Filed under: The Cockpit Chronicles
Recently a couple of pilots found themselves in a situation that was foreign and perplexing to them; a scenario the designers of the airplane hadn't fully expected. They fought their way for 3 minutes and 30 seconds while trying to understand what was happening after a failure of one of the pitot static systems on their Airbus A330. At times the flying pilot's inputs exacerbated the problem when he assumed they were flying too fast rather than too slow.Because they hadn't seen anything like this in the simulator, and the airplane was giving conflicting information, the recovery would have been all the more difficult.
Pilots are taught that an erroneous airspeed indicator can be countered by paying close attention to their pitch and power. It sounds so simple that many pilots wonder aloud, just how anyone in the situation could mess it up.
In the early morning hours of June 1st, 2009, the pilots of Air France flight 447 were working their way around thunderstorms while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in the widebody Airbus A330.
A faulty pitot tube created a situation where any changes in pressure resulted in fluctuations in the airspeed indicator. To understand how difficult it is to recognize this problem and then correct for it, let me use the following analogy:
Imagine you're driving a car at night. You come down a hill and you feel the cruise control back off on the gas to prevent the car from going too fast. Just as you look down at your speed noticing that it is, in fact increasing, a siren and lights go off behind you. A police car has woken you up from your late night drive.
Instinctively you kick off the cruise control and apply the brakes. The speedometer indicates you're still accelerating, so you press harder on the brakes. Your car has now decided that because you're trying to slow so quickly, it will shut off the anti-skid braking system and allow you to use manual brakes. You then skid off the road and into a ditch.
Based on the released information about one of the most mysterious accidents in recent history, it appears the pilots of Air France 447 faced a set of circumstances similar to our driving example.
Continue reading Cockpit Chronicles: There's more behind the Air France 447 crash than pilot error
Cockpit Chronicles: There's more behind the Air France 447 crash than pilot error originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 12 Aug 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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