I agree, however, the pilot should be trained to understand the function of electronic assist as CCIP points out. In Skully's case, allowing his physical input work with the electronic input to safely land the craft. Knowing whether to pull the plug on the electronics or work in unison.

The idea of "Stall Warning" indicated by the computer, and "Nose Up" inputs by the pilot go contradictory to me. Isn't there a video of a Panther landing on a carrier when he gets a stall warning, pitches up, rolls over, and smashes into the deck nose first?

I'm no pilot, but just playing flight sims you learn quickly how (and how not) to recover from a stall. It seems incredible to me that any driver capable of piloting an Airbus from one continent to another could possible forget something so basic. And it is not as though he didn't have enough altitude to have time to correct. The data are there, I know, but it's just so... odd that I'm having a tough time believing that's there's nothing else to it.

Gremlins, perhaps.

I remember reading a NTSB report in Aviation Week of a very similar incident.
It was an intercontinental flight B707? about 40 years ago.

The pitot tubes froze and gave the pilot higher air speed readings than he really had, he reduced power and increased angle of attack to bring down the air speed. Of course the plane stalled but he had enough altitude to recover and save the plane. He lost about 25,000 of the 30,000+ feet he had.
At the lower altitude the tubes unfroze giving a good air speed.
NTSB criticized the pilot for not using other interments to check the believability of his air speed as I remember.

Not so many computer aids back in those days may have worked in his favor?

Magic

Regardless of the technology available in a given aircraft it is the pilots responsibility to know when his instruments may be giving him incorrect data they got confused but
that can happen even to the most skilled pilot or aircrew.I think they got over whelmed trying to correct the situation they where in and failed to realize the pitot tubes had frozen.

One reason why studying each aircraft disaster is so important. There was an DC10 crash American Airlines Flight 191 back in the 70s where one of the engine nacelles fell off during take off and as a result of several things failing the crew was unable to know that because of the damage suffered the normal procedure for the situation they where in was wrong and they crashed.Based on the data that they had the pilots followed the correct procedure because they did not know that the shaker stick was not going to work this wiki article tells it better: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America...nes_Flight_191

more on 191: http://aviation-safety.net/database/...?id=19790525-2

Here it seems is the clue why pilots might be pulling on the stick.
The computer disregards info when speed is below valid value shutting down all stall warnings.
It looks like the pilots passed threshold point for the on-board systems and the computer confused them.
The computer warning caused the pilots to keep the plane in stall situation.
Possibly a situation that software designers thought could never happen?

From what I've read so far, it's more like they acted incorrectly after realizing they had a problem with ice blocking the pitot tube. Here's a summary from a member over at airdisaster.com:


Quote:
"Originally Posted by Myndee
Also, could someone kindly post a summary of what happened in laymens terms for those of us who do not 100% understand all of the lingo. Thanks.


- The pitot tubes were blocked or otherwise rendered ineffective.
- That triggered an unreliable speed event.
- The crew correctly identified the unreliable speed event and the fact that the autopilot and autothrottle had disconnected.
- A pilot took manual control of the plane.
- He should have applied the memory items for unreliable speed: Point the nose 5º above the horizon and set the throttles to climb thrust.
- Instead, he didn't set climb thrust and pointed the nose more than 10º above the horizon.
- The plane climbed, lost speed, and stalled.
- The pilot never recovered from the stall because he didn't apply the correct control inputs, as you know by now, so the plane kept falling stalled for 38,000ft and three minutes.

I think that that very much summarizes it. Gabriel"



"Originally Posted by Harding
What is this "memory items"? At first i thought it was a emergency checklist of some kind - but i changed my mind after reading the report. Seems like they actually didnt know they where in an emergency for quite a while?"


"No. They correctly noticed the unreliable speed at once.

There is a two-fold procedure for an unreliable speed event:

1- Fly the plane at a given initial pitch and thrust that ensures that the plane remains safe. This are the memory items because you have to know them by heart. There's no time to go grab the book and look up for the correct procedure.
2- Now, with the plane stabilized as said above, one pilot keep flying the plane according to these two memoty item values, and the other calmly grabs the book, looks up for unreliable speed, and with a few parameters (aircraft weight, altitude and temp) look up in a table for fine tunned values of pitch and thrust that not only will ensure safety but also will keep the altitude. Gabriel"



"The pilots were obviously not well trained for this. They failed to perform the two basic memory items. I think they might also have ignored the stall warnings because they knew the airspeed was erroneously low and considered this the cause of false stall warnings. However, the QRH specifies that pilots are to RESPECT STALL WARNINGS and to ignore any ECAM message warning them of RISK OF UNDUE STALL WARNING.

I'm also wondering if the altimeters and VSI could have been affected. The FPV was lost during the sequence. The FDR has them at 40° AoA and -10,000 ft/min V/S, but only 15° pitch with 100% N1 thrust. How is that possible? Did they reduce thrust at FL380 to remain in the envelope and let it fall, and then firewall it as they were falling out? This is not explained in the briefing. Or is it possible that the pitch indications were erroneous, both on the PFD and on the FDR? And why did they subsequently bring thrust back to IDLE in a developed stall, when airspeed was obviously needed? Did the PF do this or the Capt?

The best I can make of this is that thrust lock, a bit of load factor and pitch input caused an initial stall warning and an excessive rate of climb. They momentarily recovered by reducing pitch but the thrust setting remained too low and the pitch trim raised the AoA once again. With the second stall warning they initially applied TOGA thrust and pitch in excess of 10° This resulted in an excessive rate of climb until they reached their maximum FL380. Then it would seem that to reduce the V/S, they reduced thrust too aggressively while not reducing pitch and stalled, and then returned thrust to TOGA after the stall had developed, too late to prevent it, and then reduced again to IDLE fearing overspeed at at high rate of descent (apparently unaware of their pitch or AoA). That's the best I can make of it.

I am not surprised to hear that the pilots did not do the memory items correctly. That seems to be what killed them. Obviously, there was an industrywide training deficiency on this issue, and perhaps a deficient set of procedures issued by Airbus. The threat was obviously underrated, since ice-related pitot failure is not supposed to be happening at FL350, based on conventional wisdom at the time, and doesn't seem to occur outside the ITCZ. But it had been happening and both Airbus and the operators were aware that a threat existed. Neither seem to have reacted properly with training and procedures.

But I can't accept that such an experienced crew would not be well versed on general stall avoidance and recovery procedure either. They must have been deprived of vital positional awareness beyond airspeed data to get into the mess described in the report.

Or perhaps we still have a lot more to learn about human factors. I hope we will see the FDR plots and get a CVR translation soon. There are too many new questions in my head. Evan"

I remember that accident. It pretty much destroyed the future sales of the DC-10. That heart-stopping photograph on the front page of every newspaper in particular. We take pictures and video of disasters for granted nowadays, but having the presence of mind to grab your camera and snap off a quick picture then was rare.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...a191_ohare.jpg

DC-10's were great airplanes with a bad rap. I bet if you look at the accident rate per number of flight hours, they would probably be about average.

Here's one quick link that might back that up:

http://www.boeing.com/news/techissues/pdf/statsum.pdf

A quick glance at page 21 may show that.

:)