I understand. I'm a metrosexual now, living in LA, as my giblets have been smacked frequently over time from under performing junior pilots. I always know where their yoke is.

I used to be masculine. I promise. Ask my wife.

 

Kindly go back and re read who the above referenced quote was directed to. (Hint: it was satchip, not you)

To keep my response (above) in context, here's exactly what satchip said:

What he claimed I implied is a complete misrepresentation of what I actually said. But you knew that already.

 

Yes, I remember, you described the article as "psychobabble." I don't know when you got hired but CRM has, in my opinion, made for a much better cockpit environment than we had in the 1980s. Back then there was little standardization and many Captains just did their own thing. CRM training was a little hokey in the beginning (the 90s) but it has come a long way since then. I thought the writer did a very good job of describing the history of the culture, its problems, and where we are now. You called it "cringeworthy" and "psychobabble." To each his own.

Then, your "discussion" went on to outrageously boast that such a similar accident could never happen at DAL because "we hire experienced pilots." That comment reeks of arrogance to me. The AF447 pilots obviously made mistakes. Critical mistakes that cost them their lives. It's fine to Monday morning quarterback them, it's important to do so for us to learn from their mistakes and hopefully not repeat them. But it's wrong, in my opinion, to claim that our pilots are immune from misreading instruments, misjudging, making bad decisions, etc... The fact is we're not. We're human.

 

Index,

CRM has improved safety. It is my opinion the biggest improvement has been active pilot monitoring.

Point of fact, Delta pilots had the exact same failure on more than one occasion and dealt with it. MD88 pilots seem to have that kind of failure every couple of weeks or so.

My criticism of the article was that the author, credible as he may be, went far beyond what those in the air safety community would consider a scientific consideration of objective findings. The article was written to entertain. That sort of subjective voyeurism isn't really helpful.

It is maintained the reason Air France and Delta's similar systems failures had much different outcomes came down to training and experience. (thanks to our stagnation, we are tremendously experienced )

Was there a CRM failure and a systems failure? Yes, those too. Like many accidents there is a long list of things of contributing factors and had not those links in the chain come together we wouldn't be having this discussion.

 

I though the airspeed inop thing at NW happened in the daylight? That might have helped the AF guys realize how high they were holding the pitch, vs. the dark of night.

 

We also had that AHRS fault Quantas had, but I do not know Airbus systems well enough to get into it. There were more than a few instances where our f-NWA bros demonstrated good pilot mojo.

 

Hey I know you're just making a joke. But please don't forget this is a public forum. The MD-88 has a very good safety record. You want to make jokes about the airplane... fine. But please don't imply the airplane is unsafe on a public forum where the intent of your post could be misunderstood. Thank you.

 

What is this, "Hate on The Dude Day" ?


What made & keeps the MD88 safe is the experienced, focused, well trained, masters of aviation employed by Delta Air Lines.

So for a change of pace, how about a man from Woodside with a Redwood sized woodie trying to bail out of a Virgin?

 

Interesting change of spin. I noticed that you have now added "training" to your rationale. That's not what you said initially. You claimed that under similar circumstances DAL pilots avoided the AF result due to "experience" alone.

Even so, training and experience can NOT always prevent mistakes or accidents. I don't think you can extrapolate such a conclusion based on one incident from each side--AF bad, DAL good.

The fact is we are all human. We are all subject to fatigue, complacency, misinterpreting the situation, etc... The AF pilots had been droning along for hours. In the span of seconds ice crystals formed in the pitot tubes causing erroneous a/s and altitude indications. The a/p automatically disengaged, thrust lock mode engaged, and the a/c reverted to ALT LAW. The quiet dark cockpit suddenly became noisy with aural alerts with ECAM messages galore. All in a matter of seconds. I'm sure it was an overwhelming event. Things snowballed quickly. Virtually all of us in aviation have experienced an event or two (or more) where things got rapidly out of hand. Obviously we all survived or we wouldn't be posting here. Was that due to "experience"? Good judgment? A little (or a lot of) luck? You know the old adage about good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.

But my point is this. In roughly around a minute the a/c went from stable flight to out of control. It's easy in hindsight to diagnose the mistakes made by this flight crew. It's obvious what those mistakes were. I just think it's wrong of you to boast that DAL wouldn't make the same mistakes under the same circumstances because we're "experienced" and the AF pilots were not.