On Jan 29, 12:34*pm, "
wrote:
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.

Good grief. I just gave you an example of a plane flying
straight and level into a mountain top. It's called
"controlled flight into terrain" by the NTSB in their
accident classification. Another category is "loss
of control", which is what you have when an aircraft
crashes stalled, in high rate of decent, abnormal
attitude, etc like the Air France crash.

Try reading some NTSB accident reports.



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.



Take that up with the NTSB. Here's an example of one
such accident, that of JFK Jr.

"The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) ruled the crash was
caused by: "the pilot's failure to maintain control of his airplane
during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial
disorientation".

The probable cause of the accident, as stated in the accident report,
is:

"The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a
descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial
disorientation. Factors in the accident were haze and the dark
night."

And what exactly makes a spin so special? Spins can be recoverd from
too provided the pilot makes the appropriate inputs.








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...ance-flight-44...

"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.

The dfefinition of loss of control is not mine. It;s the accepted
aviation industry's and the one used by the NTSB. Here's NASA's
definition:

"Loss-of-control is generally associated with flight outside of the
normal flight
envelope, with nonlinear influences, and with an inability of the
pilot to control the aircraft."



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.



No **** Sherlock. That's my whole point. By the flight
control system dumping the plane in the pilots hands
in the middle of a severe crisis, instead of simply applying
the appropriate measure for maintaining level flight in
the absence of airspeed, it created a huge problem
that resulted in catastrophe that could have been
pervented.






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.


But fog wasn't involved in the loss of control of the A330.








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.





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.


You're very confused here and it's a good thing you're not
an accident investigator. In your mind, being experienced means
you can't make serious mistakes. In reality, experience is
measured in hours flown. You could have a pilot with 20,000
hours screwing up and one with 2,000 hours that performs
the same task fine. The two pilots flying when the crisis
began had a combined 10,000 hours of experience. In
any reasonable persons definition, that is not inexperienced.

And if we just wrote off all accidents as "inexperienced" like
you want to do with this one, we'd never learn from it and
safety would be compromised. I showed you where a Boeing
engineer made a presentation on the problem where pilots
of varying experience levels, are having accidents just like
the Airbus one. Inexplicably doing the wrong thing when
presented with a basic problem like a stall.
And I previously gave you the example of
the worst airline crash in history, where the pilot had
12,000 flight hours and was KLM's chief pilot for the whole
company. Yet, he proceeded to take off without clearance.
In fact, he started to do it twice, the first time the co-pilot
intervened.


And regarding the pilot taking back control of the plane,
again, easy for you to say. Ever been in a plane in
severe turbulance? What happens when you try to
get one pilot out of a seat and yourself back in while
the plane is shaking violently? It was all over in a
few minutes. He made the decision to sit in the jump
seat, observe what was happening, and give
directions. Had he ordered the co-pilot out of the
left seat, you'd be here arguing what was the wrong,
foolish move.







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.

No, you cannot dump the whole operation of the plane
back to the pilots. There is no physical connection from
the pilots joystick to the control surfaces, nor is there
a connection between the throttle levers and the engines.
You still are relying on flight computers all the time,
where if they fail, the plane is going to crash,.



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

You *ARE*!

Don't make stuff up here. All I said was the autopilot, instead
of disengaging and dumping the plane onto the pilots in the
middle of turbulence, a thunderstorm at night, etc, it should
have gone to the Airbus manual procedure to maintain level flight
without airspeed indication. And that is to apply a specific
power setting and pitch setting. I said at the same time it
should have announced what it was doing. Now the
pilots have a chance to sort out what is wrong, figure out
what is happening, while the plane is still in controlled,
normal flight.

Instead, you argue, it should make the pilots fly the damn
thing through turbulence, through a thunderstorm, while
trying to keep the plane flying right and sort through what
has gone wrong.

The results speak for themselves.



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*!

Yes, I sure did advocate that.



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!

I sure did. Now tell me where I ever said in any of that the
autopilot computer should have absolute control. You can't
because I never said any such thing. The pilots were
free to turn off the autopilot at any time as they should be.


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.

Oh, really? Show us where any one of them has said they
think having that A330 go to power and pitch setting instead
of dumping it to the pilots in a case like this is a bad idea. I have
yet to see anyone who disagrees with me on this but you....



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.

Unable to argue with the facts, it's back to more insults.
Sad. I'm beginning to lose respect for you here.

The point here is that to keep the plane safely flying, it
did NOT need the airspeed inputs, which is all that was
lost. Otherwise the aircraft was functioning perfectly.
All it had to do was set the power at X and the pitch at Y.
Capiche?




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.

You don't even understand the basic definition of "loss of control"
and it's distinction from "controlled flight into terrain" and you're
calling me names?

I've read many of your posts here over the years. I've agreed with
many of them. Disagreed with some. But I've never called you an
internet moron. Sad, so sad.



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.



I've been involved with computers for almost as long. And yes,
in the situation under discussion, in the middle of a severe crisis,
I'd want the autopilot to keep the plane flying level while telling
the
pilots what's going on, giving them a chance to figure out what
the problem is, etc.

What exactly is the downside to that? If the pilots feel they need
to, they are free to push one button and disconnect the autopilot
at any time. I guess in your world real men are supposed to react
perfectly
despite being in severe turbulance, a thunderstorm, etc. And if
they don't better that 200 should die, right? I can show you
thousands that have died because of pilot error. How many
can you show us that have died because of computer error?
And why is that computers are trusted to land aircraft everday
in near zero visibility, a very complex, precision feat,
but should not be relied on to keep a plane
flying by just setting power and pitch in an emergency?