Looks like the crew were almost literally paralysed with fear:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/print-this/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877?page=all

Wow. that is amazing reading. Gripping and terrifying.

Tragic. I heard about this a few months ago but could not believe what I was told.

Unlike the control yokes of a Boeing jetliner, the side sticks on an Airbus are “asynchronous”—that is, they move independently. “If the person in the right seat is pulling back on the joystick, the person in the left seat doesn’t feel it,” says Dr. David Esser, a professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “Their stick doesn’t move just because the other one does, unlike the old-fashioned mechanical systems like you find in small planes, where if you turn one, the [other] one turns the same way.” Robert has no idea that, despite their conversation about descending, Bonin has continued to pull back on the side stick.

This strikes me as a pretty surprising design feature.

Thanks for that link.

What an increible story. What a dreadful outcome.

RIP passengers and crew.

Lessons will be learned.

It’s shocking, but not really that surprising. If you watch that “Seconds From Disaster” with any regularity, it’s sad how many stupid, stupid things the people in the cockpit do which lead to crashes. The one that springs to mind was an alarm on early 737s that most crews thought was just an annoyance. One crew disconnected the speaker that announced the alarm and subsequently crashed.

Ian – massive mechanical faff to fit it to Airbus sidesticks so never done.

It’s hard to read that without screaming at the crew to pull themselves together! But then we’ve all done things that have gone wrong and only afterwards looked back and realised what we should have done at the time. The lack of feedback from the controls is one thing I’m sure will be looked at. The second co pilot would probably have saved the plane if he could have felt what was going on. However all he had were the instruments to tell him and because they didn’t tally with what he thought the other pilot was doing he couldn’t understand the problem.

There are several two seater fighter jets set up with a similar configuration of fly-by-wire side sticks that measure the force of the input without giving any feedback (eg the Lockheed Martin F-16), so I wonder whether this situation has occurred before in a military jet and if it has, why hasn’t the software for side stick style controls been rewritten to address the possibility that both crewmembers might be pulling the controls in opposite directions?

wow thats terrifying, amazing that the thought that its near impossible to stall in normal flying has contributed to this+ separate pilot controls.

I hope they really do learn from this…..

Ian – massive mechanical faff to fit it to Airbus sidesticks so never done.

Yeah I can see a direct mechanical system being a faff, but I would have thought a force feedback system wouldn’t add much complexity in the grand scheme of things. But I imagine that there’s some well considered reasoning behind that.

http://msquair.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/pilots-in-the-loop-airbus-and-the-fbw-side-stick/

The problem is that although there are attention-getting flashing lights in the event of a dual input, the audio warning (urgent spoken “DUAL INPUT!”) is inhibited by the stall warning which has priority over anything else. So I think it’s likely that even when the dual inputs were made the left-hand-seat pilot had no idea that the other sidestick was held fully aft.

that is amazing and terrifying reading. i was on the edge of my seat with my hand over my mouth for most of the way through that.

I may be misreading here but Bonin seemed susceptible to panic if he couldn’t understand a situation? If another pilot didn’t understand he wouldn’t keep holding back for the duration would he?

Flabergasted. Crew overwhelmed by the technology???

Utterly different order of magnitude / severity, but I often wonder if we are going down the same route with our cars – more and more divorced from what is going on, less direct control, less feel for the car’s handling…?

There are several two seater fighter jets set up with a similar configuration of fly-by-wire side sticks that measure the force of the input without giving any feedback (eg the Lockheed Martin F-16), so I wonder whether this situation has occurred before in a military jet and if it has, why hasn’t the software for side stick style controls been rewritten to address the possibility that both crewmembers might be pulling the controls in opposite directions?

Surely those don’t have 2 sets of flight controls?

Looks like my ex-RAF pilot uncle was right with his assertion of ‘They were bloody idiots, if your stall warning’s going off you push the throttle forwards and the nose down, no ifs no buts’

Less feel for the car’s handling.

We are already there, its called most Honda’s steering feel and VW/Audi’s over-damped suspension feel 😆

Isn’t it absolutely amazing that after finding nothing on the seabed despite extensive searching, that the second search locates the missing aircraft wreckage almost immediately?

Funny that.

The second search was conducted under the threat of absolutely massive litigation against Airbus for causing the death of so many passengers.

Lucky that the evidence recovered puts the blames firmly on the crew…..

I’d seen a previous report about how the plane stalled into the sea, but the implication was that it was mainly due to sensor malfunction misleading the pilots about what the plane was doing.

Wow. After reading the first bit outlining the experience of the pilots, I thought they were setting up Bonin as the scapegoat, but reading through that, it appears he deserves to take all the blame. I just can’t work out his reasoning that pulling the stick back for almost the entire duration of the incident (until he was told to give up control – a command he ignored shortly afterwards) was a good thing.

Amazingly sad story

Less feel for the car’s handling

If you were trying to drive out of Bradford this morning you’ll know we’re already there, people with power steering paying more attention to a small snowflake symbol on the dash because they can’t feel what the tyres are doing.

Isn’t it absolutely amazing that after finding nothing on the seabed despite extensive searching, that the second search locates the missing aircraft wreckage almost immediately?

Funny that.

The second search was conducted under the threat of absolutely massive litigation against Airbus for causing the death of so many passengers.

Lucky that the evidence recovered puts the blames firmly on the crew…..

Was the first search carried out by Airbus? Are you implying that they somehow messed with the data on the black boxes? Maybe they got in some actors to duplicate the voices of the pilots?

, why hasn’t the software for side stick style controls been rewritten to address the possibility that both crewmembers might be pulling the controls in opposite directions?

Looking at that link it suggested that the system takes the average of the two stick inputs so if 1 person has the stick 100% and the other 10% forward then the plane gets a 45% stick back command.
Does that actually happen flaperon?

From a different forum a poster posted this:

Shouldn’t have been near any storm of that callibre in the first place.

Combination off poor planning, poor understanding of their own aircraft and poor attention to what was going on.

Other people had managed to reroute yet these idiots hadn’t.

Radar not even set correctly, LOL at this.

The captain manages to go for a nap before entering a storm, really?

With no idea on accurate speed or level heading we have a co pilot pulling back on a stick, really? And the captain has still fked off at this point.

Carry on ignoring stall warnings, again really?

TOGA at 37000 feet? Thats just inexperience not stupidity.

Stall warning still there and still pulling back on the stick?

No one understands the situation ? Fair enough, 2 co pilots with no idea whats going on and no captain.

And then sadly, at the end it all clicks.

Sadly I can assure, had the captain stayed in his seat that whole period, it would have certainly clicked alot sooner.

For spectators, it is very important that you keep an eye on the timings aswell, this all happened in minutes, not hours, in the heat of the moment, minutes go by like seconds.

Some good observations there I feel.

Surely those don’t have 2 sets of flight controls?

Would you want to be sat in the back with no controls if your pilots wounded and can no longer fly? It would be like being on the back of TJ’s tandem as a branch takes of the top of his helmet-less head.

I may be misreading here but Bonin seemed susceptible to panic if he couldn’t understand a situation

The problem is that everyone is. The reason people in stressful life and death jobs train so much is to try to ensure they are never in a situation they haven’t encountered before in training. It appears that these pilots had trained for similar situations at low level i.e the go around but possibly had not been trained to cope with a similar situation at altitude. And perhaps the biggest problem is that they did not have a procedure where one took control of all the decisions supported by the other as would have happened if there had been a captain and first officer in the cockpit rather than 2 first officers.

Bonin may appear to come out of this badly but surely the other first officer with twice the flying hours should have taken control, especially as it seems obvious that Bonin was also a little spooked by some of the atmospheric conditions that preceded the incident.

If force-feedback on the 2 asynchronous sticks is impossible, you’d think a bloody great horrible alarm when they’re doing the opposite for any length of time would be simpler. I could build that…

Also, slight derail, but why do planes still only have the onboard flight recorder? The actual bandwidth isn’t high, you’d think they could have that level of constant broadcast telemetry easily enough.

Some good observations there I feel.

+1

Jees – that makes scary reading. Horrible situation and outcome, totally avoidable.

Surely those don’t have 2 sets of flight controls?

It depends on the aircraft, a specialized two seater like an F-14 or an F-4 requires a pilot and a weapons officer. Both crewmembers have distinct tasks to perform, so it’s usually just the pilot who has a stick.

With the F16/18 fighters, they’re mostly single seaters but they do exist in tandem seat configurations as a means of training aircrew and thus they do have two sets of controls I believe. The F-16 is an almost unique case in that the stick is operated by the pilot’s right hand and the amount of deflection applied to the elevators and ailerons depends on the level of force the pilot applies to the stick. This would mirror the conditions in the Airbus, whereby neither pilot is aware of the forces the other is exerting through the controls which ultimately influence the behaviour of the plane. I would be surprised if the hundreds of two seat F-16s in service around the world hadn’t encountered this problem before.

Flashing lights to tell you that the other side-stick is being moved, apparently: from pprune. (check the dates!).

Plus more background with a carefully crafted Google.

(Edit: I see Flaperon did the lights and alarms already, leaving the links becuase I know the thirst for reasons to procrastinate knowledge is great on STW.)

Was the first search carried out by Airbus? Are you implying that they somehow messed with the data on the black boxes? Maybe they got in some actors to duplicate the voices of the pilots?

Think the implication was Airbus just didn’t want to find the plane at all? I’m sure that’s not ture (would they potentialy really want 2 crashes?), but it’s a hypothesis.

My take on the whoel thing (FWIW);

Bonin just did what any inexperience person does, the onbvious thing (plane going down, pull up). A bit like steering into a skid, or lifting off completely when a FWD car understeers or a RWD oversteers. It’s not the right thing to do, but it does come naturaly. And whaen that doesnt work, you just do more of the same (braking mid corner when a FWD car understeers for example).

I work in the aviation industry (not aircrew) and it’s easy to say “they should have done this” “why didn’t they notice that” but in a very stressful situation your brain changes from what are normal thought patterns to something that seems normal to you but the reality is that you aren’t doing normal things.

You get tunnel vision very easily in a high stress situation, your choice in how to resolve the problem becomes the only thought process you can appear to be aware of and once you start down that path and add the stress into the situation it can become impossible to break from that and select another course of action.

I myself have done it and have seen colleagues do it. Afterwards the reaction is “why the f*ck did he/she/I do that” but at the time it seems the correct thing to do, or you brain has no other option available to it.

Shame that so many lives were lost and yes it shouldn’t have happened. But it is easy after the event to sit and look at the facts and blame those who can’t defend themselves.

Which is exactly why they (should) train, train, train – responses conditioned, following a prescribed process.

Fundamentally why the military spend so much time on training…

I have been trained trained trained, but that isn’t always the best way in aviation. The industry has become far more black and white since I joined it, but that causes issues of “I haven’t seen that, or been trained for it, what should I do”.

Being trained how to do something doesn’t necessarily make you good at it.

I work in the aviation industry (not aircrew) and it’s easy to say “they should have done this” “why didn’t they notice that” but in a very stressful situation your brain changes from what are normal thought patterns to something that seems normal to you but the reality is that you aren’t doing normal things.

There are two of them and they are both highly trained – sure not to NASA standards (no go-around in a space shuttle) but I would fully expect any CAA/FAA/equiv regulated aircrew to be able to handle the situation as described. In this instance it doesn’t seem to be a bizarre sequence of events – the airspeed indicators came back online, the plane told them they were stalling many times and they had the maximum altitude (30,000 plus feet) to remedy the situation. Sure the nature of the controls in in question but every pilot on this type must’ve known that. The most shocking part to me is that neither of them took any authority during the incident.

My point was, that repeated crew training, drills, evolutions (call it what you will) practised by the military (for example), are there to instill a conditioned response to stressfull situations where the human instinct is to panic / act on instict.

Wow, what a shame. And somewhat mental that a trained pilot with people’s lives at risk was unable to grasp the fact that pulling back on the stick for such a time in such conditions could create stall. This could be picked up by a 10 year old on MS flightsim – there must have been other things going on and not obvious to confuse a seasoned pilot like that surely?