Echoes of AF447 here. I thought that Airbus makes the only airliners with no feedback when there are dual inputs applied, and Boeing takes a decidedly different approach. Can someone experienced with this explain how this could have happened?
Task saturation - followed by loss of situational awareness - is a very real problem in today's airliners, particularly during takeoff and approach/landing. You're trying to do a ton of things in a small amount of time, while dealing with a dynamic situation outside, and in this case after a long, tiring flight over the Atlantic.
There are a great series of (dated but still good) videos from American Airlines about automation dependency, human factors and the simple but very real problems that develop as a result - often leading to panic and disaster when things go wrong. Search YT for "children of the magenta".
> your airplane [lets go controls]
Those are the words to be exchanged to avoid confusion.
I do wonder if there's some training deficiency or cultural issue that leads to this scenario in Air France flights.
And that’s the root of many issues in aviation. It works 99.99% of the time is not always good enough.
> your airplane
> my airplane
1. I'm losing command
2. I've got command
I thought Boeing did not have sidesticks, and the yokes/control columns are linked to give actual feedback (to emulate most airplanes, which do this with mechanical controls). Is that not the case?
> I thought Boeing did not have sidesticks, and the
> yokes/control columns are linked to give actual feedback
> (to emulate most airplanes, which do this with mechanical
> controls). Is that not the case?
Boeing's philosophy seems to be to provide physical feedback for most or all of the controls. So, yeah, the control columns are linked (even on fly-by-wire planes like the 777 and 787). But that's not very useful once you're dealing with startled and/or panicked pilots. Take a look at the Atlas Air or Sriwijaya Air crashes.
The problem with Air France has nothing to do with Boeing or Airbus and everything to do with pilot standards and training. At this point Air France is lucky. Look at the Air France incident in 2020 (A318). Or their incident in Bogota in 2017 (A340). Or the 2011, 2012 x2, and 2013 incidents where the Airbus (A320/321) alpha floor protection prevented an Air France crew from crashing on approach to Marseille x2, Hamburg, and Tel Aviv. At some point Air France's luck will run out.
Private pilot here.
This is so hard. It’s not an excuse, especially for professional pilots.
But I can share from experience how much your “animal brain” fights you in this situation. Pulling back leverages lift in most normal flight, until you go too slow (stall), and then you suddenly very much need to do the opposite. But the normal behavior becomes second nature, like walking.
My examiner in 2020 said the biggest thing the FAA was stressing about was a serious uptick in incidents with slow flight (and stall) handling during takeoff/landings.
A year ago, we had an experienced local private pilot wreck his plane (lucky no major injuries) succumbing to exactly this. Took off, lift conditions a little worse than normal, started to leave ground effect, felt the plane stall, pulled back, started losing altitude, panicked and pulled back harder, tailed down and fell side wards. Plane totaled. He recounted to me after how he knew what to do. He’s trained multiple times. Done lots of stall recovery. Has done many many short field takeoffs (which is similar, pop the plane off the ground and then stay low to build speed). But was still chagrined at how panick/situation management got the better of him that time.
Being master of your animal brain in all situations is hard. And you never know, because you can never test all situations.
Another counterintuitive thing is that tactile feedback isn't necessarily helpful. There's a lot of whinging about how Airbus doesn't provide any feedback in the sidestick when both pilots are doing conflicting things, same with the thrust levers (or whatever they're called in Airbus land). Pilots have crashed Boeing airliners that give you this "important" feedback.
Anyways, my point was that stall recovery is something that's usually drilled into pilots. Unfortunately for the AF 447 crew, nobody told them that the stall warning would turn off when they flew so far outside the envelope that they were in "undefined behavior" territory. And that led to at least one of the pilots not recognizing that they'd stalled in the first place. But like any crash there are many contributing factors, and if any one of those had been different the plane wouldn't have crashed.
If it were just one or two examples of poor airmanship at Air France then sure, it'd be easy to chalk it up to "flying is hard". And yeah, the pandemic has robbed a lot of pilots of their necessary practice. But the four or five cases I cited where Airbus' "alpha floor protection" saved Air France flights were all pre-pandemic. At some point you've gotta look at what those incidents and accidents have in common (hint: it's not the airplane and not the crew). And that's why my main concern is with Air France's lack of safety culture and by extension their pilot training.
This in a nutshell is why I never completed my Private Pilot training. As I got close to taking my checkride I began to think about finances going forward. And I realized that I probably couldn't afford to fly often enough to keep my skills sharp and a dull pilot is a dangerous pilot.
25 years later I'm still alive so I think I made the right decision :-)
Airbus 320 pilot told me there is a light that comes on when inputs dont match.
Now reread the transcripts with the assumption that the right seater might not have the best intentions.
But also isn't the right seater the first officier, surely he should obey a repeated direct order from the captain.
Confused, Bonin exclaimed, "[Expletive] I don't have control of the airplane any more now", and two seconds later, "I don't have control of the airplane at all!"[29]
Robert responded to this by saying, "controls to the left", and took over control of the aircraft.[73][32]
He pushed his side-stick forward to lower the nose and recover from the stall; however, Bonin was still pulling his side-stick back.
The inputs cancelled each other out and triggered an audible "dual input" warning.
--
So in an Airbus this situation is unambiguous - the plane tells you plain and simple: Both pilots are trying to fly at the same time. With a mechanically linked set of controls, you don't necessarily know whether you're fighting the other pilot or the plane.
This factoid will not die on HN. Conflicting inputs on an Airbus are handled by averaging and an audible "DUAL INPUT" cockpit warning.[1]
In the case of AF447, the co-pilot used his "Priority Takeover" button which meant only his control inputs were in effect.
If you wanted to say there is no physical feedback, then you would be correct.
[1] https://safetyfirst.airbus.com/app/themes/mh_newsdesk/docume...
This incident was at 1670 ft. My reading of the article is a P and CP being twats:
"During the go-around on the Air France flight, the captain was making nose-down inputs, while the first officer was pulling back on the controls."
I'm just a simple civvy but I was an air cadet and learned enough about flying in a single engine trainer to know that only one person should have control. You literally say "I have control" - "You have control" - "I have control". These muppets didn't seem to do that:
"It took until 07:52:06, for the captain to become the only person making control inputs."
In the very guarded language of accident review I would say that is a damning indictment of the behaviour of the pilot and co-pilot as being completely reckless and bloody stupid.
This was not AF447 so what on earth happened? I'm guessing inadequacy of some sort and that's on the industry as a whole.
If company culture doesn't strictly enforce callouts 100% of the time, it's easy to get into a routine of everything being just fine 100's of times until it isn't.
Really these sorts of things show there should be a failsafe mechanism that provides tactile/haptic feedback to the pilots if the other inputs are "fighting" theirs.
Even an audible alarm isn't enough, as you'll likely get more than a few of those during events where it matters.
Proper CRM of course should make this "impossible" - but in high stress moments any more layers of swiss cheese you can add the better.
Two drivers
I have no idea why the pilot-monitoring would have taken his controls. Or why the pilot-flying wouldn't have called him out for it. Possibly a seniority issue - we've seen similar issues before. Hopefully the french aviation authorities can determine the root cause.
That transcript is so sad.
Well, yes, but these kind of incidents keep happening at AF. Everyone talks about AF447 because it ended in the ocean, but there have been many incidents with AF since AF447, involving serious pilot error which nonetheless ended in a safe landing. So you have to look a bit beyond the "muppets" in the front seats and start to wonder about company culture and training.
Here's an article stating exactly that: https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2022/04/28/Pilots-p...
> If opposing forces on the two columns pass a certain limit, the link between them is deactivated or “desynchronized” to prevent accidents in the case of one side getting jammed.
That still leaves the question of how to interpret opposing inputs for the physical control surfaces, though
What's not clear is how the linkage still connects to the flight controls. The idea seems to be that the one which is moving wins. What is clear is that, if your side becomes disconnected, your yoke doesn't do anything. No wonder one pilot was frantic. It seems that you get reconnected by moving the disconnected yoke to agree with the one in control. Then the pin falls into the notch and the yokes are connected again. Not sure about that. You can see the pin and notch in the patent drawings.
This is independent of the fly-by-wire system. That's downstream from these mechanical devices.
I wonder if pilot training includes knowledge that yoke disconnection is possible.
Probably, I've heard https://www.youtube.com/c/MentourPilotaviation talk about it as well.
They probably assumed that is what was going on. That the other pilot was doing something obviously wrong is not a natural assumption, when there is an alternative.
It seems like Air France has got some procedural drills to work on. One would have hoped that happened already. Somebody should check, this time.