So in the wake of the Air France flight 447 crash a friend sent me this article:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog...l;jsessionid=JZBXRLQTYJMJAQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN
Not the best journalism, but it does remind me of why I try to avoid flying on Airbus planes at all costs. I had a roomate in college who was a flight instructor and he absolutely refused to fly on Airbus planes because they dont have any direct pilot controls. To even land the plane or take off apparently you set the computer in whatever mode you need and let it do the flying.... oh and if something fucks up, apparently its a bitch to get the plane out of a landing mode when it is already in progress...
So this article kinda got me thinking how flying is kinda like driving/drifting and how every cars get some new 'driver aid' you lower the average level of driver ability by removing the learning process of truly driving.
Especially things like dynamic stability control which takes your steering input and vehicle speed and then determines what it THINKS is your intended direction of travel and applies brakes to certain wheels to change the balance of the car and traction levels and make it turn more or less......
Well that's great for people who dont understand how to drive. Typically it saves people from understeering into curbs or oncoming traffic in a turn, but what about a person who understands how to drive?? Take a racetrack tire warming situation. Intentionally induced understeer is a great way to warm your front tires and this system would go 'OH NOES, he is understeering!!! bzzt, bzzt, electronics to the rescue!!' and boom, suddenly my front tires at 30degrees of angle grip up and I go shooting off the side of the track and into the barrier.... FANTASTIC...
That's just one simple example, but it's the same as with pilots who rarely actually fly the planes these days, and especially planes like the Airbus that decide the proper airleron,(wing) rudder/elevator (tail) angles for what the pilot inputs through the stick. Pilots dont even know what the actual plane FEELS like to fly anymore. FEEL is hugely important to controlling any moving object. Especially in a damn emergency situation.
No object responds perfectly to control inputs, most of us know when you have 15degrees of steering input on your car, it doesn't actually turn 15degrees because of slip angle. Even at 3mph there is some slip angle due to inertia and the tire's tendency to roll in a straight line. I have only flown small single and twin engine planes, but obviously learning how your vehicle actually responds to the REAL controls is going to be highly important for controlling the thing in an emergency.
So if you havent learned the FEEL of the airplane you are in charge of piloting because it has stupid computer controls not letting you truly fly it, then what happens when you really do have to fly the 100tons of metal through a thunderstorm????? Air France flight 447 is what happens.
.....or maybe not since in an Airbus you cant even turn off the damn computer controls because there is no connection between the stick in front of the pilots and the wings/tail.... so when the computer system went -zapp, zing, error-error and started singing 'Daisy Bell' (look up the reference), the plane was un-flyable and the pilots became passengers on their ride to the stormy blue waves.
Oh and another wonderful thing about Airbus, if both pilot and co-pilot are giving inputs at the same time, the computer averages between the two inputs and then decides the intended change of direction and then moves the plane. This means that if the pilots need to avoid something quickly, and pilot steers to the right, co-pilot steers to the left, the plane will go straight....... AWESOME
Here is what happens when you trust a computer to do everything:
YouTube - Crash OF AN Airbus PLANE AT Mulhouse France
Yup Air France again, Airbus is made in France by the way......
EVERYONE CLICK HERE AND READ!: http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af296.shtml
Some highlights:
* The black boxes have been physically opened, the magnetic tape has been cut. Normally you put the black boxes into a reading machine without opening them - the same way you read a cassette in a video recorder.
* 8 seconds are missing in the recording, 4 seconds are missing just before the impact. That means that the DFDR would have stopped accidentally just before the impact.
* The DFDR and the CVR are 4 seconds out of synchronization during the last part of the recording.
* There is no indication of longitudinal deceleration at the impact. This might be expected in a collision with a mountain, but in Habsheim the recorders should have been able to operate until the aircraft disintegrated. Any crash which could be survived by all but 3 passengers should not have caused an abrupt stop in the DFDR recording.
"Evidence, including photographs, has now been exposed that an Airbus official at the scene switched the Digital Flight Data Recorder before the court hearing."
.......uh what?????........perhaps to hide the fact that the goddamn plane had somehow put itself into landing mode and decided to land in a fucking forest??? Seriously if you didn't read the report, scroll back up and click on it, even just to scan through it......
The crash was determined to be pilot error. But it's really funny how many airbus crashes like this are determined to be pilot error..... How hard is it to put a damn OFF button!?!?!?!? I pilot in an emergency situation shouldn't have to break out the Nintendo controller and start going UP-UP-DOWN-DOWN-LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT-RIGHT-B-A-B-A-START........
Not a computer:
(185 people survived the crash when the pilots and a flight instructor figured out how to barely control the plane with just engine power since after 1 engine blew up and cut all hydraulic control lines)
Dailymotion - 1989 Sioux City crash - a News & Politics video@@AMEPARAM@@http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x5yztk@@AMEPARAM@@x5yztk
Also not a computer: YouTube - gigi galli a big drift
Man, Europe does a lot of great stuff.... but as far as commercial airplanes??? Well until Fokker decides to get into the large commercial sector, I'll stick to plane models that start and end with a 7 thank you!!!
http://www.informationweek.com/blog...l;jsessionid=JZBXRLQTYJMJAQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN
Not the best journalism, but it does remind me of why I try to avoid flying on Airbus planes at all costs. I had a roomate in college who was a flight instructor and he absolutely refused to fly on Airbus planes because they dont have any direct pilot controls. To even land the plane or take off apparently you set the computer in whatever mode you need and let it do the flying.... oh and if something fucks up, apparently its a bitch to get the plane out of a landing mode when it is already in progress...
So this article kinda got me thinking how flying is kinda like driving/drifting and how every cars get some new 'driver aid' you lower the average level of driver ability by removing the learning process of truly driving.
Especially things like dynamic stability control which takes your steering input and vehicle speed and then determines what it THINKS is your intended direction of travel and applies brakes to certain wheels to change the balance of the car and traction levels and make it turn more or less......
Well that's great for people who dont understand how to drive. Typically it saves people from understeering into curbs or oncoming traffic in a turn, but what about a person who understands how to drive?? Take a racetrack tire warming situation. Intentionally induced understeer is a great way to warm your front tires and this system would go 'OH NOES, he is understeering!!! bzzt, bzzt, electronics to the rescue!!' and boom, suddenly my front tires at 30degrees of angle grip up and I go shooting off the side of the track and into the barrier.... FANTASTIC...
That's just one simple example, but it's the same as with pilots who rarely actually fly the planes these days, and especially planes like the Airbus that decide the proper airleron,(wing) rudder/elevator (tail) angles for what the pilot inputs through the stick. Pilots dont even know what the actual plane FEELS like to fly anymore. FEEL is hugely important to controlling any moving object. Especially in a damn emergency situation.
No object responds perfectly to control inputs, most of us know when you have 15degrees of steering input on your car, it doesn't actually turn 15degrees because of slip angle. Even at 3mph there is some slip angle due to inertia and the tire's tendency to roll in a straight line. I have only flown small single and twin engine planes, but obviously learning how your vehicle actually responds to the REAL controls is going to be highly important for controlling the thing in an emergency.
So if you havent learned the FEEL of the airplane you are in charge of piloting because it has stupid computer controls not letting you truly fly it, then what happens when you really do have to fly the 100tons of metal through a thunderstorm????? Air France flight 447 is what happens.
.....or maybe not since in an Airbus you cant even turn off the damn computer controls because there is no connection between the stick in front of the pilots and the wings/tail.... so when the computer system went -zapp, zing, error-error and started singing 'Daisy Bell' (look up the reference), the plane was un-flyable and the pilots became passengers on their ride to the stormy blue waves.
Oh and another wonderful thing about Airbus, if both pilot and co-pilot are giving inputs at the same time, the computer averages between the two inputs and then decides the intended change of direction and then moves the plane. This means that if the pilots need to avoid something quickly, and pilot steers to the right, co-pilot steers to the left, the plane will go straight....... AWESOME
Here is what happens when you trust a computer to do everything:
YouTube - Crash OF AN Airbus PLANE AT Mulhouse France
Yup Air France again, Airbus is made in France by the way......
EVERYONE CLICK HERE AND READ!: http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af296.shtml
Some highlights:
* The black boxes have been physically opened, the magnetic tape has been cut. Normally you put the black boxes into a reading machine without opening them - the same way you read a cassette in a video recorder.
* 8 seconds are missing in the recording, 4 seconds are missing just before the impact. That means that the DFDR would have stopped accidentally just before the impact.
* The DFDR and the CVR are 4 seconds out of synchronization during the last part of the recording.
* There is no indication of longitudinal deceleration at the impact. This might be expected in a collision with a mountain, but in Habsheim the recorders should have been able to operate until the aircraft disintegrated. Any crash which could be survived by all but 3 passengers should not have caused an abrupt stop in the DFDR recording.
"Evidence, including photographs, has now been exposed that an Airbus official at the scene switched the Digital Flight Data Recorder before the court hearing."
.......uh what?????........perhaps to hide the fact that the goddamn plane had somehow put itself into landing mode and decided to land in a fucking forest??? Seriously if you didn't read the report, scroll back up and click on it, even just to scan through it......
The crash was determined to be pilot error. But it's really funny how many airbus crashes like this are determined to be pilot error..... How hard is it to put a damn OFF button!?!?!?!? I pilot in an emergency situation shouldn't have to break out the Nintendo controller and start going UP-UP-DOWN-DOWN-LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT-RIGHT-B-A-B-A-START........
Not a computer:
(185 people survived the crash when the pilots and a flight instructor figured out how to barely control the plane with just engine power since after 1 engine blew up and cut all hydraulic control lines)
Dailymotion - 1989 Sioux City crash - a News & Politics video@@AMEPARAM@@http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x5yztk@@AMEPARAM@@x5yztk
Also not a computer: YouTube - gigi galli a big drift
Man, Europe does a lot of great stuff.... but as far as commercial airplanes??? Well until Fokker decides to get into the large commercial sector, I'll stick to plane models that start and end with a 7 thank you!!!
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