Co-pilot error caused AA 587 crash

"Here to there" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 12:32:02 -0700, Peter wrote:
Here to there wrote:

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 18:51:45 GMT, Pete wrote:

But Molin didn't know he was putting more pressure on the tail than
it could bear. Why he didn't -- and who's to blame for that -- is the
subject of a bitter fight between Airbus and American.

I thought that was one of the main advantages of fly-by-wire systems,
to eliminate truly stupid actions of pilots. Sounds like Airbus shares
a lot of blame for the crash. It's like an auto maker made a car that
sheared off its wheels if the steering wheel was turned too quickly,
and the maker's response was to tell drivers, "Don't do that!"


Ummmmmm... so what exactly do you think will happen to a car if you
turn the wheel rapidly while driving at more than a snail's pace?

If it exceeds the available traction of the tires then I expect the
car to start sliding and possibly spin out. As long as the car
doesn't hit anything then I expect loss of tire rubber to be the
most serious damage. Of course if there is an impact (even with
something like a curb), then there are likely to be much more
severe consequences.


Except that's not the way it frequently happens in real life.
Rapid steering wheel movement at speed is one way that people
manage to flip cars, even when they haven't hit obstacles or
gone off the road. Around here, the tow trucks do a
land office business in the winter when the local students
decide to do donuts in the parking lots, and flip themselves. ;-)

Simply not true. Automobiles will not turn over on flat pavement unless
they hit something. It has been a law for decades.

But to start another flame war, maybe AA has a culture problem of
ignoring manufacturers' advice. Remember that it was an AA DC-10 that
lost an engine at ORD, and AA's maintenance practice of removing engines
with a forklift was the culprit, contrary to McDonnell Douglas' advice.
Pete

Perhaps it's not coincidence that AA is responsible for both the
deadliest and the second deadliest airliner crashes in US history (DC-10
in Chicago, A300 in NYC).
I suspect the "culture problem" may not be too far off the mark. It's a
"we know best" thing. A degree of arrogance perhaps?
Arrogance? From a company led at one time by Bob Crandall? Surely not...


Presto...I've always avoided them
like the plague.

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 11:38:58 +1000, Sylvia Else wrote:



devil wrote:

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 18:12:20 -0700, Jay Beckman wrote:



Is that due to the crash at the Paris Airshow several years back?

IIRC, the pilot commanded a flight attitude in the landing config that the
software wouldn't allow and that led to the aircraft settling into the
trees.


Only crash at a Paris airshow that I know of was of a Tu144. No Airbus
ever crashed in Paris.



I remember the incident though. An A320 full of passengers doing
something it shouldn't have at an air show, and ending up descending
into trees at the end of the runway.

Aircraft destroyed, but incredibly, only one fatality.

You may remember an incident (accident actually). But if you remember it
was in Paris, you are remembering wrong.

Jose wrote:

An A320 full of passengers doing something it shouldn't have at an air show

What was an A320 doing full of passengers at an airshow?

Air France said it was OK.


Graham

Sylvia Else wrote:
I think that pilot was just asking the aircraft to do something that was
beyond its capabilities. I seem to remember he claimed that the engines
didn't spin up when commanded, but that was disputed. I never read the
report, though.

That accident actually has a lot of commonality with the Air Canada flying
skidoo accident at Fredericton.

Plane put at low altutude with engines at low speed. In both cases, pilots
decide to rev up engines to regain altutude (for the airbus, pilot was just
showing off, for the skidoos, the pilot aborted landing). In both cases,
engines took some time to spin up and produce necessary thrust (nature of
turbine engines).

In the case of the flying skidoo, because of no FBW, the pilot stalled the
aircraft as he tried to climb above trees, and it fell in the snow and
traveled in the forest until it hit a tree. In the case of the 320, the
computer didn't allow the pilot to raise the nose, avoiding a deadly stall.
But the computer didn't know trees were ahead, so plane traveled into the trees.

Had the pilot increased thrust earlier, the plane might have regained
suffiencty speed to be able to start climbing without stalling and nobody
would have noticed anything.

Sylvia Else wrote:
I remember the incident though. An A320 full of passengers doing
something it shouldn't have at an air show, and ending up descending
into trees at the end of the runway.

Aircraft was not full of passengers. It was a demo flight with just a few guests.

The aircraft didn't "descend into the trees", it just wasn't able to climb
over the trees due to its initially low speed and low altitude.

nobody wrote:

Sylvia Else wrote:

I remember the incident though. An A320 full of passengers doing
something it shouldn't have at an air show, and ending up descending
into trees at the end of the runway.


Aircraft was not full of passengers. It was a demo flight with just a few guests.

The aircraft didn't "descend into the trees", it just wasn't able to climb
over the trees due to its initially low speed and low altitude.

Link to video of the A300 into trees
http://www.aviationexplorer.com/movi...intoTREES.mpeg

devil wrote:

You may remember an incident (accident actually). But if you remember it
was in Paris, you are remembering wrong.

Have I said it was in Paris? I think all I've done is recognise a
particular occurence with an A320 that another poster thought occurred
in Paris, and discussed the issues of the occurence rather than
uninteresting details of geography.

I think I was in Paris, though.

Sylvia.

Sylvia Else wrote:
There have been incidents where airliners have been stressed well
beyound their design limits to recover from extreme upsets, and the
passengers and crew have survived to fly another day,

"design limits" is the real keyword here. And it applies to bridges as well as buildings.

The empire state building was built with tons of extra strength into it
because at the time, the knowledge of structural aspects of materials was not
very good. So you end up with a big fat heavy building that is very strong.
More recent buildings are built with much better knowledge of materials and
thus are built with more exact strength, much lighter materials and much
thinner structure.

Similarly, modern aircraft are built with much better knowledge of material
properties as well as aerodynamics. So the difference between the stated
limits and the actual physical limits are far less than planes built in the
1960s. So breaking the "limits" today may in fact be far more dangerous than
breaking the much less well known limits of the 1960s.



The A300 crash is a perfect example of why FBW is a good thing. had there been
FBW on that system, the pilot could have commanded the rudder to the max, and
the computer would have ensured that it only moved as far as was safe,
allowing pilot to concentrate on flying the aircraft instead of guessing what
the limits would be in that flight regime.

From what I have been told, the 320 330 and 340s do not have computer
authority on the rudder, one reason being that the rudder is so rarely used in
flight. (AA being the odd airline out).

However, I suspect that the 380 and 350 will have computer authority on the rudder.

Pooh Bear wrote:
You're not a friend of John Tarver are you ? He insisted that rudders on big
jets were *purely* yaw dampers.

Isn't he the one who was certain planes have slaps, a combination of slats and
flaps ?

:-) :-)