Originally Posted by DoubleWasp
So much insight. Sorry to make you keep banging away at the keys, but it really helps to have a real world professional translation of what I was reading. Reading a lot of these reports tends to bring up a lot of questions. Reading the answers tends to bring up even more, but you've explained it perfectly.
One more question. I promise.
What's the exact story with AF 447? I read the report and the flight recorder transcript, and I kind of understand what happened here. But what's the possible rationale for the pilot literally just riding the plane with the stick pulled back all the way down into the ocean? I see it says that at one point, the plane slowed to nearly 60 MPH. Was it just sheer panic? Was the instrument failure really just so severe that he couldn't tell that he was stalling so bad he was darn near coming to a stop and plummeting? I mean, I'm playing Monday morning QB here of course, but wouldn't his SOG been suuuuuuuuper slow at that point, and altimeter giving away a full on plummet down the chute? It seems like when the third officer came into the cockpit, he immediately knew that the plane was completely doomed. So what was going on with the crew on duty (Other than unknowingly fighting a secret control war with eachother?) ?
The picture I'm getting here is that most plane crashes are basically Murphy's Law situations where it all goes wrong at the the same time. As you said, with one fault removed, no crash.
Ah, AF 447...fascinating story.
Some good discussion several years ago in this thread:
https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/2249217/1
I covered it again, a bit, in earlier posts in this thread.
Simply put: the system failed. It gave the pilots bad data, and then complete control of the airplane. They were startled, and didn't respond logically, or calmly as the airplane filled the cockpit with alarms and warning lights. They responded as they were trained.
And it didn't work.
But when the airplane started giving them good data, the results were so incredible (60 knots? That CANNOT BE right!) that the crew didn't believe their instruments.
It's fascinating because it's hard to understand if you're not a pilot, and you're here, looking at your keyboard, under 1G of acceleration, and at 0 knots, and no one's life is depending on your responses or on your decisions.
While they were flying on a dark night, through thunderstorms, when everything stopped making sense. They applied normal procedures:
1. Overspeed exists, the instruments say so, so, pull power and raise the nose, right?
2. Airplane is descending, so add power and raise the nose.
3. Airplane is stalled, stall recovery is full backstick and TOGA power.
And that airplane hit the water with full nose up (backstick) elevator trim, in a full/deep stall, at full engine power.