Learn To Fly A Broken Airplane

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Colonel
Posts: 3450
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2015 10:31 am

Gosh, does anyone else think that AOA failure and MCAS runaway pitch
trim is going to get added to 737 MAX sim training, any time soon?

Nobody remembers June 2009, but Air France had a bad day in an Airbus 330.

Faulty pitot tube caused ASI error which caused the pilot to hold the stick all
the way back for 3.5 minutes until impact.

[quote]Between May 2008 and March 2009, nine incidents involving the temporary loss of airspeed indication appeared in the Air Safety Reports (ASRs) for Air France's A330/A340 fleet ... after the Flight 447 accident, Air France identified six additional incidents which had not been reported on ASRs.[/quote]

Now, not everyone crashed when the ASI went batshit on the A330. 

Some pilots handled the emergency, and some didn't.  Think about
that for a minute.  Not everyone crashed and died with the 737 rudder
actuator went bonkers, either.

Runaway trim is not exactly a new problem.  I am speechless that
anyone with an ATP is not aware of it.  You can't safely fly a light
twin without knowing that.

[u]There will be no new causes of aircraft accidents in 2019.[/u]

I honestly don't understand people that don't give a shit about
living or dying.  Why are they flying large aircraft, though?

[u]Systems knowledge[/u].  Where have I heard that before?


Slick Goodlin
Posts: 721
Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2015 6:46 pm

Forget broken, I say learn to fly a minimal airplane so that a broken jet will never be the least amount of plane you’ve flown.  Get your first thirty hours in something like this:
[img width=500 height=350]http://www.flying-directory.com/photos/ ... 98fix1.jpg[/img]

Experience some joy, build some skill, have a good foundation under the rest of your training.
Colonel
Posts: 3450
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2015 10:31 am

The FO in the Ethiopian 737 Max crash had 200TT.

Not a typo.  200TT.  Now, the newbies think they are
WINNING when they skip all that pesky experience and
don't bother acquiring all that tedious knowledge and skill
you get from flying some smaller stuff under varied conditions
in different places for a measly couple thousand hours, but ...

They might think they are WINNING like Charlie Sheen,
but [u]they are horribly cheating themselves and their pax[/u].

They have the aviation depth of a puddle.  They have nothing
to fall back on, when shit goes south.  They are laughable
caricatures of pilots, wearing the uniform and pushing buttons
as they read a book.  Future four bars.

This is what real pilots look like:

[img width=500 height=387]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1975/456 ... 3c2d_b.jpg[/img]
Eric Janson
Posts: 412
Joined: Tue Jul 14, 2015 10:31 am

Important that people understand what is going on.

This is [b]not[/b] a runaway trim event.

This is a system working as designed - but in the Lionair and probably the Ethiopian crash the system operated due to a faulty AOA input. This gives a full nose down stab trim input ( repeatedly if you trim against it ).

On the sectors prior to the Lionair crash the issue was incorrectly identified as a problem with the [b]speed trim system[/b].

People didn't know about the existence of an MCAS system - Boeing didn't feel Pilots needed to know.

I'll bet not a single Simulator has MCAS built into it.
Colonel
Posts: 3450
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2015 10:31 am

[quote]This is not a runaway trim event.[/quote]

Ah, but didn't Boeing claim that their documented procedure for that,
covered MCAS failure?

Boeing didn't intend for pilots to ever learn about MCAS.  Failure of
that system was indistinguishable from runaway pitch trim, which in
fact was driven by the MCAS after an AOA sensor failure.

Failure modes are indeed interesting.  Systems knowledge matters,
despite what our elders and supposed betters tell us.
Eric Janson
Posts: 412
Joined: Tue Jul 14, 2015 10:31 am

[quote author=Colonel Sanders link=topic=9537.msg27177#msg27177 date=1552575510]
[quote]This is not a runaway trim event.[/quote]

Ah, but didn't Boeing claim that their documented procedure for that,
covered MCAS failure?

Boeing didn't intend for pilots to ever learn about MCAS.  Failure of
that system was indistinguishable from runaway pitch trim, which in
fact was driven by the MCAS after an AOA sensor failure.

Failure modes are indeed interesting.  Systems knowledge matters,
despite what our elders and supposed betters tell us.
[/quote]

Yes they did - looks like that didn't help the Ethiopian crew.

Indications are that they were facing a similar problem to the Lion Air crew.

It's one thing to read about a procedure - it's another to actually see it in the Sim.

I can't remember ever doing a runaway trim scenario - if I did it it would have been once during initial training.

I'm sure a crew can be easily overloaded by multiple events and loud warnings that can't be easily cancelled while fighting to control the aircraft.

The level of reliability of modern aircraft is such that it is very unusual to get abnormal situations in everyday operations.
Colonel
Posts: 3450
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2015 10:31 am

[quote]is very unusual to get abnormal situations[/quote]

Isn't that kind of the job of the pilot, to take over when the automation
malfunctions?

If the pilot is not capable of turning the automation off and hand-flying
the airplane, perhaps he should pursue another line of work.

I guarantee you, that MCAS failure will be added to the sim for any
737 MAX pilot.  And, the documentation will be updated, as will the
software and display, to specifically alert the pilot of AOA failure, and
to tell him what to do when that happens.  Heck, the software might
even be changed to automatically turn off the MCAS when an AOA
sensor fails (or other inconsistencies detected in it's relevant flight
data input which may cause it to enter a murderous failure mode).

That's what I would do, but I'm not too bright, compared to an AC pilot.

I've only been programming highly reliable embedded software for 36
years now, which Rockie told me was a stupid thing to do.  Typically,
AC pilots each hold a lot more patents for embedded software design
than I do, so they know a lot about this sort of thing.

And, I'm a really shitty pilot, so when I had a stick jam in a vertical
downline after pushing some negative G and floating some junk up
into the elevator linkage, I quickly recovered from it and landed it
uneventfully with a jammed elevator.  Never happened to me before. 
I was never trained for it.

I accept the rhetoric from the four bars that I am a moron and the
rhetoric from TC that I am a really shitty pilot, ok?  I EMBRACE it.

But, if a really stupid, shitty pilot like me can instantly recover from
a flight control jam in a [u]VERTICAL DOWNLINE[/u] with the airspeed
rapidly accelerating way past Vne, perhaps a drooling four bars
can turn off the electric trim in straight and level when it misbehaves,
as per the fucking Boeing doc.

[u]THERE WILL BE NO NEW CAUSES OF AVIATION ACCIDENTS IN 2019.[/u]

Stick and Rudder Skills
Systems Knowledge
Attitude + Power = Performance

These lessons are written in blood.  Learn them, if you want to continue living.
Chuck Ellsworth

Well I am going to get some of the experts on the other site really fired up, because being an old fart that is not up to modern standards for a pilot when the computer starts to make the airplane go somewhere I don't want it to go I would turn the automatics off and hand and feet fly the fucking thing.

That way I would get to go where I want to go and of course so would everyone else on it.

So I must be a bad pilot???
DeflectionShot

[quote]And, I'm a really shitty pilot, so when I had a stick jam in a vertical
downline after pushing some negative G and floating some junk up
into the elevator linkage, I quickly recovered from it and landed it
uneventfully with a jammed elevator.[/quote]

How did you recover? Power back and elevator trim?
vanNostrum
Posts: 338
Joined: Wed Nov 04, 2015 9:04 pm

I'm going to go out on a limb and say if that happen
to me
Power off
Full rudder
When out of the dive aileron to level  the wings
Land with elevator trim
???
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