dutchroll

Radio news here (I'm just the other side of Sydney and we've been getting totally hammered by this weather) said the crash occurred just before 8pm last night. Pilot had 40 years experience. 40 years. 8pm. Atrocious weather. Sorry, but I'm speechless.

It's crazy, nutty weather across the entire Sydney region to be flying a small VFR plane in. End of story. This is the weather during which you camp out with the guys in the hangar over beers and cricket. Or if you're stuck with your plane away from home, you book an extra night or two in the pub, or get a car ride back home and come back to pick up your plane another day.

Although my company hasn't hired a pilot for 6 years now, I can assure you that when they were hiring flat out, there were a lot of raised eyebrows among us when looking at who they accepted or rejected. Airline pilot recruitment can be a strange process, and very dependent on who is running the recruitment section at the time.

Our "iconic Australian airline" has relaxed their attitude to non-company flying in the last few years. You used to require written permission from a senior manager and there were a whole list of caveats. Common sense finally prevailed (which in my company means a manager must've been struck unconscious by lightning one evening and then had an epiphany) and formal permission is no longer required. The pilot is required to monitor their own flight time compliance (company flown hours are already screened for this, so you just have to make sure your private hours don't push you over the limits), and is supposed to submit a monthly hours report to the company for the purpose of entering on the hours database. Quite a number of my colleagues have their own aircraft or fly with aero clubs etc. You won't get any argument from me there. Unfortunately airlines won't pay for that sort of additional training.

Sending our pollies to war would be a great idea. I suspect they'd either bore the enemy into surrendering, or perhaps after explaining their decisions and policies, the enemy may even commit suicide en masse, not wanting to live on the planet anymore. Nothing used to frustrate me more when I was in the military than gung-ho politicians talking big and tough about to send us to some far-flung craphole in some corner of the Earth, but who had clearly never even contemplated doing military service themselves.

Migrant families? Where I live in NSW the ones pumping out endless kids needing welfare money are exclusively white home-grown, born and bred aussies. In fact only a few weeks ago I had to help a migrant Asian family who run a local fish & chip shop when a bunch of our proud home grown aussie white kids (not a day older than 12 or 13) came in and tried to steal stuff out of their drink fridge. They are repeat offenders. I think we should clean up our own backyard before we throw stones at the migrant families.

Company flight plans arrive with the pre-determined absolute minimum amount of fuel ordered, however Australian CARs give the PIC absolute authority to load whatever fuel he feels he needs. Indeed it's a criminal offence for a PIC to not load sufficient fuel for the flight. While being aware of the fact that the company has to make money for us to survive, most guys I know have no qualms whatsoever about loading extra fuel for weather issues over and above the minimum legal requirements. Occasionally the company gets their knickers in a knot over it, but most of the time it's suggested to them that they have another read of the regs.

....which is why I often raise my eyebrows when Governments contract private security firms in combat zones! Not to say they're all like that. I know one which is doing excellent and extremely important work in Afghanistan, but it's a highly specialised area they're working in.

In my company at least, yes to an extent. However even doing 4 x 4 hour simulator checks every year, the CASA licence assessment matrix is so huge that it's hard to fit a lot of that type of skills training in. But yes, they do try. The level of "stick and rudder" proficiency is quite affected by aircraft type and route structure. On the ultra-longhaul routes it's worst. Your whole day is one takeoff, a 14 hour flight in an approximately straight line, and one landing. Maybe a day or 2 later, the other pilot gets his one takeoff and landing on the return sector. With rest requirements and normal hours limitations, you simply can't really fit a lot of that type of flying into a year and expect lots of takeoffs, landings, and hand flying. If you're on shorthaul routes and getting lots of takeoffs and landings (sometimes 3 or 4 per day) those flying skills are a lot more practised. However certainly in the Air France case, poor training leading to a lack of understanding of the aircraft systems, degraded modes of operation, and a few other things all led to the crash. I agree with FH that flying a big jet at high altitude in the cruise is not that easy. Flying it by hand in that scenario is a total waste of time, in my opinion. There is minimal training or skill benefit. The flight crew don't plan the route. The airline does that. The flight crew then have to deal with the weather that the airline planned the flight through. The exceptions are things like cyclones or volcanic eruptions. They will plan around those at least!

I'm ex-military (16 years service) and a current union member. Not all unions or union members are the same. By the way, some private security contractors employed by the US in Iraq have been an absolute nightmare - and corrupt too. Blackwater immediately springs to mind. Threatening to murder a State Department investigator. Over-billing Government Departments. Falsifying contractual data. Getting drunk on duty. The list goes on. Four of their employees were recently found guilty of murder, manslaughter and firearms offences in a Federal trial. They are very lucky there weren't more people on more charges. An unpleasant company full of very unpleasant people.

Angus is a worthy recipient. I used to actually work for him and he was very good to me and good to work for, though you certainly didn't want to cross him. Prince Phillip though? Was Abbott just blind drunk when he made that unilateral decision?

.....and speaking of the price of eggs, the latest info that the stall warning could be heard in the CVR background "for quite some time" (according to one of the investigators) indicates to me that they will find similarities with AF447, as predicted. I'll be really interested to eventually read the exchange between the two pilots and see what sort of cross-cockpit communications were going on.

Yeah I wasn't going to respond. I thought what I wrote and meant was clear enough, and I've spent weeks trying to convince bogan friends of mine that not all Muslims are Islamic extremists using my time spent in Asia over the last 30 years as an example. But I don't feel the need to send my lifetime CV to Bex or anyone else.

Good to know. I had an encounter with a tower controller at Bankstown the other day after doing a steep climbout, which is normal for my plane, who clearly forgot to take his happy pills that morning (I responded with my normal policy of "politely apologise, comply, and save the fight for another day"). I need to store those references away.

No I don't have a clue bex. Never been there in my life. Sheesh. Yes it was. And my comment still stands. The authority culture issues have been well documented in airline flight safety circles, however you should not read into my comment more than exactly what I wrote. Some, like Korean Air, have worked very hard on addressing that culture. I was simply stating that I acknowledge Asian pilot training has come a long way (I actually wrote those words above, if you'd like to re-read them), but there are still cockpit gradient culture issues. Then I made it clear that I didn't know whether or not this was a factor. That's all. Stop trying to read some ulterior overtones into it. There are a number of Asian airlines I would be happy to travel on, and friends of mine ask me that question (do you think "airline x" is safe?) all the time.

Well, it's probably not unreasonable for me to generalise about the Airbus from my position. We discussed AF447 quite extensively during training with instructors who had many thousands of hours Airbus time. Also I agree that Asian pilot training has come a long way, however the Asian culture of avoiding criticism or contradiction of authority figures has very deep roots way beyond just airline pilots and leads to steep cockpit gradients. This has been a factor in previous Asian airline accidents. Whether it's relevant to this one, I don't know.

Whichever pilot last pressed the button and keeps it pressed will have exclusive command. If a pilot releases the button (except where they've kept it pressed for >40 sec), they essentially release the command authority of that sidestick and the system reverts to normal operation.

That is correct - they are pure fly-by-wire and are not connected to each other. This creates an interesting training and monitoring conundrum, as you can't really see what the other guy is actually doing with his sidestick. The sidestick inputs in an Airbus are algebraically added by the flight control computer. So, Captain pulls full back, F/O pushes full forward, plane does nothing. The plane squawks a "DUAL INPUT" voice alert at you. There's a red thumb button on each sidestick which functions as the autopilot disconnect. However it also functions as a sidestick takeover button. If you press it and hold it, for as long as you hold it, your sidestick takes over priority from the other guy. A red arrow illuminates on the glareshield in front of the guy losing authority, a green light illuminates in front of the guy gaining authority, and the plane squawks a "PRIORITY LEFT/RIGHT" voice alert. Push and hold the same button for 40 seconds and the other guy's sidestick is locked out. A momentary press on either button will unlock it and revert the system to normal (this design aspect is for the case of an unconscious pilot who flops over on the stick).

Yeah they do, but the systems have been found wanting under extreme conditions. I don't know why. Boeing seem to manage just fine. One issue is that the automatic flight envelope protection software uses the data from these systems. So for example, the low speed/stall protection system is wonderful when everything is working ok. Airbus procedure for a GPWS "pull up" warning is to pull full backstick and hold it there until clear of terrain, whereupon the aircraft will climb with the flight control system holding absolute max angle of attack (alpha-max) and sitting right on top of the low speed buffet until you command a pitch down. However if the AoA vanes are frozen, it can think you are approaching the stall and automatically lowers the nose to maintain what it thinks is alpha-max. It'll do this and you can pull back on the stick as hard as you like, with no effect! To get out of it, you have to force the plane into "Alternate Law", and the only way to do this is to turn off 2 out of your 3 air data computers. Then it'll revert to Alternate Law, it loses the flight envelope protection systems, and hey presto you can pull back on the stick and recover from the dive it has put you in! This has happened at least twice that I know of. The flip side of this (and what happened to AF 447) is reversion to Alternate Law with no-one noticing, and losing the stall protection while thinking you still have it. They had conflicting airspeed indications due to icing, and the aircraft reverted to Alternate Law as it can do. Then they stalled it but the guy flying thought it was in Normal Law and held in full backstick - all the way to hitting the water - wondering why it wasn't climbing. I think if this accident turns out to have some of these elements, Airbus are going to be in strife. They have outsmarted themselves with their flight control systems and have confused pilots (especially when faced with other conflicting flight path info) in the process.

I'm betting there won't be a major structural failure, but I reckon stalling and failing to recover is highly likely. Icing probably involved too. The Airbus aircraft can have big problems if air data sensors (pitot, static, or AoA) get iced up.

Comments on Tuesday from the Indonesian Transport Minister to their Parliament: "I think it is rare even for a fighter jet to be able to climb 6000 feet (1800 metres) per minute," he said. Utter bollocks. Any fighter jet can easily climb at rates far greater than 6000 ft/min. Even the B767 would do 6000 ft/min after takeoff at normal domestic flight takeoff weights until it got well into the 20's. "For a commercial flight, climbing around 1000 to 2000 (feet, 305 to 610 metres) is maybe already considered extraordinary, because it is not meant to climb that fast." Absolute nonsense. At medium weights or less, 1000 ft/min would be what you would expect, even at cruise altitudes in the mid 30's. Even at maximum takeoff weight, it will exceed this climb rate until getting close to its cruise altitude when the ROC will drop below that (for an Airbus - a Boeing will comfortably exceed 1000 ft/min climb pretty much all the way). This is why politicians should not comment on aviation accidents. The investigators will already have played the CVR recording and plugged the flight data into their computer simulators. They will already have a pretty good idea of what happened, but of course they need to be very careful before making public statements. I'd suggest the investigation sounds like it will discover pretty much what we thought it would (I personally think it will be a repeat of the AF447 accident, or at least with a number of similarities).

We used to fly close form on Caribous every now and again. The rejoin wasn't that hard if, as you say, you did it correctly. Mind you it was difficult to get much overtake on lead in a Caribou! :)

http://www.smh.com.au/world/airasia-flight--qz8501-blackbox-from-plane-retrieved-20150112-12mdpo.html The flight data recorder has been recovered, and the CVR has been located but not yet retrieved. Looks like people might have their answers soon enough.

The thrust-pitch coupling of underslung (i.e. wing pod mounted) engines on commercial jets has been known about for a long, long, long time. On the B767 the standard nose high + low airspeed jet upset recovery was to reduce thrust (which seems counter-intuitive at first) for that very reason. Piling on the thrust could, and generally does, prevent timely reduction of the high nose attitude at low airspeed where elevator and stabiliser effectiveness is reduced. Interestingly Airbus doesn't publish an upset recovery procedure in their FCOM, presumably due to the fact that the aircraft has attitude and speed protections built into the fly-by-wire system. However these protections (well most of them) only function in Normal Law, not the backup flight control laws which you can find yourself operating in with certain other malfunctions. One of these situations is invalid air data due to icing, whereupon the aircraft can revert to Alternate Law in the flight control system and lose the attitude and speed protections. But this is, or should be, common knowledge across any Airbus fleet. Not only that, there are a number of aural and particularly visual cues on the EFIS which make it obvious that this has happened. And the stall warning system still functions normally no matter what control law you're in (assuming AoA data is valid of course). We fly the A330 on routes through that airspace all the time. ITCZ weather is very fickle although that storm system at the time was particularly large. Several factors lead to decisions 99% of the time to go around, not over it: 1) The air routes there are pretty busy. Altitude blockages are quite common across Indonesia. 2) Big CBs can often have tops at or above typical cruise altitudes for commercial jets (typically FL350-FL410). 3) Although you can get a rough idea where the tops might be on radar by manually using the radar tilt, it's not precise. The more modern radars are supposed to vary the tilt automatically and only display threatening weather while not displaying stuff you'll comfortably pass over the top off. That's the theory. They don't always do this perfectly though. If ATC is busy or comms are bad and there's an excessive delay in getting the clearance, we start deviating anyway while we're waiting for the clearance. The risk of going into or very close to a CB cell exceeds the risk of deviating without a clearance, bearing in mind that you're cruising already separated from other traffic at semi-circular altitudes, and you have TCAS. To try to avoid this happening we ask ATC for weather deviations quite early, usually 80nm or more (about 10 minutes or more) before the weather. However if you're in the dark of night and it pops up on the radar at the last minute, well you just do what you can, even if that means turning and deviating while you're trying to get onto ATC. Airbus Cruise altitudes: The Airbus FMGEC (it's abbreviation for the flight management system) computes two altitudes and displays them on a particular page. The "optimum" altitude is best fuel economy taking into account aircraft performance and the loaded high altitude winds. This is where the aircraft will normally be planned to cruise, all other things being equal. Next to it the "recommended max" altitude is displayed, and is purely aircraft performance based. It gives the highest altitude you can climb to and still have a 0.3G buffet margin while maintaining level flight at max cruise thrust (which is less than max climb or max continuous thrust). We don't go there unless it's really smooth, and only then if we really feel we have to. When you're deviating around weather and associated turbulence you absolutely don't want to climb an Airbus to "recommended max". It's really not a nice (or safe) place to be, sandwiched between the high speed (mach) and low speed (stall) buffet margins on your airspeed display! You may have heard this referred to as "coffin corner". This is not to say that we would't climb if we could. Climbing before you get to the weather is often desirable to make it easier to go around, or increase the chance you'll get over the top, but only if you can get a clearance to do so, and only if you have a good enough margin to your "recommended max" altitude. I'm a little bit reluctant to trust the Indonesian radar data and I think it's unwise to be already forming conclusions from it. Having said that, and as much as I dislike Quadrant, I tend to agree with the author's conclusion of the likely outcome of the investigation linked above. Airbus + bad weather + bad crew training and response = disaster.

Not that RA aircraft do a lot of formation stuff, but it was suggested to me that I should post this example from the 70s of how not to fly a formation rejoin. 1. You rejoin along a line slightly below the lead, not at the same altitude. That is, the lead aircraft should gradually move slightly vertically upwards above a fixed spot in the window as you get closer. If things turn pear-shaped, this allows the wingman to fly "through" the lead aircraft even if neither aircraft take avoiding action (in which case the lead will always pull up, and the rejoining aircraft will always push down). 2. You achieve only a moderate overtake speed during the rejoin process, then stabilise the rejoin position slightly loose, still maintaining an altitude slightly below the lead aircraft. 3. You move "up" (co-altitude). 4. You move "in" (the correct close formation position, nice and gently). "Altitude, line, speed" is the general "patter". It takes a lot of conservative practice before you can achieve a crisp, efficient formation rejoin.