Editorials

DON’T BLAME THE AEROPLANE

16/06/09 16:54 Filed in: Air Safety | Airbus
Air France 447 Cockpit Recording

 The French investigators have released the Air France A330 Voice Recording which shows that the pilots stalled the aeroplane and failed to recover from the stall.

Read the sickening transcript HERE

There has been a great deal of speculation as to why they couldn’t fly the aeroplane, and which components performed well. Here is my response to one speculator:
"I am an Airbus Pilot, have been since leaving the Boeing 727 in 1997. Flown A320, A321, A330, A4340 &, for nearly three years, the A380.

 Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: at FL350 they flew into a 51,000 feet high Cb.

(Cb stands for Cumulo-Nimbus —thunderstorm— cloud).

The increased freezing-level probably put them into clear icing immediately with updrafts (and downdrafts) akin to hitting a brick wall.

 No Pilot, no sim, can replicate what that’d be like. And we all hope we could have played the cards better than the people concerned. It’s in our nature. But we’d be kidding ourselves.

 I don’t fly into thunderstorms because I doubt they are survivable. Nor has anyone, to my knowledge, in the last 20 years.

With power of 10-100 nuclear blasts —and 95% of the lightning contained in the Cb— most of it mid-level, and twisting updrafts and downdrafts competing with each other amidst ice blocks as large as footballs … it’s an environment not conducive to safe flight."

The question that has to be answered is: despite being banned by all Ops Manuals, what were these guys doing flying in that Cb?

The answer is something that, for all of us in the future, we can control.

 The A380 now has ‘Auto TCAS’ —it alerts you that the autopilot will perform the manoeuvre. You take over if it doesn’t, but you never have to.

 Why doesn't Airbus develop ‘Auto Cb Avoidance’?
It could alert you to the fact that, if you get too close to a red active cell, it will divert upwind when it gets to a pre-determined distance. No matter if your radar is turned-down or off, or if you’re taking controlled-rest in the seat.

It would then fly around the active radar return, giving a 20NM margin and regain the flight plan track afterwards.
The pilot’s bible, Handling The Big Jets, tells us,

“When faced with stalling a big jet or doing something else … consider the latter”.

In the A330s case, ‘something else’ would not be flying into a Cb in the first place.’

[Go HERE and see the hail damage to an EasyJet Boeing 737 in 2003 - and they only flew close to a Cb cell, not in it.]




June 15th., 2009

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