RECENT REPORT BY EXPERTS (LINK included below)
It comes as no surprise to me that five aviation experts have in effect found that the 2012 BEA conclusion reached by French authorities into the cause of Air France 447, namely that the crew were not to blame due to the technical problems they faced, was a shocking whitewash.
The report of the 5 experts came out around May 2014. My rejection of the BEA's whitewash came out on 19 Jan 2014 on this site. (link below) An extract of the relevant portion appears at the end of this article for your convenience. I'd like to say....not bad for Flight Sim pilot...but sadly, to me it was just logic and common sense....
I am a computer game pilot, (Microsoft Flight Simulator) and an Aviation Analyst, who has made a study of flying airliners and of air crashes.
Had I been in the cockpit of AF 447 at the critical time, I would have recognised Pitot Tube failure as the most likely cause of the alarms and would have been aware that, of all the alarms to pay attention to, the stall warning would be the major one.
I knew this due to studying earlier accidents where pitot tube failure occurred. Aero Peru for example. (About 1998 if I recall - see date in my AF449 blog.)
See the news 24 article below and my blog which is an article I wrote some time last year. I explain exactly why AF 447 should NEVER have happened and that Air France are totally negligent for failing to have trained their pilots to deal with accident situations which had occurred before.
In an attempt to establish my credentials as an aviation analyst you can rely on, kindly note that I did not need to read this latest report by the five experts to conclude that the BEA report was wrong. I did so last year on my blog. (see link below)
THIS BLOG GETS IT RIGHT FIRST!!!
(Oh, and for the record, on MH370, I concluded that cockpit incursion, i.e. unlawful cockpit interference by someone, be it a pilot, crew or hijacker, was the cause of the plane's disappearance within 36 hours (see my various blogs) whilst other analysts and some so-called experts, including experienced airline pilot's were trying to suggest all sorts of theories linked to catastrophic failure (e.g. the zombie theory) were equally or more likely to be the cause. But the experts now all seem to agree on that which you read first on this blog!!)
I acknowledge that if had I encountered pitot tube failure in a modern automated cockpit on board the Aero Peru flight, (also described in the blog) I would also have been confused by the conflicting over speed and stall warning alarms. These alarms are also accompanied by erratic air speed and altitude readings and various other alarms such as rudder ratio. Very intimidating if you don't understand the likely cause.
But that is precisely why I study airliner accidents. To become a better pilot and to learn from them. If I do that in order to fly airliners on my computer, as a hobby, surely it's not to much to expect pilots and airlines, who have the lives of passengers in their hands, to at least do that much.
How anyone at Air France, who had any responsibility for ensuring that pilots were properly trained at the time (2008 & prior), can dare to show their faces in public is a mystery to me. Criminal charges should be laid. As a trial lawyer, I can say that proving negligence should be relatively easy. And I know better than to say that very often in my line of work.
The experts' conclusions, with which I fully agree, raises serious questions about the competence of the BEA. Which God do they serve. Safety or Air France?
THE PLANE WAS FULLY CAPABLE OF FLYING
It should be borne in mind that the engines and flight controls of the aircraft were all functional. Thus there was nothing to prevent it from continuing to fly.
WHAT WAS THE SHORTCOMING THEN?
Essentially, there were two failures by Air France Trainers.
Firstly: The failure to drill the pilots to be able to identify symptoms of likely pitot tube failure in a modern automated cockpit and the failure to ensure that pilots were fully conversant with the procedures to recover control or keep control of the aircraft in the event of such a failure.
Secondly: Air France failed to ensure that their pilots were familiar with the challenges of flying at high altitude.
HIGH ALITUDE
Pilots normally use the autopilot shortly after take-off, usually for the whole flight, and then they may choose to fly manually for the landing.
As a result, high altitude flying is something not often practised. At cruising altitude, particularly above 35 000 feet (Flight Level 350 & above,) the air is extremely thin.
The result is that the difference between stall speed, at which speed the airflow over the wings is insufficient to allow for the lift required for flight and the plane simply falls out of the sky (as indeed occurred) and over speed, a speed at which the aircraft's speed is too high for the airframe, risking a catastrophic breakup of the aircraft, is far narrower than at lower altitudes.
This means that the higher you go, the narrower the margin for error becomes between stalling and overspeed. Pilots flying at high altitude need to be acutely aware of this reality during any high altitude emergency and, if the auto pilot should fail, care is required to keep the aircraft flying safely between those two critical air speeds.
It amazes me that in flight simulation drills, the setting of emergency scenarios to deal with and demonstrate the peculiar risks of high altitude flight, including recovery from stalls and over speed, situations does not appear to have been standard practice at that time.
PITOT TUBE
Pitot tubes are responsible for measuring air speed and air pressure, and this gives altitude and air speed readings on the pilot's instruments, i.e. the air speed indicator and the altimeter. There are two or three such tubes on board an airliner.
When one or more such tubes fail, the problem which arises is that air speed and altitude readings become erratic and totally unreliable.
PITOT TUBE FAILURE ON AUTO PILOT
Although Pitot tube failures are not a major problem in themselves, (one can work around faulty airspeed and altitude readings) if the pitot tube which is linked to the Auto Pilot happens to fail, especially in a highly automated & computerised cockpit, this can become a major problem if not identified quickly.
An autopilot requires reliable information from the instruments. Faulty information will cause Auto pilot malfunction & in the case of pitot tube failure, this can include the autopilot switching to manual, which requires immediate pilot intervention to take manual control.
Irrespective of whether the autopilot switches off or not, a pilot should, in most in flight emergencies dealing with likely systems failures, disconnect all the autopilot systems, and try to fly the aircraft (normally straight and level first) in order to establish if there is anything preventing the aircraft from flying straight and level. If the aircraft can proceed to fly straight and level, then one knows that one then has time to find out which alarms are actually sounding and which of them, if any, require action.
PITOT TUBE FAILURES SHOW THEMSELVES
Pitot tube failures are usually accompanied by a series of warnings, which may include, stall warning, rudder ratio warning and an overspeed warning.
As stated above, the first pilots (Aero Peru), and only the first pilots, who encountered conflicting stall warning and over speed alarms have an excuse for losing an otherwise functional aircraft.
Even for non-pilots, it should become apparent that the confusion arises because one alarm is warning that the aircraft is about to fall out of the sky in a stall (you are flying too slowly) whilst the other warning over speed alarm warning that you are flying far too quickly and the air frame is likely to start breaking up at any moment.
The Aero Peru pilots, bless their souls, could not understand what could possibly be the cause of these conflicting alarms, not to mention several other alarms, all sounding at once. They panicked and the airliner crashed into the sea.
WHICH WARNING?
If you suspect a pitot tube failure, (clue, erratic and nonsensical airspeed or altitude readings) then you know you can't be over speed if you are flying at a normal power setting for the condition of flight prior to the emergency. Try to fly straight and level and use a standard N1 Thrust setting for the altitude and air speed you were last travelling at. Problem solved.
The alarm to watch out for, if you suspect pitot tube failure, however, is the stall warning.
Reason: The stall warning and related stick shaker mechanisms are not linked to the pitot tube. So if you hear the stall warning or feel the stick shaker in the steering column, you know that you're not over speed and you know that the plane is stalling or is about to enter a stall.
The solution is simply to add thrust and to lower the nose slightly. ....Hey presto, problem solved as easily as that. If the AF 447 pilots had studied the Aero Peru accident, OR if they had been properly trained, they would have known what to do and how easy it was to do it.
WHAT DID THE AF447 PILOTS DO WRONG?
They failed to pay heed to the stall warning. When they did take action, instead of lowering the nose or increasing thrust, the two basic stall recovery steps, they raised the nose until the aircraft in fact entered a stall, from which it never recovered.
Worse still, as the aircraft literally fell out of the sky in that stall, the two pilots had no idea what had gone wrong or even that the aircraft had entered a stall.
Only when the Captain returned to the cockpit did he manage to solve the problem. But it was too late. They solved the simple puzzle only seconds before the aircraft "belly flopped" on the sea after falling at thousands of feet per second. I can only hope no passenger happened to look out of the window or managed to see anything in the dark. A terrifying thought...
One might be forgiven for wondering whether, instead of trained pilots, AF447 was instead being flown by someone more like the recent Mayor of Toronto on a very bad day.
TWO PRIOR ACCIDENTS
Apart from the Aero Peru accident (caused by washing crews failing to remove see-through tape which covered the aircraft's pitot tube while on the ground) there was another accident from which Air France ought to have learned. It occurred around 2002 if memory serves.
I should mention in passing that the use of see through tape was a major error by the ground crew in Lima because it prevents the tape from being spotted during the pre-flight inspection.
The second incident was a charter airline flight from the Caribbean to Europe. The aircraft had stood for about a week at the Caribbean AirPort without being flown.
It is believed that insects laid eggs in the pitot tubes, which stood unprotected instead of having their covers on, which is standard.) This resulted in similar alarms etc. as occurred in the Aero Lima incident, and the crew were also unable to work out how to solve them.
After those two accidents no airline or flight instructor, no chief pilot, and no pilots could possibly have any excuses at all for not knowing what to do. I knew what to do, and I am not a professional pilot.
PITOT TUBE FAILURE & VISIBILITY
In good visibility and in daytime, pilots will be able to pick up an altitude or air speed anomaly with reference to the ground. This would normally assist with identification of pitot tube failure and with recovery. You're unlikely to ignore a stall warning if you're flying with nose high attitude in the day and if you can't see the horizon ahead of you.
In IFR conditions or at night, a pilot needs to be able to fly the aircraft on instruments and this requires a knowledge of average N1 power settings at various altitudes for straight and level flight as well as for descent and ascent. But even if you fail to do this, DON'T IGNORE the STALL WARNING or the STICK SHAKER or Plane will stall and fall out of sky. Get it? Stall Recovery is Flying 101, not rocket science.
ONE LAST POINT TO NOTE ABOUT PITOT TUBE FAILURE
Now, even you know how to deal with pitot tube failure, and you didn't even require an instructor. You now know that you cannot rely on autopilot, airspeed reading, altimeter, rudder ratio warning and the overspeed warnings. But the Aero Peru accident teaches us one more basic thing to avoid.
The Aero Peru crew were over the sea on a dark night and were trying to deal with a host of conflicting alarms and an aircraft which did not seem to be flying properly. (It was fine and quite flyable, but they had no idea. The alarms and unreliable airspeed and altitude readings while flying over the sea in total darkness all added up to a veritable nightmare from hell.
In their confusion and desperation, the pilots made the mistake of asking Air Traffic Control to advise them about their true altitude.
Given all the sounding alarms and their confusion, the pilots could be forgiven for forgetting that ATC's radar usually can only show a dot on the screen i.e. no altitude, no aircraft ID, and no airspeed reading. These readings may appear to the controller to be on his radar screen, but they are provided to ATC by the Aircraft's transponder when ATC's radar interrogates it intermittently after a four digit identifying code provided by ATC is entered into the transponder by the pilots. And therein lies the problem. The transponder's reading also comes from the faulty pitot tube.
ATC told the Aero Peru flight, which was trying to return to Lima in pitch black darkness, that Approach Radar had the plane on their screen at about 10 000 feet, which (of course) roughly accorded with one of the erratic readings they were occasionally getting on one of their altimeters.
However, in truth, they were not at 10 000 feet. The airliner was in fact flying at a few hundred feet over the sea, but the pilots could not spot this is the moonless darkness.
To make matters worse, the aircraft was not flying straight and level as they intended, but it was slowly descending.
It was not long before they realised that they had made a terrible mistake. The pilot felt one of the wings had hit water. That must have been a sickening feeling. A second later, the plane cartwheeled around that wing tip and crashed into the sea and broke up, killing all on board.
When they found the wreckage, the bits of tape left by the washer crews were still on the pitot tubes. Apart from that, nothing else was wrong with the aircraft. It was perfectly capable of flying. Sadly, no one at that stage knew how pitot tube failures would reveal themselves in a modern automated cockpit. Aero Peru was a Boeing 757.
Understandably, no one can blame the crew of Aero Peru aircraft for what occurred. I would certainly have been confused in that situation.
But I can say that after I read the ATC transcript of this accident in 2001 (contained in a book I have called the Black Box), I too felt sick. I felt as though I had suffered through that accident with the crew. And I swore, that I would never be caught out in the manner they were by such a simple technical failure.
ONE OTHER POINTER TO DISASTER FOR AERO PERU
On the take off roll, if the airspeed readings of the pilot and co-pilot do not agree, one ought to abandon the take-off, if this occurs prior to V1 (the point of no return on the take off roll), the usual procedure is to abort the take-off.
The airspeed indicators of the pilot and co-pilot on the Aero Peru Flight did differ during call-out on the take off roll, prior to V1.
The pilots chose to ignore it, thinking it was a minor discrepancy which soon appeared to have rectified itself. They were not to know that this was a sign that their lives, and those of their passengers, would soon be a thing of the past.
If memory serves me correctly, the Caribbean flight (insect eggs) also encountered such an airspeed discrepancy during the take off roll.
Now, with hindsight, I would, if I were an instructor testing pilots in a simulator, programme a pitot tube discrepancy on the take off roll.
I would not only expect the pilots to respond by aborting the take-off roll (if before V1) but I would also expect them to be able to tell me about the likely problems this event might be foreshadowing. If they can't tell me about Aero Peru and the other flights, I'd ban them from flying and instruct them to go and study those accidents before being retested.
This is what Air France ought to have done. There can be no excuse whatsoever for their failures in this regard! This constitutes clear criminal negligence.
And this makes BEA's report, which attempts to exonerate the pilots (to some extent) and thereby exonerate Air France, so equally inexplicable and so shocking. The opinions in that report are so obviously misguided that the conduct of those who wrote it also borders on criminal conduct. You can't address gross negligence if you don't call it by its name, and instead, choose to look the other way.
Heads ought to roll at BEA and at Air France. Prosecutions should follow. After all, lives were needlessly lost on a fully flyable aircraft. What more need I, or the families of the victims say.
OTHER LESSONS FROM AF447
You can take comfort from the fact that now, most airlines do include pitot tube failure AND high altitude flying and recoveries in the tests they set for pilots on their simulators.
BUT....then the airlines went on to ignore another lesson. The missing plane lesson. It took a long time to find and locate the wreckage of the aircraft under the Atlantic Sea. But despite this:
1. No black boxes with longer ping periods were installed.
2. No compulsory satellite tracking system has been installed to assist recovery teams to find the plane.
3. ALSO, the one or two hour voice recording limit on the black box dates back to the limits imposed by recording onto actual tape. Digital recordings take no real space and the whole flight could easily be recorded. Normally this won't be necessary since the event in question is usually last to occur.
But what if there's a suicide pilot or some event which gives rise to a zombie plane which flies on its on own for hours on end. We'll have data but no voice. Seems truly silly in this digital age. Full voice recordings should be mandated at once!
So I leave you with one final question. Do we again have to wait for 3 or more such events before we learn the lessons?
SG WALTHER July 2014
Update 1 Jan 2014 Air Asia 8501crash.....
http://siegfriedwalther.blogspot.com/2014/12/qz8501-similarities-with-af447.html
http://www.news24.com/World/News/Pilots-blamed-for-Air-France-Flight-447-tragedy-20140513-2
http://siegfriedwalther.blogspot.com/2014/01/air-france-447-and-lessons-for-saa.html earlier
Here is an excerpt of precisely what I said in my blog on this site on 19 Jan 2014, prior to the Five Experts weighing in to agree:
"Chillingly, the French report into this accident comes to its erroneous conclusion despite the above two prior fatal air crashes where similar problems confronted the crew. In the light of what pilots and airlines should have learned from that accident, the French report cannot stand.
43. If that is not enough, the report goes on to make an inexplicable concession that several other pilots have encountered this issue on twelve other occasions, and they all made it home safely.
44. Any passionate airlne pilot, flight sim, or real world, has to study and understand prior crashes. It could save your life and the lives of all on board. Also, airline pilots are subject to regular evaluations in airline flight simulators. Here instructors can set emergencies which cannot be risked in a real world aircraft. Studying air crashes to prepare is like studying past papers for an upcoming exam.
In my view, the Air France pilot in control was negligent in failing to prepare himself for the events which occurred on the A330 that evening.
Air France also have to explain why their instructors permitted pilots to fly without testing to see whether they could deal with incidents like the Aero Peru air crash.
If I were the instructor doing the flight-sim training for Air France pilot assessments, the Aero Peru accident would arguably be the first on my list of flight-sim emergency scenarios. This is precisely because of the confusion this type of failure can cause.
On the take-off roll, I would wait for the pilots to spot the altimeter discrepancies. If they did, and irrespective of whether they aborted or not, I would pause the simulation to ask the crew what accident this is based on and what events are likely to occur next. If they failed to answer either question correctly, I would tell them to get out of the simulator, to go away and find out and not to return until they do.
49.Air France ought never to have allowed any pilot to fly a real airliner without such pilot being able to recognise and deal with a pitot tube failure at low and high altitude. Had they done so, I am convinced the pilots would have reacted calmly and would have instinctively coped with the apparent chaos in the cockpit.
Since the Air France report confirms that other pilots, faced with this situation in twelve other incidents, arrived home safely, one imagines that they were either taught to deal with pitot tube failure or they studied it for themselves. "
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