Hacker News Reader

Comment by oatmeal1 | Hacker News Reader

> It's tempting to blame the inexperienced first officers or their training but the blame for this crash has to land squarely on the atrociously bad UX of the Airbus cockpit.

The real problem is that someone who doesn't look at his most critical instrument* in instrument flying conditions, causes a stall, doesn't respond to stall warnings, doesn't communicate, refuses to hand over controls even though he doesn't understand what is happening, is in the cockpit at all. Either the training was inadequate, or deficiencies in Bonin's flying were overlooked.

View on HN

Also, the PNFs hesitancy to shout "my controls" and/or hitting the priority button, especially as he moves to pitch the plane down when it was probably still recoverable.

That the off-duty captain standing behind them is the first to vocalize they're at 10000 ft and stalling is indeed not great.

He did hit the priority button and say "Controls to the left." Bonin hit his priority button to take back control but didn't say he was taking back control.

The reality is there is not a single thing you can legislate or train that will prevent a pilot from flying a perfectly working plane into the ground if they get stubborn.

Aircraft emergencies are all about keeping you out of panic so that your natural instincts don't surface, because pretty much every natural or intrinsic human instinct, if followed, will just result in you flying the plane into the ground. Every sense you have is overwhelmed with "things aren't working the way I know they are supposed to and my control inputs seemingly have random results", and in a panic, your brain REALLY wants to revert to "just keep going up, away from danger", which is the opposite of what you need to do 95% of the time.

The only fix in this case would have been literally evicting that pilot from the cockpit, and there's no button for that.

> The only fix in this case would have been literally evicting that pilot from the cockpit, and there's no button for that.

Military jets have such a button. Maybe commercial needs to take some inspiration?

what, an ejector to parachute the pilots, fuck the passengers? that would be pretty funny. It does save the airline pilot replacement training though. Or maybe an ejector to throw just the bad pilot out?

Just the bad pilot is what I had in mind

Reading the CVR again, he did in fact ask for the controls ("So give me the controls") several times, but still seemed to be under the impression that they were in overspeed, or at least had to climb.

I think my sibling comment is probably right, Bonin would've required much more severe shouting to take his hand off the stick.

Certainly worth reading: https://bea.aero/uploads/tx_elyextendttnews/annexe.01.en.pdf

I won't like to criticize someone with a different trade skill (much less when they're already dead), but to paraphrase two of my CFI friends, their summary view was "Bonin acted stupidly". He didn't communicate he had controls, kept pulling the stick to nose up. The pilot psyche element had lot to play in this accident. He was sticking to a naive understanding of aerodynamics in panic - which was counterfactual - rather than counting on prior training experience (like what we developers would say an antipattern). Relaying a similar point, his training still wasn't enough to gather situational awareness & apply common-sense instead of a panicky behavior.

Honestly, part of the mistake is also on Dubois. When flying as a team, it is essential to establish hierarchy and make sure who has authority. As the one with the lesser number of hours, Bonin should have been relegated in favor of Robert. That being said, hierarchy should not be as much of an obstacle that the one in authority disregards the suggestions of the copilot.

Bonin in his panic hit his priority button to take back control but didn't say he was taking back control. He should have announced he has the controls - and it is obvious knowledge to pilots that flight behavior us from the averaged stick inputs. But only when they know both are handling flight surfaces.

If a pilot stubbornly wants to keep control maybe out of desperation or panic - and performs actions which are counterfactual to the knowledge of aerodynamics every pilot is taught, there is no instrument system which can salvage this catastrophe.

["Bonin acted like an idiot" - not my words, but two of my CFI friends, who discuss aviation topics on weekends often over beers.]

Bonin was an idiot, I agree. But Dubois should have established a clear hierarchy to prevent the idiot getting control over Robert.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com