finis72

KC 10 has the facts straight.

80ktsClamp

The low speed protection on the bus is very similar to the 777. What he did here he could have just as easily done on the bus. In fact, NW about nuked a 320 a few years back in DEN in a very similaqr scenario.

Timbo

Was that also what happened in the Paris Air Show, chainsaw incident?

80ktsClamp

Nah... they had actually disabled the low speed protection in that one and flew it at 30 feet, below the tree tops right at the stall speed. He had unspooled the engines, and then when he realized it was getting a bit too late went to full power. He pulled back, but was already at the stall so the plane wouldn't let him full stall the plane (similar to getting the pusher).

As with any jet engine, it took it a bit to get from idle and he was behind the power curve... you can hear them attaining full power right as they start chewing trees. Yet he claimed "it wouldn't let me go around."

rickair7777

Update....

Asiana crash: Who's to blame? - CNN.com


(CNN) -- When federal safety investigators meet on Tuesday to determine the cause of the Asiana Flight 214 crash, they will have studied not only last summer's deadly accident but also a little-known incident years earlier.

In August of 2010, Eugene Francis Arnold, one of the Federal Aviation Administration's top test pilots, was descending into Seattle's Boeing Field when he leveled off to avoid another plane.

To his surprise, his speed fell 10 or 15 knots below his target speed, even though he believed the jet's automated speed control, or auto-throttle, was engaged.

Arnold pushed the throttle manually to increase the plane's speed and landed safely.
Asiana: Pilot error was a factor in crash
NYT: Asiana blames software for crash
2013: Chilling new video of Asiana crash

Arnold, investigators believe, experienced the same type of "mode confusion" that caught Asiana's pilots off guard -- at a much lower altitude -- shortly before they plowed into the sea wall at San Francisco International Airport.

In both cases, the pilots believed they had selected modes of autopilot and auto-throttle that would "wake up" the auto-throttle if necessary, much as a car's cruise control kicks in when the car heads uphill. But they hadn't.

Complex system

There lies the big question before the National Transportation Safety Board when it meets Tuesday: Is Boeing to blame for creating a system so complicated that it befuddled even a top FAA test pilot?

Are the pilots to blame for not understanding the intricacies of the system and for failing to monitor the plane's speed?

Or is Korea-based Asiana Airlines to blame for not adequately training its pilots?

At a December hearing on the crash, experts told the safety board that while automation has vastly improved aviation safety, it has a flip side.

The same technology that makes it possible for pilots to fly coast to coast without touching a yoke are complicated and hard to master.

Thus, flying is getting easier and harder at the same time.

"Automation can be extremely supportive of human operators if it is designed properly," expert Nadine Sarter of the University of Michigan testified. "But we also have seen in a number of incidents (where) automation can actually get in the way."

"We have heard things like 'clumsy' automation, where automation ... helps the most when the pilot actually might need the help the least. But when they need the help the most -- in very time-critical conditions -- it might be very difficult for them to actually operate the automation," she said.

Different opinions

Not surprisingly, Asiana Airlines, the pilots union, and Boeing, which manufactured the 777 involved in the crash, have starkly different opinions of what role the pilots played in the crash, and the role of automation.

"The airplane and all airplane systems were functioning as expected prior to impact and did not contribute to the accident," Boeing said in a March submission to the safety board. The accident was caused by the pilots' failure to monitor and control the plane's airspeed and direction, and could have been avoided if they had initiated a timely go-around.

Asiana, meanwhile, blamed Boeing and the pilots. The pilots, just three months before the accident, had received "specific instruction" about the possibility the airspeed protection would be disabled in a certain mode, Asiana said.

The airline assigned blame to the pilots for not ensuring "a minimum safe airspeed," and Boeing for creating an autopilot system that led to an "unexpected disabling" of speed protections.

The warning system, the airline says, also did not give the pilots enough time to recover.

The Asiana Pilots Union blamed crew training, saying pilots were not trained that a combination of autopilot and auto-throttle modes would not prevent the plane from going too slowly.

"In this case, a key piece of information was not provided as part of the normal training program at Asiana," the union said.

Boeing said it was without fault.

"All airplane systems were functioning as expected prior to impact and did not contribute to the accident," it told the safety board.

Asked why the "hold" mode did not protect against dangerous drop-offs in speed, Boeing told the board, "To do this would violate (Boeing's) design philosophy: the pilot is the final authority for the operation of the airplane."

"If the auto-throttle automatically (switched mode to prevent an aerodynamic stall), it would be overriding the crew's selection," Boeing said.

Fly the plane manually

If pilots are confused by the technology, there is a simple solution: Fly the plane manually, Boeing said.

"This accident would have been avoided had the flight crew followed procedures and initiated a timely go-around," Boeing told the safety board.

What no one contests is that by the time the plane's captain recognized the plane was traveling too slowly, it was too late.

At 11 seconds before impact, the plane's low airspeed alert was triggered.

Eight seconds before impact, one of the pilots pushed the throttles forward. But it takes engines seven to eight seconds to spool up from idle to full power.

The plane slammed into the seawall, ripping off the landing gear, the tail and both engines. It spun 330 degrees in a shower of sparks and debris.

Of the 307 people on board, three died. Almost 200 were injured.

filejw

Was at small mostly GA field not the Paris Air Show.....LFGB...

9780991975808

These are only some of the worms that are crawling out of the automation "can." Recommendations to train pilots to be better monitors are but expressions of supreme ignorance of the principles of Man-machine interface. Training can improve only something that exists. However, human nature has defied all attempts to significantly improve monitoring skills despite extensive training. Therefore, reason dictates that Man-machine interface problems ought to be solved by machine redesign rather than by a stubborn obsession to force change on the unchangeable.
...
There is nothing wrong with the advancement of technology. We would not have aviation if it were not for technology. But technology should build on itself, retain the lessons it learned along the way and serve man. There is definitely something wrong with designing and approving flight equipment and aircraft systems that leave the human being out of the equation, yet rely on the pilot to magically make a faulty design, dependent exclusively on a single, fragile mode of flight control system, work. An airplane should be an extension of, and adapt to the limitations of the human pilot, not the other way around. This fundamental principle is emphatically advanced by the Flight Safety Foundation in Paragraph 4.3.1 of the Operator's Flight Safety Handbook, developed by Global Aviation Information Network (GAIN)
The bottom line is that flying machines do not create man: man creates flying machines. "Engineering the pilot out of the airplane is not an option."(126)
___________

(126) Skitka, Linda, et al, Cockpit Automation May Bias Decision-making.

(Excerpt from G.N. Fehér, Beyond Stick-and-Rudder, Hawkesbury, 2013, p. 298-299, 313)

Adlerdriver

All my "spears" are directed at the CNN author, his theories and Nadine the "expert".

So, he FLEW the airplane. Made it do what he wanted when the automation didn't. Disaster averted. 10-15 knots at altitude is a quite a bit different than 40+ knots on short final.

I also find it a little strange that one of the FAA "top test pilots" was just "recognized" for being included in the FAA's "prestigious" pilot certification database LAST YEAR. FAA recognizes Eugene Francis Arnold

Does that mean we all get articles written about us too?

Simple answer. Yes. They don't need to understand the intricacies of the system. They need to monitor their airspeed and keep it where it should be no matter what. There are certain automated functions that can be monitored with less frequency or have less dire consequences should they fail - airspeed simply isn't one of them.

No it's not. If these systems are hard for you to operate find another job.

That's because, Nadine, reliance on automation in a time critical condition is not a proper use of it.

A lesson most of us were taught early on, took to heart and apply regularly.

I'm not even going to "go there" with our resident author and his self quoted "told you so".

Airhoss

80Kts,

Just for clarification sake here on the Bus incident

How did he "disable" the low speed protection?

Answer;

He did disable the low speed protection but he didn't know that he had disabled it due to a lack of system understanding. He had the auto thrust system engaged and he had the throttles in the CL detent which means that the airplane should be in managed or selected speed mode IE auto thrust will maintain a selected FCP speed or a programed managed speed from the FMC. And the auto thrust system will maintain that speed, unless you get below a certain radar altitude then the airplane will not maintain speed or thrust as it thinks you want to land. It's been a long time since I flew the bus but it's somewhere around 100 AGL where the airplane starts switching to land mode and there are several other things that happen as you get lower.

So he set the the FCP speed to the speed he wanted for the pass then descended below the that critical radar altitude which made the airplane think he was going to land so the power started to come back for landing. By the time he figured it out and manually pushed the throttles to TOGA it was too late.

All he ever had to do was disconnect the auto thrust system and manually fly the throttles which is what he should have been doing during a low pass in any case. You can disconnect the throttles by simply pushing them to the TOGA detent or you can hit the disconnect switches on the throttles or push the A/THR button on the FCP any one of those actions gives you manual throttles and then they work just like any conventional throttles you've ever used.

I am a bit rusty on A-320 system details but that is pretty darn close to how it happened and why.

rickair7777

That's an automated page linked to the airman database. Any of us can generate the same article. Not sure what the point is...maybe to impress chicks in a bar?

And I agree with you, Boeing is right, they should have flown the darn airplane.