Hard landing with a Boeing767

[JohnMitchell 14]

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If the automation shuts itself off, even with a light or chime to indicate the switch, there's no guarantee that the pilots will pick up on that.

That's how that Eastern L-1011 went down in the everglades. Three man cockpit and no one heard the autopilot horn when they kicked it off by mistake.

[sacex250 0]

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What you're describing is exactly what brought down Air France 447. The computers lost the ability to control the airplane when the pitot tubes iced over, so the computers gave full control to the pilots

No, that's different. What I described was a system where the pilots would have to enable the switch from automation to full manual. That step is critical in that is ensures the pilots know the current configuration of the AC.

If the automation shuts itself off, even with a light or chime to indicate the switch, there's no guarantee that the pilots will pick up on that. You have to figure that the shit is hitting the fan is the computers give up, so there's a chance that the pilots might not see the indication of the change.

If the pilot has to take action to make it happen, there's no chance that they'll be uninformed.

That's like saying that if a Ferrari driver turns off the traction control then there's no way he'll spin out and wrap it around a telephone pole.

If you start giving pilots a way to shut off safety systems then, you know what, they will! Remember the Northwest DC-9 crash in Detroit where the pilots shut off the flap/throttle configuration alarms and then proceeded to takeoff without the flaps set? At least one little girl survived the crash.

In the A320 crash, the computers did nothing to cause the crash, they performed exactly as they should have. It was how the airplane was flown by the pilots that caused the crash.

If the same maneuver had been flown in a 737, the pilots would have had a stick shaker to warn them that they were flying too slow, and if they continued to fly slower, the stick pusher would have fired to force the nose down to prevent a stall although it also would have caused them to crash to the runway.

The 737 pilots would have had more incentive to avoid a stall by not flying slow. The A320 pilots weren't afraid of stalling, so they used up all their available control authority flying slow, but then they had nothing left when they tried to climb.

It's all been said before, no sense repeating it here.

[sundevil777 93]

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flight ANA965 of All Nippon Airways landing HARD, fuselage shows signs of torsion...

I'd say that is failure by buckling, not torsion.

Probably a very exciting ending to their trip.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[sacex250 0]

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What you're describing is exactly what brought down Air France 447. The computers lost the ability to control the airplane when the pitot tubes iced over, so the computers gave full control to the pilots. The problem was the first officer didn't realize that the flight computers weren't providing stall protection anymore, so he just kept pulling back on the stick instead of nosing over to recover from the stall that he was causing.

Thanks for the great example of automation confusion.

I think it's a great example of pilot incompetence. The other pilot understood what configuration the aircraft was in, what he couldn't figure out was why the airplane was stalled. He didn't know that the incompetent first officer was the one causing the stall. If an airplane is shouting STALL, STALL, STALL at you in a loud clear cockpit voice, it should be pretty apparent that the person flying the plane should be dropping the nose, unfortunately, the first officer was a moron.

It's all been said before, no sense repeating it here.

[sundevil777 93]

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And then there was the one a few years ago where the airbus computer wouldn't go off the circling pattern mode over the UK. The almost ran her dry before the AB engineers came up with a quick in flight re-boot that allowed manual flight again.

I'd like to find a reference to that incident.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[lawrocket 3]

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He didn't know that the incompetent first officer was the one causing the stall.

Both of the bus drivers knew that the autopilot disconnected. The problem was that neither was trained on how to drive the bus without a reliable airspeed indicator OR even how to manually fly it in those conditions.

So when driver Bonin took controls, he pulled back and started a climb. A warning went off about leavign the programmed altitude (eventually climibing 2500 feet). Then a stall warning went off (it would go off 75 times before impact.)

By then they had gotten control, but Bonin pulled back again. The flight computers were in alternate law, where the pilot could stall the plane. Problem is - pilot didn't know he could stall the plane. he went for a Take-Off -Go-Around parameter, which is what he was used to. Problem is it doesn't work like that at 37k feet.

By now, the angle of attack inputs in the plane were not accepted as valid because the forward speed was so low. And there was no clue that Bonin was holding the stick back. They didn't figure this out until they were at 2k feet. Too late.

The problem was that there was a pilot who wasn't trained on what to do if the computers aren't working. The computers disregarded valid data because it wasn't supposed to happen.

Such a situation is king of like the Gimli Glider - a new glass cockpit 767 that did the work for you. The system measured fuel usage and was so reliable that nobody even bothered to flight test the performance of the plane if it ran dry of fuel. Solid piloting helped make a serious screw-up a non-casualty event.

Pilots now are reliant on the computer systems. Which is fine until the fit hits the shan. CRM is a great tool, but flying her is getting to be a skill that is being lost.

As Wendy said, there are some trade-offs here. But we're also looking at events where malfunctions cause pilots to think of calling tech support instead of thinking Pitch, Power, Trim and flying the bird.

AF 447 is an example of this. Automation confusion. A pilot knew he couldn't stall the plane because the computers wouldn't let him. He knew it for over three minutes all the way down.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[theonlyski 3]

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I hadn't heard of that one 'til now but I've seen to many other very scary incidents. If that system is so great, shouldn't we have computers flying our parachutes?

Computers don't land parachutes very softly.


However, it is kinda funny to watch one hook it in.

"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

[sundevil777 93]

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The problem was that there was a pilot who wasn't trained on what to do if the computers aren't working.

I don't believe that. Just because pilots don't do something correctly doesn't mean they never got the training, albeit likely not enough of the training taken seriously.

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Such a situation is king of like the Gimli Glider - a new glass cockpit 767 that did the work for you. The system measured fuel usage and was so reliable that nobody even bothered to flight test the performance of the plane if it ran dry of fuel. Solid piloting helped make a serious screw-up a non-casualty event.

For that event it was only the flight management computer that was measuring fuel usage from a starting fuel load that was input manually (in the wrong units of course). The fuel quantity indication system was inoperative because it was in fact not reliable (accurate) enough at the time of the introduction of the 767 to service. That's right, fuel quantity gauges were not part of the minimum equipment list.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[davelepka 4]

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If you start giving pilots a way to shut off safety systems then, you know what, they will! Remember the Northwest DC-9 crash in Detroit where the pilots shut off the flap/throttle configuration alarms and then proceeded to takeoff without the flaps set? At least one little girl survived the crash.

Which is why it would need to be more than just pushing a button. If you have to puch a button, then gournd the AC and call MX to come in and re-set the 'easy' button, then go through a review with upper management where you explain to them why you pushed the button, pilots are going to be far less likely to push the botton unless they really need it.

That's why I likened it to declaring an emergency. It's a big pain in the ass for a ton of people when a pilot declares an emergency (we're talking airlines here). Every single time an emergency was declared, it wasn't declared at the first hint of a problem, it was after the pilots checked the book, called HQ for a work-around or solution, and then figured out they need to declare an emergency.

The 'easy' button would be the same. Always there, always available, but a last resort.

[sacex250 0]

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If you start giving pilots a way to shut off safety systems then, you know what, they will! Remember the Northwest DC-9 crash in Detroit where the pilots shut off the flap/throttle configuration alarms and then proceeded to takeoff without the flaps set? At least one little girl survived the crash.

Which is why it would need to be more than just pushing a button. If you have to puch a button, then gournd the AC and call MX to come in and re-set the 'easy' button, then go through a review with upper management where you explain to them why you pushed the button, pilots are going to be far less likely to push the botton unless they really need it.

That's why I likened it to declaring an emergency. It's a big pain in the ass for a ton of people when a pilot declares an emergency (we're talking airlines here). Every single time an emergency was declared, it wasn't declared at the first hint of a problem, it was after the pilots checked the book, called HQ for a work-around or solution, and then figured out they need to declare an emergency.

The 'easy' button would be the same. Always there, always available, but a last resort.

Your "Easy Button" wouldn't have done anything to prevent the crash of the A320, can you name an actual crash where it would have helped?

Declaring an emergency isn't nearly the big deal that you think it is. Your characterization of it is a bit overly dramatic, really, "call HQ first"? It's the emergency itself that gets investigated, whether or not an emergency is ever declared.

It's all been said before, no sense repeating it here.

[sacex250 0]

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The problem was that there was a pilot who wasn't trained on what to do if the computers aren't working.

I don't believe that. Just because pilots don't do something correctly doesn't mean they never got the training, albeit likely not enough of the training taken seriously.

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Such a situation is king of like the Gimli Glider - a new glass cockpit 767 that did the work for you. The system measured fuel usage and was so reliable that nobody even bothered to flight test the performance of the plane if it ran dry of fuel. Solid piloting helped make a serious screw-up a non-casualty event.

For that event it was only the flight management computer that was measuring fuel usage from a starting fuel load that was input manually (in the wrong units of course). The fuel quantity indication system was inoperative because it was in fact not reliable (accurate) enough at the time of the introduction of the 767 to service. That's right, fuel quantity gauges were not part of the minimum equipment list.

The fuel quantity system was part of the minimum equipment list, but was inadvertently left inoperative by a maintenance worker who was working on the system. The flight crew decided to continue the flight because they thought that maintenance had authorized the flight.

The real problem however was that an incorrect mathematical conversion between metric and imperial units meant that the plane was carrying 22,300 lbs. of fuel (10,115 kg) instead of the 22,300 kg of fuel it needed, less than half.

It's all been said before, no sense repeating it here.

[nanook 1]

I noticed that during the level flight and on its way to the trees, the flaps were retracting. Were they being stowed too early?

Edit:

Nevermind, the flaps weren't moving at all.

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[sundevil777 93]

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The problem was that there was a pilot who wasn't trained on what to do if the computers aren't working.

I don't believe that. Just because pilots don't do something correctly doesn't mean they never got the training, albeit likely not enough of the training taken seriously.

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Such a situation is king of like the Gimli Glider - a new glass cockpit 767 that did the work for you. The system measured fuel usage and was so reliable that nobody even bothered to flight test the performance of the plane if it ran dry of fuel. Solid piloting helped make a serious screw-up a non-casualty event.

For that event it was only the flight management computer that was measuring fuel usage from a starting fuel load that was input manually (in the wrong units of course). The fuel quantity indication system was inoperative because it was in fact not reliable (accurate) enough at the time of the introduction of the 767 to service. That's right, fuel quantity gauges were not part of the minimum equipment list.

The fuel quantity system was part of the minimum equipment list, but was inadvertently left inoperative by a maintenance worker who was working on the system. The flight crew decided to continue the flight because they thought that maintenance had authorized the flight.

The real problem however was that an incorrect mathematical conversion between metric and imperial units meant that the plane was carrying 22,300 lbs. of fuel (10,115 kg) instead of the 22,300 kg of fuel it needed, less than half.

I see now that you're correct - maintenance errors left the fuel quantity system inop. The crew operations guys I worked with on the 777 said that the fuel quantity indication system was inop on the introduction to service of the 767, and was not part of the minimum equip list on introduction. Obviously, that had changed by the time of the Gimli incident a year later.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[lawrocket 3]

Correct. But it was based upon overconfidence in the system. No need for a fuel gauge? Who else would have ever flown a plane without a fuel gauge? But on a new 767 with all those computers?

THIS, I think, is a problem. Nobody had ever even considered that it would ever run out of fuel. The 767 had never even been tested for powerless flight characteristics because it wasn't supposed to happen. It was fool-proof.

Compare it to autopilot being disengaged and a plane stalling. Nope - the plane won't let you stall it. It did. This is whee I am seeing what I PERSONALLY think are problems. Reliance on the technology has made many things better, quicker, more efficient.

But the biggest problem in any of these issues is the one you didn't think of. These new planes have far more failure modes than those in the past.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Rookie120 0]

No need for a fuel gauge? Who else would have ever flown a plane without a fuel gauge? ***

It's done more than you think. If the system is faulting we can still send the plane out but we have to "stick" the tanks to get an actual fuel load and there are some other restrictions for us to send it with a FQIS INOP.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!

[Rookie120 0]

OUCH! Not the first time and wont be the last time this has happened. Alitalia had one at Newark where the Captain landed nose first and buckled the fuselage. Call the Boeing recovery team and they can fix it. It will be up to the insurance company thought to decided if its worth to fix or write the thing off and scrap it. Thats a lot of damage though.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!