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Air France Flight 447

I haven't followed this much but how the hell dose a airliner get in a flat stall? Its not a P-39.
 
Air France flight 447 flight data recorder is giving evidence

After being lost in the Atlantic Ocean for nearly two years, the now recovered flight data recorder has been found to be functioning and is providing a wealth of information about the final minutes of the doomed flight.

Icing in the pitot tubes is likely the start of the disaster, but the pilot at the controls was the second in command. He put the aircraft into a climb, even when the stall warnings were sounding. The result was a stall and a descent rate of 10,000 feet per minute.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/27/us-france-brazil-crash-idUSTRE74Q28420110527
 
Simply amazing. If what is being told here is actually what happened, the pilots did the unthinkable and stalled the airplane for 38,000 feet into the ocean without every commanding the nose down, or increasing thrust?!?

This is strangely difficult to swallow. Pilots who are regularly drilled on emergency procedures not recognizing a stall, with the stall warning sounding more than once?
 
Back in the "olten days" we used to memorize attitude and thrust settings for level and other flight modes. We don't do this any more, but after staring at the instruments of the whale for some 15 years I have a pretty good idea what they should say even without airspeed or alttiude info. Quite a number of years ago a South American airline planted an otherwise good 757 in the Atlantic from taped over pito-static ports (the plane had been washed).

I don't know enough about the airbus in question to know how much the throttles and flight controls can be made to override the computer Fly-by-wire system.

As Paul Harvey would say.... there must be "The Rest of the Story"..... Both incidents were at night over the ocean.

t
 
Back in the "olten days" we used to memorize attitude and thrust settings for level and other flight modes. We don't do this any more, but after staring at the instruments of the whale for some 15 years I have a pretty good idea what they should say even without airspeed or alttiude info. Quite a number of years ago a South American airline planted an otherwise good 757 in the Atlantic from taped over pito-static ports (the plane had been washed).

t
Do you still check N1's an/or other values at final appoach for example? Regarding the 757, didn't Boeing add unreliable airpeed warning to EICAS after that crash?

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By the way mods, there are many threads about same topic, time for a merge?
 
My only guess is that the pilots didn’t trust the instruments at all and could physically feel the plane dropping.
 
I can just imagine a panic reflex.
Shut the AP and AT down, open up all throttles, and pull on the stick!
It would be against all human instinct to go into a dive if you are already losing altitude at 10,000 ft/min (120 mph drop), even though it would have been the right procedure to gain airspeed.
Also the plane would have been in an unnatural attack angle and the throttles on 100% before stalling.
This is all speculation, let's wait for the official report, and comment on that!
 
Official report may not be much help unless they said why they wanted to rip the wing off the plane.
 
Its the last sentence of the reuters report that sparks my interest.. Four minutes when the adrenalin is rushing like crazy, is a very long time. Why didnt the captain retake control He had three minutes to impact still when he returned to the cockpit.. Something just doesnt add up. Hopefully we'll find out in July..
Pam
 
Yes, I find it very odd that a well experienced PIC would not figure out that the stall warning is blaring, your losing altitude, therefore you must be in a stall. Nose up isn't what you do, even as just a sim pilot I know that. Now, if they were in a flat spin it often doesn't matter what you do, you are screwed. If that's the case then the SIC is to blame for putting the aircraft into a nose up attitude in the presence of a stall warning and inducing the flat spin. There must be more to this story.
 
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