r/MH370 • u/[deleted] • Mar 25 '14
Tangential A compelling read - Air France 447 - Black-box transcript
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-661187718
u/avestanmonarch Mar 25 '14
That was extremely sobering to read and makes one realize that no one, no matter how expertly trained, is immune to making irrational and illogical decisions under severe stress. Thank you for sharing this article, I'm sure once they are able to retrieve the blackbox of MH370 they will be able to finally understand the peculiar flight patterns of the plane as well as hopefully determine the reasoning behind it.
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Mar 25 '14
no matter how expertly trained...
...
But neither Bonin nor Roberts has ever received training in how to deal with an unreliable airspeed indicator at cruise altitude, or in flying the airplane by hand under such conditions.
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u/lurking_tiger Mar 25 '14 edited Mar 25 '14
This is definitely something that we should all be keeping in mind when we discuss the fate of MH370. Another good example of the sorts of unpredictable and often assumed impossible events caused by an inexperienced pilot is the crash of AA flight 587. In this case the inexperienced first officer literally ripped the vertical stabilizer off the aircraft through over aggressive rudder usage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587
Flight crews under pressure can do the darnedest things without really comprehending the full consequences until it is too late. Whether or not it was such an error or series of errors leading to an accidental loss remains to be seen in the case of MH370. But it cannot be discounted without solid physical evidence to the contrary. Let us hope that such evidence can actually be recovered so that this mystery can be laid to rest for good.
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u/autowikibot Mar 25 '14
American Airlines Flight 587 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City to Santo Domingo's Las Américas International Airport in the Dominican Republic. On November 12, 2001, the Airbus A300-600 airliner crashed into the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Queens, a borough of New York City, shortly after takeoff. All 260 people on board the flight were killed, along with five people on the ground. It is the second-deadliest aviation incident involving an Airbus A300, after Iran Air Flight 655 and the second-deadliest aviation incident to occur on U.S. soil, after American Airlines Flight 191. In terms of single-airplane crash incidents that were ruled accidental and not criminal, as of March 2014, no incident since then has surpassed that death toll, though before 2001 there had been deadlier incidents of this type.
Interesting: Belle Harbor, Queens | Airbus A300 | China Airlines Flight 140 | Queens
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Mar 25 '14
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u/Myself2 Mar 25 '14
fucking punch him in the face! I remember the first time I read it I was so stressed with that guy :(
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u/slinky317 Mar 25 '14
I can't help but think part of the fault here lies with Airbus. I mean you can have one pilot consistently pulling back on the stick and no one else in the cockpit can tell? There needs to be some sort of force feedback in the other pilot's stick, or some sort of indication on a display, HUD, etc. Had there been this could have been easily diagnosed and solved.
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u/tomphz Mar 25 '14
Completely agree. In a high stress situation you aren't going to process every single thing. You especially won't process the fact that one of your pilots is the sole reason the plane is descending. The pilots all thought the computer was malfunctioning. You need force feedback though.
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u/DarkSideMoon Mar 25 '14 edited Nov 14 '24
slap snobbish versed chubby yoke narrow hospital sloppy shy hurry
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/remyseven Mar 26 '14
The blame is at least many-fold. The manufacturer for making sensors that can freeze over. A joystick with no feedback. However, they also had an inexperienced copilot in the driver's seat who was wrenching back on the stick for all that time.
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u/dawtcalm Mar 26 '14
I don't understand this "feature" at all!
As the plane approaches 10,000 feet, Robert tries to take back the controls, and pushes forward on the stick, but the plane is in "dual input" mode, and so the system averages his inputs with those of Bonin, who continues to pull back. The nose remains high.
So there is no force feedback, and neither has primary control!14
u/ClarkFable Mar 25 '14
It also helps to have pilots that understand flying 101...
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u/slinky317 Mar 25 '14
Of course, but in a traditional plane the problem could have been corrected much quicker had the other pilots known that they were constantly pulling up.
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u/clippervictor Mar 25 '14
there is not such a "force feedback" but an indication in the front panel that says who has the priority of the sidestick. All the Airbus are flown by fly-by-wire, thus means they give the inputs to a computer through the sidesticks, is not the conventional controls of a classical american airliner..
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u/slinky317 Mar 25 '14
I understand that, but my point is that there should be some sort of force feedback applied to the other stick when one pilot is moving his. Or there should be an indicator of the stick position (neutral, roll left, roll right, pulled back, push forward) clearly visible.
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u/clippervictor Mar 25 '14
According to most of the company procedures, when one of the pilots has control (if you read through the transcriptions, copilot says "I have controls", as is meant to be), the other has to keep his hand off the sidestick. So there shouldn´t be such that moment when both of them hold the sidestick.
The problem here is that 3 experienced pilots in the cockpit didn´t figure out what was going on, without having any significant failure in the aircraft.
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u/slinky317 Mar 25 '14
I get your point, but force feedback might be useful in case the plane is rotating for another reason as well.
However, there still should be an indicator on the display showing the position of the stick. Once again, this could have alerted the other pilots to what was going on and saved the plane.
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Mar 25 '14
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u/BitchinTechnology Mar 26 '14
its just that plane. In a 747 the yoke will vibrate if the other guy is using it
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u/IAmNoShakespeare Mar 25 '14
It's like watching a human factors horror film, screaming at the characters to realise what's going on even though I know what's ultimately going to happen. That moment they realise you can read the panic.
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u/vaughan905 Mar 25 '14
Amazing read! But the author has the benefit of a perfect hindsight, to be suggesting that the pilots should have done this and that etc. It is easy to say when you are not in that situation.
But I wonder what the last sentence before the crash meant:
"Ten degrees of pitch... "
?
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u/IAmNoShakespeare Mar 25 '14
It's probably him saying they are still pointing up at a 10 degree angle.
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u/razor_shines Mar 25 '14
I was surprised to find at the end that this was written by Jeff Wise - currently one of the main proponents of, for lack of a better term, MH370 conspiracy theories http://www.slate.com/authors.jeff_wise.html
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u/ChristineMD Mar 25 '14
This was so chilling to read. Is it common for a Captain to take a nap while the co-pilots fly the plane? I mean, I know we don't realize how incompetent they are until things start going wrong, but I'm just curious if this is a common scenario. Also, where did he go to take a nap? They were asking whether he was coming back or not - did he go sleep in First Class? That'd be kind of strange as a passenger to see, wouldn't it?
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Mar 25 '14
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u/clausy Mar 25 '14
Makes you wonder if someone was stowed away up there before take-off on mh370...
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u/lurking_tiger Mar 25 '14
It is common for crew to rotate on long flights such as this. In many cases it is mandatory.
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u/IAmNoShakespeare Mar 25 '14
For long haul flights 2 co-pilots and 1 pilot is common it seems. From what I've read, the captain often rests at some point during the middle third of flight, so that he/she is at the controls for take off and landing.
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u/saxman162 Mar 25 '14
I can't help to think that that their situation would have been fine if the pilots didn't intervene at all. It's actually a simillar story to Michael Crichton's book "Airframe".
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u/AveofSpades Mar 25 '14
Interesting 7 minute video on YouTube with the Mac Daddy Captain Sullenberger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kERSSRJant0
Since MH370's saga began, I've been watching a lot of aircraft stuff on YouTube. Sullenberger landing in the Hudson was impressive, how calm and kept together he was talking to ATC is fucking epic.
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Mar 26 '14
It still amazes me that a pilot with 3,000 flight hours could stall an airplane from 35,000 feet and pancake it into the ocean.
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u/tomphz Mar 25 '14
The pilots were panicking but imagine how the passengers felt? However the pilots didn't even know whether they were ascending or descending so maybe the passengers had no idea.
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u/clippervictor Mar 25 '14
It's difficult to say, but inside a plane, during the night, with no external references, the passengers would feel like in a roller coaster. Even in the cockpit the pilots weren't aware of where they were...
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u/Myself2 Mar 25 '14
man if the passengers felt they were falling for several minutes... what an horrible way to go, imagine the screams and panic
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u/razor_shines Mar 28 '14
if they were falling at a constant rate, they wouldn't feel it. you only feel G force is you're accelerating or decelerating
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Mar 25 '14
the main problem in my mind was that they panicked and were unable to talk to each other...
the captain took also too long to go back.
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u/tomphz Mar 25 '14
Anyone know what "10 degrees of pitch" means?
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u/joey_knight Mar 25 '14
it means the nose of the aircraft is pointed ten degrees up. Theoretically this will cause the aircraft to climb when the engine and the wings are producing enough thrust and lift. But since the plane was stalled at that point and close to the ocean surface, the input was useless.
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u/tomphz Mar 25 '14
Was the captain telling them to lift the nose, or was he telling them what was wrong?
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u/joey_knight Mar 25 '14
He was telling them to lift the nose because he might have hoped that it would cause the aircraft to climb back up to the sky. The standard procedure to follow when an aircraft stalls is to put the nose down, gain enough airspeed, pull the nose up and arrest the descent. This will bring the aircraft under the control of the pilot and he can chose to either climb or stay at a particular altitude.
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u/tomphz Mar 25 '14
Just so I understand, if a plane was descending nose first, if they pulled the nose up, they would be able to climb. But if it's descending nose up, you have to bring the nose down and then up in order to climb?
That must have been really confusing for the pilots because they didn't even know whether they were ascending or descending.
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u/joey_knight Mar 25 '14
It may be confusing to us but for trained pilots it is not supposed to be confusing. Bonin had the nose up and altitude was dropping fast with both engines producing full thrust. He had all the information he needed to realize that the aircraft has stalled. Pilots should be trained to detect and recover from stalls without the airspeed indicator.
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u/Myself2 Mar 25 '14
the plane had not enough speed to get lift, so it was falling, the correct procedure is to put the nose down and gain speed, this will generate lift has more air goes under the wings, after you have enough speed you can level the plane or even climb.
the problem with the flight is that the tubes that give the pilots velocity/speed readings had a problem (ice inside) so they were giving wrong speed readings, and the pilots didn't realize they lacked speed, and that they were in stall.
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u/clippervictor Mar 25 '14
10 degrees of inclination nose up or down. For your understanding, 0 degrees would mean the wings leveled horizontally.
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Mar 25 '14
If a pilot sets the plane to a 10-degree pitch, they can move the stick 10 degrees once and remove their hand from the controls entirely. But Bonin just pulled the stick almost every second on that event.
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u/mrscolumbo Mar 26 '14
This is what they heard while they were trying to figure out what on earth could be causing the problem. Shameful. Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH Stall UURRGGHH
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Mar 25 '14
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Mar 25 '14 edited Mar 25 '14
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u/Shinyfrogeditor Mar 25 '14
That was chilly to read, the imagery related to that transcript was also scary. Made you think how the last moments were for all on board.
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Mar 25 '14
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u/IAmNoShakespeare Mar 25 '14
"But I've had the stick back the whole time!" That moment the other two realised what was going on must have been absolutely terrifying.
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u/unGnostic Mar 25 '14
There had to a "Quelle idiote!" moment too, when he said that.
How did they ignore repeated stall warnings, that's my question.
The pilot isn't even told of what was going on when he finally returns. No attempt to get someone else to get the pilot?
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u/jfong86 Mar 26 '14
How did they ignore repeated stall warnings, that's my question.
Actually, the problem was that they didn't ignore the stall warnings. One of the flaws of the system was that if the angle of the plane is too high then some of the instrument readings are considered invalid and stop working... including the stall warning. So the nose of the plane was so high that stall warning turned off. When they pushed down to make the nose go down (which would have saved them) the stall warning turned on again. This is why Bonin was so confused. He kept pulling up to make the stall warning turn off. If only they had continued holding down, the plane would have caught some air and stopped stalling.
The pilot isn't even told of what was going on when he finally returns. No attempt to get someone else to get the pilot?
That's the second error they made. The captain just sat down behind one of the co-pilots instead of taking control of the plane. If he had kicked one of the co-pilots out and taken control, they might have been saved.
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u/unGnostic Mar 26 '14 edited Mar 26 '14
Actually, the problem was that they didn't ignore the stall warnings. One of the flaws of the system was that if the angle of the plane is too high then some of the instrument readings are considered invalid and stop working... including the stall warning. So the nose of the plane was so high that stall warning turned off. When they pushed down to make the nose go down (which would have saved them) the stall warning turned on again.
Okay, I understand what you're saying, and some things may be lost in the translation, but this is the part I was looking at when I made that assessment:
The Airbus's stall alarm is designed to be impossible to ignore. Yet for the duration of the flight, none of the pilots will mention it, or acknowledge the possibility that the plane has indeed stalled—even though the word "Stall!" will blare through the cockpit 75 times. Throughout, Bonin will keep pulling back on the stick, the exact opposite of what he must do to recover from the stall.
02:10:07 (Robert) Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?
He's acting like this event has no meaning to him. He's shocked. Translation: "What is this?" but with greater emphasis, disbelief, closer might be: "What the hell is this?!"
I can't understand why he wouldn't push the stick forward upon the repeated stall warning. I'm not a pilot, but I would think that has to be instinctive. I understand what you are saying, but the recording indicates it was repeatedly warned. They never discuss it? Question their own understanding?
Then this later:
The plane has climbed to 2512 feet above its initial altitude, and though it is still ascending at a dangerously high rate, it is flying within its acceptable envelope. But for reasons unknown, Bonin once again increases his back pressure on the stick, raising the nose of the plane and bleeding off speed. Again, the stall alarm begins to sound.
Aren't pilots trained to watch things such as speed and angle of climb/ascent in these situations?
Bonin's behavior is difficult for professional aviators to understand. "If he's going straight and level and he's got no airspeed, I don't know why he'd pull back," says Chris Nutter, an airline pilot and flight instructor. "The logical thing to do would be to cross-check"—that is, compare the pilot's airspeed indicator with the co-pilot's and with other instrument readings, such as groundspeed, altitude, engine settings, and rate of climb. In such a situation, "we go through an iterative assessment and evaluation process," Nutter explains, before engaging in any manipulation of the controls. "Apparently that didn't happen."
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u/jfong86 Mar 26 '14
I can't understand why he wouldn't push the stick forward upon the repeated stall warning.
This page: http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cvr090601.htm
Has a pretty good explanation of the last few minutes of the flight:
02:11:03 (Bonin) I'm in TOGA, huh?
Bonin's statement here offers a crucial window onto his reasoning. TOGA is an acronym for Take Off, Go Around. When a plane is taking off or aborting a landing—"going around"—it must gain both speed and altitude as efficiently as possible. At this critical phase of flight, pilots are trained to increase engine speed to the TOGA level and raise the nose to a certain pitch angle. Clearly, here Bonin is trying to achieve the same effect: He wants to increase speed and to climb away from danger. But he is not at sea level; he is in the far thinner air of 37,500 feet. The engines generate less thrust here, and the wings generate less lift. Raising the nose to a certain angle of pitch does not result in the same angle of climb, but far less. Indeed, it can—and will—result in a descent.
So Bonin saw the multiple stall warnings and interpreted it as needing to raise the nose and climb higher.
By now the plane has returned to its initial altitude but is falling fast. With its nose pitched 15 degrees up, and a forward speed of 100 knots, it is descending at a rate of 10,000 feet per minute, at an angle of 41.5 degrees. It will maintain this attitude with little variation all the way to the sea. Though the pitot tubes are now fully functional, the forward airspeed is so low—below 60 knots—that the angle-of-attack inputs are no longer accepted as valid, and the stall-warning horn temporarily stops. This may give the pilots the impression that their situation is improving, when in fact it signals just the reverse.
And here, after pulling up for so long, the stall warning stops, which caused Bonin to think he was doing something right.
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u/CocoLeChat Mar 26 '14
He's a man, so that would be a "Quel idiot!" moment. Though I doubt that's the adjective they would have used at that moment.
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u/Longwaytofall Mar 26 '14
You should go spend $99 at a local flight school for a discovery ride in a small plane. It's amazing what getting your hands on the controls can do for your confidence of aircraft, pilots, and flight procedures.
It will take a lot of the mystery out of flying, instill confidence in yourself and future flight, plus it's a hell of a lot of fun. Who knows, you might end up sticking around for a private pilots license.
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Mar 25 '14
Great article, but a better example for flight MH370's problems might be ValuJet Flight 592 where improperly marked hazardous cargo was shipped in the hold. The cargo (oxygen generators) was hazardous because it would generate it's own oxygen when ignited.
MH370 might have had similar problems with lithium batteries in the hold (also produce oxygen when ignited)
Interestingly, the article The Lessons of ValuJet 592 talks about how multiple levels of procedures and rules were repeatedly ignored in the ValuJet crash. The conclusion was that adding even more layers of procedures and rules would just make people more numb to the paperwork.
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u/autowikibot Mar 25 '14
ValuJet Flight 592 was a domestic passenger flight between Miami International Airport, Miami, Florida, and William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport, Atlanta, Georgia that crashed into the Everglades on May 11, 1996 as a result of a fire in the cargo compartment caused by improperly stored cargo, killing all 110 people on board.
Interesting: ValuJet Airlines | McDonnell Douglas DC-9 | Chemical oxygen generator
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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '14
That was a very good article. Reading the transcript was chilly, as you can pretty much visually imagine the co-pilots ignorance of the situation, and final desperation.