It went into manual automatically when the pitot tubes became clogged.
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What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447
- Thread starter planar1280
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It went into manual automatically when the pitot tubes became clogged.
Insane Metal
Member
Holy crap, that was frightening. =(
andthebeatgoeson
Junior Member
Unless I'm reading the times incorrectly, luckily it was 2am.
OpinionatedCyborg
Member
I can't speak to this case specifically, but there are situations like graveyard spirals where the pilot's senses betray him into thinking he needs to correct the plane's movement when in fact doing so will only hasten the plane's spiral to earth. Flying at night and losing your instruments is pretty shitty.
This case... I dunno. You would think a 40 degree angle while dramatically losing altitude would be perceptible...
planar1280
Banned
it will be released eventually
Roude Leiw
Member
i tried this once. i could see that we were stalling but i was not able to feel anything. our pilot told us though that we were losing height.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFcW5-1NP60
Yeah, given that at one point they all have a discussion on whether they're going up or down, I'm guessing that the overall conditions (and with turbulence to boot) made it extraordinarily disorienting.
To those going on about the captain going off for a nap... That's standard procedure. Flight crews can only work a certain number of hours; on long-haul flights, they take turns to take breaks and go for naps. It's not like he was being criminally negligent. If anything, the negligence comes from choosing not to fly around the storm, but again, this is fairly normal; planes fly through storms more often than you think, mainly because they usually fly over the worst of it. For better or for worse, the captain saw the weather, saw the flight path, and decided it was nothing to worry about, so why worry about leaving the plane in the hands of his crew while he takes his mandated rest period?
It's amazing what pressure can do to you and how it can affect your thinking. This will sound like a ridiculous example, but... Ever seen the shitty game show The Weakest Link? That has some of the easiest damn questions for any quiz show, but throw a spotlight on a normal person, give them 5 seconds to answer, and suddenly they can't answer even the simplest question. Now imagine the pressure of having hundreds of lives depending on you while flying through conditions you've likely never seen before...
Slurpy2k20
Member
Ridiculous fucking analogy. Pilot training is supposed to kick-in PRECISELY when they're under pressure. Thats when it actually matters. If you can't operate and think clearly under intensely high pressure, then you should not have graduated from flight school and be a fucking pilot where hundreds of lives depend on you everyday. Its pretty disturbing you're normalizing, rationalizing, and excusing lapses in judgement under high pressure when it comes to piloting planes, as if pilots shouldn't be able to function as expected with the pressure of 'hundreds of lives depending on you'.
Chittagong
Gold Member
planes have GPS afaik, but since it only measures ground speed, it's pretty irrelevant as the airspeed is the critical measure. Let's take an actual example.
I was flying a 747 from LA to LHR this week in a massive 200km/h tailwind with a ground speed of 1100km/h. The theoretical max air speed of 747 is 1110 km/h, so flying in that speed would be disastrous. With GPS this would have led the crew to reduce speed to 900km/h, which given the tailwind would have been actually 700km/h, which would stall the plane.
Long story short - GPS ignores wind, which can vary plane speed so much it can result into crash if ignored.
Indeed, which is why pitot-static systems are used.
This is my response from earlier:
..but I have been thinking about it on and off throughout the day. My education is in Industrial Engineering which gets into human factors and warning signals. Based on the fact the stall was never mentioned (again I haven't read the whole transcript) I have to think the warning signal was not effective.
I had professors that worked on warning signals for the Air Force and they would think their signals were great. They would put a pilot in the air and put them in the situation to set off some signals and the pilot would come down saying they couldn't concentrate because too many signals or types of signals (light, voice, touch, etc) going off at once. One example they used was a verbal warning of being low on fuel was basically useless, regardless of how important it is to flight. The best they found in that test was to use the sound of sucking an almost empty cup of liquid with a straw. The pilots easily recognized what it was and what it meant. Perhaps the stall warning signal should be reviewed.
UnluckyKate
Member
Yeah, it was also night with no visual clue outside to help the pilot see the pitching or even the ground
wow.
made me aware of the show mayday, though. which had me look up the landing in the hudson from almost three years ago. i never really knew how miraculous that was.
This makes me really angry.
Very chilling read. I dont feel like I want to read the about rest of the accidents right now, especially as Im planning on booking plane tickets for America next month.
Speaking of turbulence stories the worst I experienced was on a flight from Venice to Dublin a few years ago. We had just reached the Dublin coast when the plane hit bad weather (It's Ireland so was to be expected!). The plane was shook from side to side, and free falled several times rollercoaster style. At one time I though the plane would flip over we went that horizontal. It didn't last too long, maybe 5 or 10 mins max but it felt like a lifetime. We landed and everyone cheered and clapped.
Add to that the fact the South African rugby team were on the same flight and you can imagine how small and powerless I felt.
Speaking of turbulence stories the worst I experienced was on a flight from Venice to Dublin a few years ago. We had just reached the Dublin coast when the plane hit bad weather (It's Ireland so was to be expected!). The plane was shook from side to side, and free falled several times rollercoaster style. At one time I though the plane would flip over we went that horizontal. It didn't last too long, maybe 5 or 10 mins max but it felt like a lifetime. We landed and everyone cheered and clapped.
Add to that the fact the South African rugby team were on the same flight and you can imagine how small and powerless I felt.
This reminds me of a medical case: Several radiotherapy patients suffered a radiation overexposure because the French lab technicians could not read and understand the English operator's manual and software and in consequence operated the machine incorrectly.
Source:
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/2004FRA1.html
https://rpop.iaea.org/RPOP/RPoP/Content/ArchivedNews/3_SevereRadiotherapyAccident23patients.htm
http://rpop.iaea.org/RPOP/RPoP/Cont.../Lectures/AccPr_2.10_Accident_update1_WEB.ppt
I have been intrigued by the strong reluctance to learn English by most French people I know. I'm still not sure what the reason for this is.
shanshan310
Member
Yeah, those Aircraft crash investigation shows are pretty interesting. If anyone has time, go take a look.
ZedIndyLil
Member
Why am I reading this thread. Fear of (as opposed to annoyance with) flying is fundamentally irrational, but I have it in spades. Reading this stuff is compulsive, like picking at a scab or something. Makes me want to take a boat back to the US instead of boarding my Air France plane next week.
The 2nd to last paragraph is very reassuring, though, in that, as horrific the facts of this crash are, knowledge of those facts make it less likely that such a freaky confluence of errors will ever happen again.
The 2nd to last paragraph is very reassuring, though, in that, as horrific the facts of this crash are, knowledge of those facts make it less likely that such a freaky confluence of errors will ever happen again.
I find it hard to believe that they didn't know that they stalled the plane the whole time while the word "Stall!" was blaring through the cockpit by a voice.
It mentioned in the article that the "stall" warning was said 75 times and they still didn't know.
I understand that it said it was impossible to stall the plane whilst in normal law and that they get taught that, but if you don't have a clue what's going on maybe you should pay attention to the warning sounds.
Would be interesting to know why they didn't react the the stall warning, but i guess you'll never know.
Is it also common practice for Captains to take a nap or some shit?
It mentioned in the article that the "stall" warning was said 75 times and they still didn't know.
I understand that it said it was impossible to stall the plane whilst in normal law and that they get taught that, but if you don't have a clue what's going on maybe you should pay attention to the warning sounds.
Would be interesting to know why they didn't react the the stall warning, but i guess you'll never know.
Is it also common practice for Captains to take a nap or some shit?
Since we are tangentially talking about plane crashes with really crazy stories, didn't catch this earlier so:
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-07-02/..._plane-air-crash-minor-injuries/2?_s=PM:WORLD
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
It's sort of baffling though. Isn't airbus a french company? Or at least headquartered in France? And I understand it's not their first language but you think the airlines would make their pilots know at least the emergency words in english like stall or some other word that is an alert that bad shit is going to happen/is happening.
The example you give seems ridiculous too, are there that many manufacturers that don't have multilanguage instruction manuals? It seems ridiculous that a TV manual would have like 30 languages but something that can give you harmful radiation is only in english.
Dreams-Visions
Member
wut
and to add to "how did you survive that?" stories:
Vesna Vulović (Serbian: Весна Вуловић; born 3 January 1950) is a Serbian former flight attendant. She holds the world record, according to the Guinness Book of Records, for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160 metres (33,330 ft).
The explosion of JAT Flight 367, on which Vulović was a flight attendant, occurred on 26 January 1972, over Srbská Kamenice in Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), and caused it to break apart. The 22-year old was not scheduled to be on that flight; she had been mixed up with another female flight attendant who was also named Vesna.[2]
The official report of the Czechoslovak investigation commission, which was handed over to the ICAO on 7 May 1974, stated that there had been an explosion in the front baggage compartment of the plane. The Czechoslovak secret service (Státní bezpečnost), which was leading the investigation, presented parts of an alarm clock ten days after the crash which they claimed came from a bomb. The report concluded that the plane was torn apart by that bomb.
On the morning of 27 January 1972 an anonymous man called the newspaper Kvällsposten published in Malmö, Sweden, claiming in broken Swedish that he was a Croat and member of a Nationalist group that brought the bomb onto the plane.[citation needed] Apart from this no further evidence was ever found that this was a terrorist attack. Nevertheless, shortly after the phone call the Yugoslav government blamed the Ustae. According to the official report the explosion tore the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 to pieces in mid-air, and Vulović was the only survivor. Ever since it was said that she survived because she had been in the rear part of the plane. However, Vulović states that she was found in the middle section right above the wings.[3] That tallies with what was said by Bruno Henke, the man who saved Vulović's life by rescuing her from the wrecked fuselage on the ground.
Vulović fell approximately 10,160 metres (33,330 ft).[1][2] She suffered a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae (one crushed completely) that left her temporarily paralyzed from the waist down and two broken legs. She was in a coma for 27 days. In an interview, she commented that according to the man who found her, "...I was in the middle part of the plane. I was found with my head down and my colleague on top of me. One part of my body with my leg was in the plane and my head was out of the plane. A catering trolley was pinned against my spine and kept me in the plane. The man who found me, says I was very lucky. He was in the German Army as a medic during World War II. He knew how to treat me at the site of the accident."[4]
Vulović continued working for JAT at a desk job following a full recovery from her injuries. She regained the use of her legs after surgery and continued to fly sporadically. She claims she has no fear of flying, which she attributes to the loss of memory of the crash, and she even enjoys watching movies with plane crashes.[5] She is considered a national heroine throughout the former Yugoslavia.
Vulović was awarded the Guinness Record title by Paul McCartney at a ceremony.[6]
Vulović was eventually dismissed in 1990 for expressing views critical of Yugoslav ruler Slobodan Miloević.[7] She participated in protests against his rule afterwards, up to and including the Bulldozer Revolution that led to his ousting. Many believe that her status as a national heroine prevented the authorities from arresting her despite her open defiance of the Miloević regime.[3] She continues to be vocal in politics in Serbia.[5]
In January 2009 German ARD radio correspondent Peter Hornung-Andersen together with German journalist Tim van Beveren and Czech journalist Pavel Theiner published a report based on newly found documents, mainly from the Czech Civil Aviation Authority and the Czech Republic's National Archive, concluding that it was "extremely probable" that the plane had been shot down by mistake by the Czechoslovak Air Force.[7] They claim that the plane broke up only a few hundred meters above the ground, not the 10,000 metres claimed by the official investigation.[8] This claim was backed by evidence, e.g. secret reports in which several eye witnesses said that they saw Vesna's plane flying below the clouds before it crashed and maps drawn by Czechoslovak investigators showing that the largest parts of the plane were found in an area rather small which would not have been the case if the plane broke apart in 10,000 metres altitude.[9] The Czech Civil Aviation Authority nevertheless issued a statement denying the claim without addressing the evidence.[citation needed] The original statement has given rise to more recent reports.[8] Vulović, despite having no memory of the crash or the flight after boarding,[7] has challenged these new theories, denying the claim that the plane descended to a much lower altitude while attempting a forced landing.[citation needed] A representative of Guinness World Records stated that "it seems that at the time Guinness was duped by this swindle just like the rest of the media."[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_VulovićThe explosion of JAT Flight 367, on which Vulović was a flight attendant, occurred on 26 January 1972, over Srbská Kamenice in Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), and caused it to break apart. The 22-year old was not scheduled to be on that flight; she had been mixed up with another female flight attendant who was also named Vesna.[2]
The official report of the Czechoslovak investigation commission, which was handed over to the ICAO on 7 May 1974, stated that there had been an explosion in the front baggage compartment of the plane. The Czechoslovak secret service (Státní bezpečnost), which was leading the investigation, presented parts of an alarm clock ten days after the crash which they claimed came from a bomb. The report concluded that the plane was torn apart by that bomb.
On the morning of 27 January 1972 an anonymous man called the newspaper Kvällsposten published in Malmö, Sweden, claiming in broken Swedish that he was a Croat and member of a Nationalist group that brought the bomb onto the plane.[citation needed] Apart from this no further evidence was ever found that this was a terrorist attack. Nevertheless, shortly after the phone call the Yugoslav government blamed the Ustae. According to the official report the explosion tore the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 to pieces in mid-air, and Vulović was the only survivor. Ever since it was said that she survived because she had been in the rear part of the plane. However, Vulović states that she was found in the middle section right above the wings.[3] That tallies with what was said by Bruno Henke, the man who saved Vulović's life by rescuing her from the wrecked fuselage on the ground.
Vulović fell approximately 10,160 metres (33,330 ft).[1][2] She suffered a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae (one crushed completely) that left her temporarily paralyzed from the waist down and two broken legs. She was in a coma for 27 days. In an interview, she commented that according to the man who found her, "...I was in the middle part of the plane. I was found with my head down and my colleague on top of me. One part of my body with my leg was in the plane and my head was out of the plane. A catering trolley was pinned against my spine and kept me in the plane. The man who found me, says I was very lucky. He was in the German Army as a medic during World War II. He knew how to treat me at the site of the accident."[4]
Vulović continued working for JAT at a desk job following a full recovery from her injuries. She regained the use of her legs after surgery and continued to fly sporadically. She claims she has no fear of flying, which she attributes to the loss of memory of the crash, and she even enjoys watching movies with plane crashes.[5] She is considered a national heroine throughout the former Yugoslavia.
Vulović was awarded the Guinness Record title by Paul McCartney at a ceremony.[6]
Vulović was eventually dismissed in 1990 for expressing views critical of Yugoslav ruler Slobodan Miloević.[7] She participated in protests against his rule afterwards, up to and including the Bulldozer Revolution that led to his ousting. Many believe that her status as a national heroine prevented the authorities from arresting her despite her open defiance of the Miloević regime.[3] She continues to be vocal in politics in Serbia.[5]
In January 2009 German ARD radio correspondent Peter Hornung-Andersen together with German journalist Tim van Beveren and Czech journalist Pavel Theiner published a report based on newly found documents, mainly from the Czech Civil Aviation Authority and the Czech Republic's National Archive, concluding that it was "extremely probable" that the plane had been shot down by mistake by the Czechoslovak Air Force.[7] They claim that the plane broke up only a few hundred meters above the ground, not the 10,000 metres claimed by the official investigation.[8] This claim was backed by evidence, e.g. secret reports in which several eye witnesses said that they saw Vesna's plane flying below the clouds before it crashed and maps drawn by Czechoslovak investigators showing that the largest parts of the plane were found in an area rather small which would not have been the case if the plane broke apart in 10,000 metres altitude.[9] The Czech Civil Aviation Authority nevertheless issued a statement denying the claim without addressing the evidence.[citation needed] The original statement has given rise to more recent reports.[8] Vulović, despite having no memory of the crash or the flight after boarding,[7] has challenged these new theories, denying the claim that the plane descended to a much lower altitude while attempting a forced landing.[citation needed] A representative of Guinness World Records stated that "it seems that at the time Guinness was duped by this swindle just like the rest of the media."[7]
sheeeeeeeit
though at some point the height you're falling from becomes irrelevant (terminal velocity), it's still baffling to read.
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
Sort of regret reading those stories while I'm eating. :/
Dreams-Visions
Member
I would assume all pilots are trained in English and/or how to interpret English warnings, as all air traffic controllers/towers around the world use English as the default language. They may know other languages as well, but I'm pretty sure English is a pre-requisite and would not be the reason warning systems were unrecognized or ignored.
and with regard to this Air France crash, I'll never understand how neither pilot (but Bonin in particular) really seemed to pay any attention to the Altimeter. The device was working according to the story, and it would have revealed in no uncertain terms that they were falling (10,000 feet/minute should be hard to miss). You'd think such information would lead to some of the most basic inductive reasoning and force Bonin to conclude that he shouldn't be pulling up on the motherfucking stick. I mean come on.
and regardless of the quality of the design of these systems, the truth of the matter is that any level of half-way decent communication between the 2 pilots would have prevented this disaster. yes, asynchronous controls seems a dumb idea, but if they had simply talked their way through what was happening and what they were doing...or if the senior pilot had taken control of the plane earlier (removing Bonin from the equation entirely), this plane would not have crashed.
If you are interested in planes and reasons for crashes, this is the show - Mayday aka Air Crash Investigation. It airs on Nat Geo in Europe, 11 seasons so far and green light for 12. season.
I actually don't believe the pilots did not understand the word "stall", that's just what came to my mind when I read the post I quoted. That makes my post a little offtopic, sorry about that.
To answer your second question: These radiation sources are really specialized instruments and there are not a lot of them in existence (think on the order of dozens in the whole world). It's not like a mass-produced device that will be sold in supermarkets around the world. Sometimes you will be glad to even receive a manual at all and don't have to remain in constant correspondence with the manufacturer to be told how it works. And if the manufacturer is English, the only instructions you will get are in English.
Holy shit, this Bonin guy was a complete fool. Completely disregarding everything else, on two separate occasions the plane started to regain speed after he stopped pulling back on the stick and yet, for some almost unfathomable reason, he still remained completely clueless until the end. I just don't understand how he didn't figure it out after the the first time he eased off the stick and the plane began to regain altitude. Crazy, crazy stuff.
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
Ya, I was thinking that after I posted but still you would think that with how costly something like that is if there are so few that they would pay the small amount of money to translate it to their customer's needs. Just seems silly IMO. Or no one in France or whatever hiring or talking to someone to make sure of protocol for it. It is sort of a potentially dangerous device.
OpinionatedCyborg
Member
This may have been mentioned several times in this thread, but apparently Boeing jets have a mechanism that vibrates the yoke when a jet enters a stall. It is called a stick-shaker. Apparently, it vibrates so strongly and loudly that it often can be heard on CVRs shortly before the plane crashes. think of a rumble pack. It's an extra way to alert pilots of stalls during times when their multi-tasking abilities might be otherwise overwhelmed. Based on a quick google search, it appears the Airbus A330 does not have stick shakers, just a loud verbal warning when the aircraft enters a stall. That said, from what I gather, Airbus has a slightly different philosphy than Boeing and it has produced an impressive safety record, so I am not going to say one is better than the other.
I do find it fascinating how the airplane manufacturers have to wrestle between automation and hands-on piloting when determining how to maximize safety.
I do find it fascinating how the airplane manufacturers have to wrestle between automation and hands-on piloting when determining how to maximize safety.
comment from a pilot said:
If 75 loud "STALL!!" warnings couldn't prevent the desaster, the rumbling wouldn't have either...
It's more or less a European company headquarterd in France.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus
Yep, good stuff.
A visceral warning can promote a faster response. Not saying it would have in this case, but when your ears are overloaded with warnings, having the controls shake will still reach you.
OpinionatedCyborg
Member
I find airplane crashes and the subsequent investigations quite interesting, but I have not given Mayday a chance because I cannot stand dramatic retellings of the events. Just have interviews with experts, a CG simulation of what the plane was going through, the CVR, etc. Cut the F-grade acting and amateur production values. ugh.
Yeah, it is a bit over the top, but it goes into quite a lot of technical detail in each incident. I like that it first recreates the incident, then explains why it happened.
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