. The idea being to maintain proficiency.
The cause of the AF442 mishap is detailed here. And it says that the pilots flew into an area of weather that they knew about, lost air data, and entered a stall from which the did not recover. You're overemphasizing the pilots role, under emphasizing the mechanical failure and exaggerating the capability of automation.
If you know any pilots put this to them and watch the response ;)
WTF does that mean? Am I supposed to react with giddy agreement that my profession is pointless? Using your logic, humans need never do anything that can be automated- surgery, programming, procreation...
No artificial intelligence can replace the versatility of the human mind. Pilots are there for the ability to make decisions under widely varying conditions. The automation is there to lessen the work load.
The vast majority of heavy aircraft losses are due to pilots.
Yeah, and when your idea of the pilot-less cockpit is attained it will be "The vast majority of heavy aircraft losses are due to lack of pilots."
While it gets regular maintenance that includes depot level refurbishments, they fly an average of 10 hours per day. The oldest I've flown, that is still in operation, was delivered June of 1997. It is rare that they are taken out of service. The oldest of all aircraft I've flown still in operation is a P-3C delivered in 1985- soon to be retired. This model has seen a good deal of press coverage of late for the missions it has flown in search of MH370 in the Indian Ocean.
Still working since the day it was acquired in fall of 1985. This despite having been immersed in water (covered the circuit board but left the floppy drives dry) after a basement flooding a year ago. Its a bit reluctant to boot sometimes but after a power cycle or two, loads up to DOS 3.1 or basic.
As far as the commercial pilots saying this will fail, 1 You have a professional bias, get over it 2 FAA is under pressure to ensure that GA doesn't fail 3 If this is demonstrably "non-commercial" it should succeed
Citation needed...
As for statement number 1, don't confuse industrial expertise for "professional bias". After 20 years in the field I'd say it will draw unwanted attention from the FAA. I'd also say it's not economically feasible with Avgas at $6 a gallon.
Avgas is about $6 a gallon so unless you were going somewhere close enough to drive anyway, it would not likely be cheap. Further, a real airline ticket is still historically VERY cheap (just aggravating to use sometimes), and a great deal more safe compared to civil accident rates.
Plausible except for one thing. Fule range at 12000' is not adequate to transit as far as they did- would have needed to be at cruise flight levels.
It was also said that the aircraft underwent several course changes as well as altitude changes (climbs and descents), though admittedly information has been unreliable thus far. This theory doesn't explain these changes and they can't be ignored. The aircraft had to remain at cruise altitude to transit the distance involved as fuel consumption would be too great at low altitudes. If they did experience an emergency and lost navigational ability over time, they still could have used the wet compass to determine that they were headed on a southerly course for hours.
The CVR only records radio, interphone and cockpit conversation. It provides context to data recorded on the FDR which holds 30 hours or so of a minimum of 88 flight parameters. Either or both would likely answer the majority of investigators questions.
Google's first attempt at a holodeck?
Now I see why you always mod me down; you're an Air Force guy who hates pilots...
If by that you mean you would have preferred a single payer approach, I would agree. This was a result of compromise (a concept not well understood by House Republicans, BTW) due to the exhaustive lobbying efforts of the insurance industry, and is a prime example of the need to remove money from politics.
During the Regan expansion, I chose to sign a contract with the Navy. My path did not involve any contribution on their part towards my college education; AOCS is not a scholarship program, and like a fool, I decline to participate in the GI Bill.
I truly did it because I thought it would be exciting (it was, mostly), but we were not (formally) at war with anyone until Desert Shield/Storm came along. As an added bonus, I learned to fly and got to play with really fascinating machinery- "something in return". I would concur that my motivation was indeed selfish from a strict interpretation, but not exclusively so. And most of my peers came from the same frame of mind. Despite a minority that saw it as a path to the airlines, most of us "mean(t) well and desire(d) nothing in return" save the pay and adventure. I would conclude the percentage might not be that small, even today. OTOH, I would strongly encourage my son to choose any branch other than Army or Marine Corps as the chance of getting fired upon is much greater than in the others.
BTW, James Duane's video does not argue the merits of the 5th Amendment. It merely argues that one should exercise this right to the maximum extent possible.
With judgment and experience, a pilot can know whether a climb is better than a descent, what route is best to avoid, if taking extra fuel is more harmful than helpful, understands winds aloft, tropopause, and orographic phenomenon and their effect on turbulence, and a myriad of other vital information.
Most importantly, incidents like AF447 would be more likely and recovering from that type of upset would be impossible by remote pilot.
Is there a structural problem with computer-aided pilot's ability to fly visual approaches?
Not sure of the specifics of this incident (VMC or IMC), but there's no "structural problem" with automation and visual approaches. It is more likely simply an issue of training- about limits of automation and flying a visual flight path.
The automation can be used as a aid during a visual approach, but one must be familiar with how to set up the FMGC/FMC. Training costs money. Sim time is a limited and costly resource and managers are always looking to save a buck. Safety and profit are often opposing metrics.
Read my other posts, no need to repeat my self.
the critical information relating to the flight situation of the aircraft was being withheld by the "smart" cockpit
The pilots were challenged by degraded systems: no air data meant they had no information about airspeed, vertical speed or altitude. It was attitude only during night IMC. No information was "withheld", per say, some simply wasn't available to them. They were all trained to standards, including stalls, and alternate law. Alternate law means that most protections are lost: pitch and roll limits, overspeed and stall prevention- you cannot stall newer Airbus in normal law, it won't let you. The aircraft still "flies" the same way. Boeing's cockpits are smart too, but are most definatley not immune to failures and connected yokes is not Here's a summary of Airbus flight control laws: http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm
If the former is true, what airline should I be flying on?
Like picking a surgeon or hospital, pick an airline that has quality training and experienced pilots. I would suspect that AirFrance has revisited their stall training for the better. Low pilot pay usually indicates low experience and poor training. High paid executives is a meaningless metric.
...the lack of any angle of attack gauge, a stall warning that does not sound when the airplane is so stalled as to be falling from the sky, and the lack of something making an enormous deal about the switch from normal law to alternative law flight mode.
Boeing doesn't present AOA either- it is not deemed relevant anymore with advanced flight display systems. Stall warnings (derived from AOA) are considered relevant and they did receive stall warnings: "At around 2 h 11 min 42, the Captain re-entered the cockpit. During the following seconds, all of the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped, after having sounded continuously for 54 seconds." As for alternate law, I suspect your view of it is overly complicated. Direct law, however, is much like flying a paper airplane. The pilots will always be advised of what flight law the aircraft is operating in. Nonetheless, to get into that state requires multiple failures of redundant systems. With out any electrical power, the airplane cannot be flown- battery only is a greater emergency than fire.
Regarding the dual sticks with a dual input light, the key problem is this: when would averaging the joystick inputs actually be desirable?
Never. Its meant to be one stick at a time- just as pilots are trained on yokes. If the other pilot is fighting me on a yoke, I am the aural warning: 'I have the controls". In an Airbus the computer is the warning. We still must communicate on either plane.
Do both pilots frequently fly at the same time and average it out?
Never intentionally. That's why the system alerts them aurally and with a red warning light which can't be canceled and won't go away until the dual input is resolved. Few th
If a pilot is panicking to the point that he is flying wrong, he will be hitting the lockout button because he will think he is right.
Look, I'm not arguing that pilots, humans, aren't capable of panicking and melting like butter. But the profession is not meant to resemble the movie Airplane. Nothing stops the scenario you describe from occurring in a Boeing with the yokes fixed to one another, with both pilots overcome like knuckleheads, pulling in opposite directions. This is why you want well trained and experienced pilots at the helm. Again its not a flaw, its a philosophical choice. Either way, the humans need to be trained to operate the machine.
Look, I know that pilots in the U.S. are really paid peanuts and probably just want to unwind and don't care about anything when they are not flying.
True dat. Yet here I am on /. talking aviation stuff on a day off.
Aircraft often earn nicknames. B777's are known as Bigfoot for the main gear (the aft two wheels on the truck pivot during turns). B787 has become known as "Sparky"- you can guess why.
Aircraft design is a collaborative effort that includes pilots among many others, not just engineers. Not sure what your point is. If you're suggesting that they were overwhelmed by warnings and such, I would concur. That is the point of training and systems knowledge. All ECAMs are prioritized to allow the pilots to deal with the most pressing emergency (as a user, I think it fails from being needlessly complicated and unintuitive). This notwithstanding the fact that one must "fly the airplane first" at all times. The parent's point that Airbus have design flaws because the sticks are independent, is as I said, incorrect. He could say he he has issues with design philosophy, but its not a flaw to have independent sticks, and no machine yet can make judgments on what info the pilots need about systems failures. Perhaps you are advocating aircraft have a neural connection to the pilot's brain- sadly that is only science fiction as yet.
Certainly this would have been the only alarm they were hearing or blinking light they were seeing, you know in a stalling aircraft
Yes I do know. I think I'm qualified to make the argument that this is not a "flaw", or make observations on the AF mishap. I have over 7700 hours on Airbus and over 14000 total flight time as a commercial pilot, including training in stall recovery in large swept wing aircraft, and I've heard this argument made many times.
BTW, in addition to inop GS, they also did not have any visual approach path indicators as the PAPI is out of service: ILS RWY 28R LOCALIZER/DME U/S RWY 28L ILS LLZ/DME U/S RWY 10L/28R CLSD RWY 10R/28L CLSD RWY 28L PAPI U/S
The communication problem was largely caused by an major Airbus design flaw: the sticks between the left and right seats aren't linked. In other planes, the pilot would have known the copilot had the stick pulled back because the action would make his own stick move back as well. On AF447, the pilot saw nothing other than the copilot's hand on the stick and assumed he was doing the right thing, and in the understandable confusion as they struggled to gain control of the plane the copilot never verbally corrected the misconception.
Incorrect, there is no design flaw. As designed, if both pilots make a flight control input simultaneously, they will receive an aural warning: "Dual Input". They will know about it and either pilot can take priority over the other by pushing a button on the stick which will lock out the other.