WingNews logo WingNews
top | item 10012968

(no title)

gnaffle | 10 years ago

> Air France 440 was also shrouded in mystery (but nowhere near this degree), and turned out to be very poor airmanship by one pilot.

It was poor airmanship by two pilots (and other factors, including the feedback mechanisms and the lack of training for this particular high altitude scenario).

discuss

order

encoderer|10 years ago

My understanding is that the pilot in the left chair didn't realize that the pilot in the right chair kept pulling his stick back. In boeing planes, the sticks move together, so that wouldn't be possible. And the pilot in the right chair clearly didn't understand that in the alternate law the fly by wire system was running in, his stick movements put the plane at risk.

mikeash|10 years ago

Yes, it was a completely incorrect reaction by a single pilot, combined with a catastrophically bad design for the controls, which caused that crash. It is completely insane to me that anyone would think that averaging inputs from two pilots and providing no feedback would be even remotely a good idea.

gnaffle|10 years ago

That's correct (even though he did mention "watch the height" and could have followed up on that). If I remember correctly, even the left chair pilot also applied nose-up inputs at some point in time.