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> Air France 440 was also shrouded in mystery (but nowhere near this degree), and turned out to be very poor airmanship by one pilot.

It was poor airmanship by two pilots (and other factors, including the feedback mechanisms and the lack of training for this particular high altitude scenario).

My understanding is that the pilot in the left chair didn't realize that the pilot in the right chair kept pulling his stick back. In boeing planes, the sticks move together, so that wouldn't be possible. And the pilot in the right chair clearly didn't understand that in the alternate law the fly by wire system was running in, his stick movements put the plane at risk.

Yes, it was a completely incorrect reaction by a single pilot, combined with a catastrophically bad design for the controls, which caused that crash. It is completely insane to me that anyone would think that averaging inputs from two pilots and providing no feedback would be even remotely a good idea.

The aircraft does provide feedback, it says, "DUAL INPUT, DUAL INPUT". IIRC this can be heard on the cockpit voice recorder of Air France 447.

I mean physical feedback. In any rationally designed aircraft, the controls are physically linked, such that moving one moves the other (or at the very least this arrangement is faked with servos). When two pilots attempt to give contradictory inputs, they immediately know it because they can feel the other one fighting.

Yes, in the Air France tragedy, the aural warning clearly wasn't enough. Through fear and panic, the pilots failed to understand what the plane was telling them. But the feeling of having a control yoke fight against you doesn't require much mental effort to process.

Aural warnings are so easy to ignore. There are a ton of stories that go like, "What is that annoying buzzing sound? Well, no time to worry about it now, I'm landing. <CRUNCH> Oh, it was the gear warning." Happened to a friend of mine, even.

I think it ultimately comes down to engaging with the primary sense you're already using. If you're doing something visual, then a visual warning (on whatever you're looking at) can be effective, while an aural warning won't. If you're listening to something then interrupting it with an audio warning will work great. Hand flying is a tactile experience, so that's the sense you want to work with.

I agree with you completely.

Also,

> Hand flying is a tactile experience, so that's the sense you want to work with.

is the primary reason why Boeing still uses yokes instead of sidesticks.

Aural warnings are so easy to ignore.

Yes. You give an example of someone ignoring a single aural warning. The case of AF447 was much worse.

There was a cacophony of different sounds and noises in the cockpit of AF447. All the various alarms are deliberately made to sound different. But when someone knows he's a minute from death, there's no way his reptilian brain can make sense of a plethora of simultaneous alarms. It will, instead, strive to tune them all out.

I remember a documentary where Duke Cunningham discussed his experiences as a fighter ace in Vietnam. In high stress situations he would switch his intercom to allow him to speak to his RIO, but not be able to hear his RIO. He didn't want the distraction. (Note: sadly, Cunningham disgraced himself in later life).

I built a gear warning system for my glider. The usual ones just have either as steady tone or a pulsing tone. I made mine do a pulsing tone with different speeds, then it actually spells out "WARNING GEAR UP" in morse code. I don't know morse code, but I figured the irregular pattern would make it more identifiable and harder to ignore.

I've seen it advised to turn off the aircraft radio when it's not useful and you're in the middle of something tricky, like climbing out from a low altitude, or landing in a field.

> I've seen it advised to turn off the aircraft radio when it's not useful and you're in the middle of something tricky, like climbing out from a low altitude, or landing in a field.

Makes sense. "Aviate, navigate, communicate".

That's correct (even though he did mention "watch the height" and could have followed up on that). If I remember correctly, even the left chair pilot also applied nose-up inputs at some point in time.

Well we could go into the whole 'swiss cheese' theory of accidents, and include a long list of causes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

> Air France 440 was also shrouded in mystery (but nowhere near this degree), and turned out to be very poor airmanship by one pilot.

It was flight 447. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

IMO The mystery of MH370 is partially due to some incorrect assumptions, which can't be proven or disproven until the main wreckage is found, and/or the blackboxes recovered.

Where the wreckage ended up could depend several factors. eg. glide ratio of a 777 (~18:1), or how the 777 Fly-by-wire control system works under certain failure modes. There hasn't been a crew incapacitation crash in a fly-by-wire airliner before.

A small fire in the electrical bay could disable aircraft systems in unexpected ways, and possibly even burn out on its own, and the damage doesn't actually cause the jet to crash immediately. If the cockpit crew were incapacitated at cruise altitude, the jet could still end up 100 miles away from the point the engines flamed out.

Part of the mystery is due to the radical change in the flight path. It was supposed to fly North from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

But for some reason, the plane was turned around, and flew towards the Indian Ocean instead of China for at least an hour: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/MH370_fl...

Merely incompetent crew or a technical failure would not cause that - it has to either be a hijacking or an unstable pilot doing it on purpose.

Turning around is a common procedure under mechanical events and mechanical explanations for what happened to MH370 are still one of the leading 2 theories.

Not an expert, but doesn't the flap already indicate that they crash landed? As otherwise plane would have sunk to the bottom ocean in one piece? I guess further analysis will say whether flap detached via chafe or on impact.

Also is there a chance they will be able to detect smoke debris on it (to confirm or deny chemical battery fire theory)?