On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 07:29:08 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:

On Jan 28, 9:28*pm, "
wrote:
On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:57:24 -0800 (PST), "





snip

Which part of an airplane that hits the ground first doesn't
determine whether it was due to loss of control or not.
Loss of control doesn't mean the flight controls were not
working. *It means the pilots lost control of the airplane,
it was not in a normal mode of flight.

They *WERE* in complete control of the aircraft. *They flew it into the
ground.

As I said before, you're definition of "in complete control" is not
what most people would agree with. It's certainly not in the
lexicon of the NTSB which would consider any plane that impacts
the earth in a stall after plumetting tens of thousands of feet,
"loss of control". An example of a plane that is flown into the
ground is one that is still in a normal flight envelope but where
the pilots have lost altitude/terrain awareness and impacted
a mountain. That is called "controlled flight into terrain".
Clearly the A340 was a loss of control situation.

That's certainly not a useful definition. By that definition, a plane is, by
definition, "out of control" anytime something bad happens. ...even if it
crashes into a mountain-top at straight-and-level.

Here's a question. Take another case. A pilot is in IFR
conditions, becomes disoriented, the plane starts banking,
enters a spiral dive. Along the way down, the pilot puts
in a variety of control inputs, but the plane crahes into the
water tail first. Is that a loss of control accident, yes or
no?

Not as long as he has complete control of the aircraft, driving it into the
ground, no. A spin, of course, would be out-of-control.


Which obviously they did, because they were trying to
get it to just fly level. *Instead it was stalled and plumetted
30,000 feet to the ground.

They were trying but because they were incompetent they flew it into the
ocean.

The experts agree it was loss of control:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...lt-was-it.html

"The details in today’s report confirm that this crash should not be
considered on its own. It is another in a series of disasters
involving what is technically called “loss of control” – a problem
which has become the number one cause of air crashes. The trend is so
alarming that it was the subject of heated debate at a Flight Safety
Foundation conference in Turkey earlier this year.

If you define "loss of control" as you do, certainly it's a leading cause. It
is the only cause possible.

At the heart of the issue is how pilots respond when faced with an
imminent aerodynamic stall, which comes down to just one movement on
the flight controls: the need to push down the nose of the airplane,
not pull it up.

Which they did *NOT* do.

At the conference, Michael Coker, Boeing’s senior safety pilot, cited
a series of crashes, beginning with that of the Colgan Air crash that
killed 50 people at Buffalo in 2009 and including others in Venezuela,
Amsterdam, and France. In each case the airplane had reached the brink
of a stall, where the wings lose the ability to provide lift, and the
pilots, rather than putting the nose down to regain speed—a basic
tenet of Piloting 101 since the beginning of flight—had instead pulled
up the nose and produced a fatal outcome.
The case of Air France Flight 447 now joins that list as the deadliest
of all."





Try applying what you are saying to driving a car.
Accident occur everyday where drivers lose control
of a car and cause a crash.

It's not unheard of for a car to drive, under full control, into a bridge.

Yes, if the driver is suicidal or asleep. But not if the driver
has the car under control and is trying to avoid hitting the
bridge.

Fog.


The loss of control
could be initiated by some factor, such as swerving too
much to avoid a deer. *The car is now careening out of
control, despite the fact that the driver still can
move the wheels and activate the brakes. *They have
lost control of the car because it is no longer doing
what they want it to do, which is to go straight down the
road.

Strawman.




No, it's just a very fair comparison.

No, you're proposing a scenario set up with the conclusion stated. A
strawman.

snip


I don't know what you are arguing here. *You claimed
the pilots were inexperienced. *Do you now agree they
actually had substantial experience?

The ones at the controls were. *They made a rookie mistake. *The captain was
not at the controls.




So now you're back to 6600 hours and 3000 hours experience of
the two pilots actually flying the plane makes them
inexperienced.....
And the captain was not sleeping during the event. He was
back in the cockpit observing and giving
direction during the crisis and he had even more experience.

He was called to the cockpit *after* the disaster was already in play. He
didn't assume command and if he had done so, the disaster would probably have
been averted. The two flying *were* inexperienced; one holding his control
stick in the *FULL CLIMB* position with stall alarms going off. That doesn't
exactly match your assertion that he was very experienced.

snip

It's unbelievable that anyone would argue that it's better
to just abruptly dump the plane back into the hands of the
pilots in the middle of a thunderstorm, with severe turbulance,
at night, over the water, instead of just defaulting to Airbus's
own manual which say set the power at X, the pitch at Y,
and the plane will continue to fly safely.

It's hard to believe that anyone would suggest a programmer, who isn't there,
knows more about a bad situation than the supposedly trained pilots, who are.

That determination was made a long time ago by Airbus and Boeing.
There newest fly-by-wire aircraft all have computer controls which
look out for the pilots making what you call rookie mistakes. For
example, they limit the rate of roll a pilot can command. They limit
the max rudder deflection as a function of airspeed so that a pilot
can't put so much force on a control surface that it causes the tail
to rip off.

They are fly-by-wire, sure, but when things go to hell control is still
"dumped", as you say, back on the pilots.

And no one is suggesting that the computer have absolute control.

You *ARE*!

Only that the computer not go from it handling the plane in severe
turbulance, at night, over water, to dumping it in the hands of the
pilots.

You *DID*!

The computer could
have simply applied the correct procedure for the situation, ie
set the power and pitch to the manual numbers, telling the pilots
that it was doing so. If the pilots wanted to take other action,
then they could have disconnected the autopilot.

You *DID* again!

You put ultimate faith in humans. But it's a well known fact that
humans frequently are more fallible in many circumstances than
a computer. And I'd say the results of this and other accidents
speak for themselves. So does the reference I provided.

You put the ultimate faith in computers. Foolish! ...particularly when
things are already going south. The FACT that the aircraft manufacturer (and
the FAA and just about everyone else) disagrees with you is instructive.

And that same computer did continue on with the program
for quite awhile. *As airspeed indication was lost, it backed
down through a couple of alternate ways of controlling the
airplane. *If it could do that, there is no reason that it could
not have applied the power/pitch setting as the last
solution. *If it had, 200 people would likely be alive.

Could? *Sure it *could*. *You don't let a computer have control after it's
impaired.

The computer was never impaired.

It's inputs were, dummy.

One more time. Go read up on the flight modes of the A340
system. The computer continued to have control as it lost
sensor input. It backed down from the main flight control mode
to alternate flight modes as it continued to control the airplane.
It's only at the end, where it dumped the plane back to the
pilots instead of going to the final alternate flight possibility
that is right in the manual.

I've read the report. No, I'm not going to read it again because some moron
on the Usenet is second-guessing the professionals who designed the thing,
rather than the real cause of the crash; the loose nuts behind the yokes.

Your preference is clear. You'd rather the computer dump it
back to the pilots in a horrific emergency situtaion and hope
that they react properly and also remember the correct
power setting of x% and the correct pitch setting of y%.
How about neither one of them, in that terrifying environment,
can remember the correct procedure? I'd prefer the computer do it.

When things are already going South, no I'd rather not trust my life to a
programmer who's life isn't on the line. I'd rather trust a pilot who is
doing his job (really, his only job). I've been around computers long enough
(designing them for almost 40 years) to know better. Your trust in technology
is just amazing.

And as I pointed out before, a similar scenario had
already happened before. *The A340 pitot tubes were
in the process of being replaced because they were
known to ice over. *And in some previous incidents
the pilots, confronted with an unusual scenario,
also did not apply the correct power/pitch
procedure per the book. *Should they all have reacted
correctly? *Sure. *But humans are known to screw
up, particularly when confronted by a major crisis
where you only have seconds to react correctly.
That's why having that autopilot continue to keep
the plane in a safe envelope by just setting power
and pitch makes sense.

...and computers (and their programmers) are infallible? *Get real!



The history of aircraft computers is pretty damn good.

Because they're out of the loop when bad things happen.

Can you find us one accident report for a modern airliner
where the blame was placed on the computer?
And in this case, again, all that had to be done is apply
the correct power and pitch. And besides, the computer
was still involved in running the airplane anyway. Without
it they would not be able to move any of the basic flight
controls. So, if you don't trust computers and their
programs, you better not fly today.

I'd especially trust a computer program that was written
over years by multiple programmers, tested many hours before entering
service, etc, over pilots confronted with a panic situation.

You're a fool. It's instructive that no one in the business agrees with you.

snip

Easy for you to judge the dead pilots who were
confronted with a major crisis in some of the worst
circumstances possible. *Wonder how you would
perform under similar circumstances.

I AM NOT THE PILOT, DUMMY. *The *fact* is that they killed a *lot* of people
for no good reason. *It was *purely* pilot error by an obviously inexperienced
crew.


And now you resort to name calling?

I'm just putting a name on what you're proving yourself to be.

You are judging pilots and
from your insistence that this was not a loss of control situation,
it's clear you're not even familiar with aviation terminology.

You're clueless. (just another statement of fact)

I'll leave it for others to decide who's the dummy here.
And again you're back to "inexperienced pilots?"
I

Obviously inexperienced.


I didn't judge. *That's the conclusion drawn from the investigation after the
BB was recovered.

Simple then.
Show us where the accident report says the pilots were
inexperienced, as you claim. Show us in the accident report where it
says the plane was designed by someone insane.

I'm not going back through the articles just to prove some irrelevant point.
The *fact* is that it was pilot error, not an error of design.



As for the sanity comment, not sure what you're referring
to. *The pilots knew they had lost airspeed information.

Yet one continued to try to *GAIN* altitude. *Sanity?


They should put you, the armchair expert pilot in a simulator
and see what happens. Ever hear of spacial disorientation?
Vertigo? That's what happens when you get confused
enough from the vaious inputs to the body that you know longer
know up from down. And neither that, nor panic, can happen
to a computer.

What a dumbass!