
Fly the Airplane - drewblaisdell
http://dcurt.is/2011/12/15/fly-the-airplane/
======
RomP
Great narrative, but factually wrong on at least two accounts:

>If the pilots has switched a button to re-enable autopilot, everyone on board
would have lived. But they didn’t. One co-pilot made a single, absurd
mistake–for twenty full minutes–that brought the plane down.

First factual error: The button they should've switched is not the auto-pilot
button (which they operate many times per flight), but the flight mode button
(which most pilots never operate in their career). When the plane lost at
least two of the three pitot tube readings, it went from the NORMAL "Law" to
the ALT "Law", where the airplane doesn't guard itself against many pilot
errors. When the pitots de-iced shortly thereafter, the plane did NOT go back
to NORMAL "Law": it had to be switched there manually. The pilots did not do
that and it seems to be the consensus so far (can't state that for certain
before the official report is released) that they did not realize they were
flying the plane in ALT and then DIRECT Law.

Second factual error: the "absurd mistake" lasted nowhere near 20 minutes. The
first problem appeared at 2:10:03UTC and flying into the ocean occurred at
2:14:28UTC -- 4 minutes 23 seconds in all.

~~~
mseebach
As it's completely meaningless to have the autopilot operate out of normal law
(why would the computer operate the plane outside of the envelope the computer
considers safe?), isn't it safe to assume that re-engaging the autopilot would
have put the plane back in normal law?

~~~
jodrellblank
Isn't it also safe to assume:

\- Pilots wouldn't be trained with marketing speak so they believe the
Aircraft is uncrashable, and ignore 75 repeats of the STALL warning alarm.

\- The change of modes between "can't crash" and "can crash" laws normally
never happens, so when it does it deserves a huge and explicit attention
grabbing ongoing alert of its own.

\- The plane would never, ever, detect that it was barely moving forwards,
nose pointing up, falling at hundreds of feet per second, and then switch the
STALL alarm off.

\- The plane designers would make it so one pilot has no clue what the other
is doing with the controls, and if both offer conflicting instructions, the
plane will not alert them, but just average the instructions.

\- The "about to hit the ground" warning would be built to sound early enough
that they could use it to avoid hitting the ground.

\- The pilots would be trained so that if something goes wrong, seems weird,
panic is setting in, they must stop what they are doing and cooperatively
restate their assumptions and reassess the situation.

~~~
boucher
These are excellent points. I was amazed at the behavior of the dual input
sticks; in what world would this be a useful feature of the airplane (other
than, perhaps, a training scenario?) How is the switch to alternate mode not
made painfully obvious to the pilots?

------
joshwa
A core concept they drill into your head in flight training is the following
axiom:

    
    
        Aviate, Navigate, Communicate 
        (in that order)
    

First and foremost, keep the plane in the air. Then you can worry about where
you're going (e.g. don't fly into terrain, start heading towards an airport).
Finally, coordinate with others (e.g. controllers) to let them know what
you're doing and seek guidance.

This axiom can be applied to lots of other areas, too, including startups. For
instance, it explains why I don't blog: I'm concentrating on execution and
strategy.

It's one of the reasons I wonder if the many prolific startup bloggers have
their priorities straight.

EDIT: oops, just saw yread's comment below.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3360071>

------
hxa7241
This seems like a somewhat rough diagnosis.

The pilots were not making an 'absurd error'. They did not forget to fly the
plane.

It is that _what they thought they were doing was not what they were actually
doing_. Their mental model broke away from the reality. (They thought the
plane was in 'normal mode' when it was actually in 'abnormal mode' -- an
expression of which: one them declaring "this cannot be happening!")

Telling them just _fly the airplane_ is not (quite) the solution -- they
thought they _were_ flying it.

But the remedy is sort-of basically correct. It just seems better expressed
as: when nothing makes sense (your mental model has suddenly utterly failed),
fall back to a more basic backup mental model and system -- like primitive
manual override.

(How clear can such separation of a basic mode be? How practical would it be?
How reliable? It leads to a set of engineering/UI questions . . . were they
well designed in this particular case?)

~~~
mikeash
I'm not so sure. They weren't flying the airplane, but rather were letting the
computer fly it for them. (The control movements made by the one pilot who was
horribly in error were not something that one would ever make if the controls
were directly connected to the control surfaces.) Meanwhile, the computer was
letting the humans fly. If the pilot in error had flown the airplane instead
of driving the computer, everything would have come out fine. (And, while I'm
not completely familiar with the Airbus's fly-by-wire system, I'm pretty sure
that doing this still would have been safe in the event that the computer
_hadn't_ given up, either.)

They spent all this time trying to figure out what was wrong with the plane
when their immediate concern should have been to get the nose down and get
their airspeed up. Figuring out the underlying problem can wait. That's what
"fly the airplane" is all about. Even if stuff is on fire, the first priority
is to keep your speed up and don't run into anything hard.

~~~
onemoreact
The problem is they did not know there airspeed and they did not understand
they where stalling. The airspeed issue related to simple icing. Stalling was
a little more complex than that. They had plenty of indications that they
where stalling one of the pilots simply did not believe them.

~~~
jodrellblank
Aside: Using the word "simply" glosses over the interesting bits.

Why did a pilot, a 32 year old, with Air France for 4-5 years, qualified to
fly the A330 (for 2 months), with "under 3,000 hours of experience" [NYTimes]
(so, a couple of thousand hours) not believe the stall warning? And what can
humans do to guard against that?

That's an interesting question, "simply" doesn't do it justice.

[
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/28/world/europe/28flight.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/28/world/europe/28flight.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)
]

------
bulte-rs
I fully support this message; having performed an instrument rating renewal
check just yesterday in sub-optimal weather I experienced a frozen pitot-tube
(the thingie that measures dynamic pressure; or a component of the airspeed).
Having no speed indication is scary in instrument conditions (i.e. no
visibility) but continuing flying is the best decision you can make (that and
turning on pitot-heat). But please apply this 'motto' to other fields as well.
No matter how bad the situation is; do the thing you're supposed to do: Fly
the damn airplane, Talk to your customer, Keep your hands on the steering
wheel and: keep breathing.

~~~
yread
in order of priority: aviate - navigate - communicate

I.e. make sure to stay in the air, know where are you flying and tell others
about where you're going or what you've learned

~~~
jodrellblank
They tried aviating. The person with control knew he was on manual controls,
and did the wrong thing.

This is why the message "FLY THE PLANE" is a useless exhortion - he thought he
was doing that.

Had the priority been: communicate - aviate - navigate, they might have been
alive.

Imagine instead:

"Manual control"

"check"

"pulling back rudder to gain altitude and avoid storm"

"we can't go much higher, and we don't want to lose speed"

"ok, flying straight on"

~~~
gvb
Beg to differ, but he wasn't _flying_ the plane. He knew he was on manual
control, but he apparently did not understand or did not appreciate the
implications of the fact that the plane was flying on "alternate law".

With the normal flight laws, the pilot _cannot_ stall the airplane because the
flight laws prevent it. On "alternate law", that protection is removed and the
aircraft can be stalled. When flying "normal law", pulling full back on the
stick is arguably a reasonable approach to stabilize the flight of the
aircraft because the flight control system will fly the plane in a stable,
just above stall, attitude and speed.[1]

On "alternate law", pulling full back on the stick resulted in the plane no
longer flying, but stalling and falling. I would contend the copilot was not
_flying_ the plane, he was relying on the _flight control computer_ to key off
his "nonsensical" input and take over flying the plane.

Trivia: the report indicates the flight speed sensors de-iced and the flight
system recovered full correct data input quite soon after the incident
started. I'm rather surprised that the flight control system did not go back
to "normal law" mode, but rather stayed in "alternate law" mode. I don't know
what it takes to revert the flight mode - if it is a manual reversion or if
the plane simply has to get back into normal flight, which never occurred for
AF447.

[1] AF296 crashed at an airshow while the pilot was flying with full aft
stick. It crashed not because it stalled, but because the pilot ran out of
energy (altitude) and the engines could not spool up fast enough to stop the
plane's descent before it hit the ground.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296>

~~~
bulte-rs
Reset from alternate law to normal law is - afaik - a pilot induced operation.
The airbus computers will never initiate such a change by themselves. I.e.:
They will drop down into a lower mode automatically; but they will not up the
amount of support 'by themselves'.

------
n8agrin
I followed through the entire essay in complete agreement, but I wished the
following paragraph had at least a reference pointing to its claim:

 _The human body’s physical “fight or flight” response evolved to help it
evade a dangerous situation, which historically involved extreme physical
exertion. The rush of steroids into the bloodstream essentially turns off
unnecessary systems, including some higher thinking processes, to aid in
escape._

When we make statements like this proclaiming we understand the complex
workings of things like human physiology I always have to shake my head. We
may be smart, us programmers and designers, but let's not pretend to
understand the order and meaning of everything. And if you do understand and
you have the means, provide some kind of reference to where the claim
originates from so we can all learn more.

* edited because I sounded like a jerk and wanted to make my point clearer

~~~
dcurtis
It has in fact been shown in countless studies that corticosteroids (stress
hormones that are released in situations like the ones I described in the
article) cause cognitive deficits in humans and other animals. Here is one
slightly strange example:

 _The present study investigated the acute effects of cortisol administration
in normal healthy male volunteers on immediate free recall and recognition of
pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral nouns using a between-subjects double-blind
design. Two hours after cortisol (10 mg) or placebo administration, impaired
recall and recognition of neutral and pleasant words was found in the
treatment group, whereas recall and recognition of unpleasant words was
similar in both groups._

See:
[http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/12820857/reload=0;jsessionid...](http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/12820857/reload=0;jsessionid=84851F2AB6F2AACD220321FB3F51963E)

~~~
n8agrin
Your essay is well written, I agree with the premise of it and you clearly
know a bit about biology. But I still think it's important that when we make
these general claims of scientific fact we point to the giants whose shoulders
we're standing on. Maybe it's just the ex-scientist in me, and if so,
apologies. I appreciate you found a cortisol related article to prove your
point, and I agree it's an odd choice as the abstract, which I'm assuming is
what you read as well, seems to state little other than pleasantries are
forgotten when under a chemically induced stress response.

~~~
onemoreact
The flight or fight response has been investigated for a long time. It's
complex enough that you need to read a lot of relevant studies most of which
are old before you can understand it. Which makes finding a single source
hard.

If you want basic research start with Walter Bradford around 1915 _Bodily
Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage: An Account of Recent Researches into
the Function of Emotional Excitement_.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bradford_Cannon>

------
mmcconnell1618
The Professional Pilots Rumor Networks has a bunch of excellent discussions
about AF447 (and other incidents). It's nice to get the perspective of people
who fly for a living:

[http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/466259-af447-final-
crew-c...](http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/466259-af447-final-crew-
conversation.html)

------
alabut
There's a subtle shoutout to The Checklist Manifesto - that book is amazing. I
thought it was another GTD-style productivity book but it's not, it's a lot
more than that. It studies several seemingly unrelated fields like medicine
and construction to bring together unique insights into group collaboration
and workflow on complex projects with lots of stakeholders. The chapter about
venture capital has a bit of a Moneyball vibe to it.

------
crikli
Let he who has flown on untrustworthy instruments in the soup cast the first
stone.

~~~
feralchimp
+1000. I'm a PPSEL of the Cessna-exclusively-outside-the-soup variety, and
these kinds of transcripts often bring me to tears. I understand the
fascination with (and importance of understanding) accidents and human-error
events especially, but the pilot in question was just about my age, and I
can't begin to put myself in his shoes in the first moments of this tragedy
without crushing pressure entering my guts.

Rest in peace holmes, and don't take it personal.

~~~
crikli
I'm a PPSEL also, training for my IR right now. We had some icing on my last
flight that caused some pitot/static issues, fairly quickly solved by flipping
on the pitot heat and climbing out of the clouds. Very interesting
psychological experience; I had to use a good deal of mental energy to shunt
the terror out of the way and used what little was left over to fly the
airplane.

I've come to the conclusion that dealing with those situations is analogous to
lifting weights: when you start out your ability is weak. Experience and
training increase your strength but there is an upper limit. You just gotta
hope you don't have to press something that's beyond your max. The likelihood
can be mitigated against but not completely eliminated.

------
InclinedPlane
An even more interesting air disaster is United Airlines Flight 173. Just
prior to landing a malfunction caused the indicator for the landing gear being
lowered to fail to indicate that it actually was lowered. The plane circled
the airport while the crew concentrated on figuring out what was wrong. The
plane ran out of fuel and crashed.

It's easy to get side tracked by a problem while losing sight of the big
picture. That crash led to a complete rethinking of the way planes are flown.

~~~
dolbz
That is interesting. I'm sure I've read of planes doing a fly-by for the
control tower to assess whether the landing gear is actually down or not in
situations like this. Were there reasons something like this wasn't attempted
in this case?

~~~
CWuestefeld
I've just been reading an autobiography of a WWII aviator (a tailgunner in a
B-17). He mentions that for planes with substantial damage, it was standard
procedure to bring the plane in on its belly with no landing gear. This was
because there was a good chance the landing gear itself was damaged, and if
so, having it there would do far more harm than good.

If it's possible to bring in a B-17 on its belly as a preventative measure,
surely it's possible to do so with a modern airliner when the alternative is a
real crash.

~~~
Someone
I do not know whether you are right, but I think most successful B-17 belly
landings would involve ditching all cargo (i.e. bombs) before landing. AFAIK,
doing that with a modern airliner only is possible in Hollywood.

------
drewblaisdell
The transcription from the recovered recording of the pilots is also
particularly unsettling:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Findings_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Findings_from_the_flight_data_recorder)

------
LaGrange
One thing this is, in my opinion, missing: panic is a weird state. You might
even know that what you're doing is irrational. It doesn't really help, and to
make things worse, people telling you what's rational don't actually help (you
know that you're not doing the right thing, you feel helpless about it
already, last thing you need is people passing judgement on you).

It's a tough problem, because sometimes panic attack strikes completely out of
nowhere, even a person who was previously stable, even in situations less
stressful than described (there's records of people panicking while crossing a
street, to the point where they couldn't move). And it isn't always completely
obvious to onlookers, and it might get your co-pilot, your climbing partner,
or you.

------
llambda
> Unlike car accidents, which are often blamed on driver (and thus human)
> error, airplane crashes are considered engineering failures...

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding something about the way these accidents are
investigated and understood, but directly after this the author goes on to
cite Air France 447, which many of us have by now read about in Popular
Science, among other sources I'm sure, wherein it's made clear that that
particular flight fell into the ocean for no other reason than a persistence
fault on the part of the copilot who had control of the plane. So how does
that qualify as an engineering error and not simply human error? Could the
author mean by "engineering" such an abstraction as the engineering of flight
training?

~~~
gcp
I think it means that any crash, even if caused by the pilots fault, is seen
as a fixable technical problem, either in automation, equipment, reliability,
or _pilot training_.

We don't send all car drivers back to get their license if somebody crashes
his car. We do try to "fix" the pilots if something like this happens.

~~~
lutorm
Maybe a better term is "systems failure", where the pilot is part of the
system.

------
gldalmaso
>> _The rush of steroids into the bloodstream essentially turns off
unnecessary systems, including some higher thinking processes, to aid in
escape._

>> _So, the next time you’re in a crushing situation, remember how irrational
humans are under stress and remember to FLY THE AIRPLANE._

The advice is good, but irrelevant as the article itself states it.

Maybe the first step in the checklist manifest should be to take a steroid
inhibitor pill, or even better, always take some pill that only kicks in when
steroids are above normal levels (if that could even be acomplished).

------
ditojim
the co-pilot _did_ fly the plane, incorrectly, for 4 min & 23 seconds. he was
pulling back on the stick to climb because he didn't have all of his
instruments (due to the icing of the sensor) or understand why the plane was
not climbing. the reason the plane crashed was because he flew the plane
wrong, not lack of flying the plane.

~~~
lutorm
Flying the plane wrong is not flying. The point of the saying is to not get
distracted by what's happening to the point that you fail to fly the airplane.
And that's _exactly_ what happened here.

------
arjn
I found the Popular mechanics article linked to in the OP well written and far
more interesting. One of my family is a retired pilot so I'm gonna show him
that article. The sad thing is, if they had gotten the captain into the
cockpit a couple of minutes sooner, this may never have happened.

------
bond
I just can't believe the stall warning sounded continuously for 54 seconds and
he just ignored that. WTH was he thinking the stall warning was for?

~~~
exDM69
This has been mentioned in other articles about the crash, including ones that
have been posted in HN.

Under normal conditions, when the flight computer is receiving airspeed and
other telemetry normally, the fly-by-wire Airbus operates under "normal law",
a mode where the pilot controls the aircraft but the flight computer prevents
stalling and other dangerous situations. In this case, the pitot tube was
frozen and the flight computer didn't receive proper airspeed data and went
into "alternate law" mode, where the pilot controls the craft and there are no
computer enforced limits. The co-pilot with the controls had probably not
flown the aircraft under alternate law or incorrectly believed that he was
operating under normal law, and had never heard the stall warning before. So
either he thought that the stall warning was false and just another instrument
malfunction or he just didn't understand it's meaning in the confusion.

~~~
omegant
The flight mode is important but not the reason why they crashed the plane
(IMHO). The reason they didn´t do anything else but pull the sidestick and
apply TOGA was that they thought it was the solution to the problem. The
problem to them was thunderstorm + fast speed variation (unreliable speed
indication or no indication at all)+ autopilot disconnected. So they applied
one of the most practiced maneuvers in commercial airplanes simulators the
wind shear which is one of the most dangerous situations an airliner could
face, and therefore one of the most practiced maneuvers(due to economical
reasons refresh simulators are more and more condensed and reduced, almost no
time for "basic" maneuvers like real stalls, regular manual flying, etc...).

Usually severe wind shear takes place in the presence of thunderstorms (they
were flying inside one ), then there is a severe change in speed indication
and wind speed(also present at the AF flight) How do you fight a windshear?.
First there is a loud alarm ringing(in modern planes like the A330) + visual
alarms (that wasn´t present at the AF, at least not this particular one), then
you apply TOGA and pull the stick full backwards (check this video, is very
well explained, also the part of the plane taking care of the stall in normal
mode [http://es-
la.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1015017491047010...](http://es-
la.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150174910470106&comments) ). The plane
will flight just above the stall speed (in normal mode) and that way you´ll be
able to avoid ground obstacles, as the windshear is only dangerous when flying
close to the ground (take off, approach, and landing). If you have altitude
enough you are able to change altitude for speed and recover the control
without further problems.

Obviously the wind shear maneuver is not designed to be flown at cruise
altitude, as the engines don´t have enough thrust to take the plane of the
stall and keep climbing, also the plane is already very close to the coffin
corner (over speed and stall aerodynamic limits are just a few knots apart),
so any "extreme" maneuver (banking more than 20º or pulling or pushing hard in
the controls) will simply put you outside of the flight envelope creating a
control loss (usually you lose 2000´to 5000´ being unable to stop the
descend), this happens also to planes entering sudden warmer zones like the
ones you encounter in the tropic(due to the loss of air density).

There is a point when you simply disconnect from the alarms (no matter how
many times stall or alternate law where sounding), you don´t hear them anymore
(this was discovered or more studied with the Vietnam war pilots, who had very
complex environments full of radio communications and SAM alerts), you only
keep trying what you think will work, may it be the correct procedure, the
incorrect one or just touching buttons because that damned computer is not
behaving the way you want to.

Is difficult to know exactly how they suffered the problem and is also
extremely difficult to judge it from a computer chair(even in simulator is
well known the fact that the instructor can see obvious mistakes from the
instructor chair, which the pilots are unable to recognize or detect for
several minutes, once he sits in the pilot seat it is very provable that he
will make similar mistakes).

What initially seem the correct actions(to the autopilot disconnection and
lost of speed indication)are: to use the unreliable speed procedure(keep the
throttle position and a pitch position) and then try to recover at least one
of the speed indications (or at least checking which one was correct). But
setting TOGA and then pulling the sidestick, this is (in my opinion) the
automatic reaction to thinking they were suffering a wind shear(incorrectly),
and so they keep fighting that imaginary wind shear for the long, long
remaining 4 minutes till they crashed. No amount of other information or
alarms took them away of that mental procedure (unfortunately), not because
they where lost in they assumptions (they were), but because they thought
almost all of the time (till it was too late) that they were performing the
correct actions.

I must say that almost none of the pilots I know have the same opinion as
me.(I am A320 pilot with B737 and MD80 experience).

------
elevenE
While not relevant, the yellow color while selecting text makes it unreadable.
(Yes, I select/highlight the text that I'm reading.)

------
seanos
One obvious improvement would be to replace the warning "Stall!" with "Stall!
Stall protection disengaged!" when flying in alternative mode. Even better
might be "Stall! Push stick forward!" when a stall is detected and the pilot
is simultaneously pulling back on the stick.

~~~
gcp
I don't think more complex aural warnings would have accomplished anything
[1]. (Edit) This guy basically had his brain disengaged due to panic and was
useless at that point. The tragedy is that the other pilots couldn't prevent
it.

The plane also warned them aurally that they were giving conflicting inputs.
None of them "understood" it, in the sense that they thought about what that
must have meant.

[1] Though, having the stall alarm go _off_ when the stall was too deep is
very, very weird and may have contributed to the issue.

(Edit: I initially said that pilots are deeply trained to use stick down to
recover from a stall - but apparently this isn't really true for commercial
pilots who are trained to avoid height loss when near a stall.)

~~~
seanos
The crash report says that the second pilot and pilot (when he arrived) were
both unaware that the other copilot was pulling back on his stick. E.g. at one
point the other copilot had his stick forward (causing an averaging of the two
inputs resulting in nose still up) and right before the crash when the copilot
replies "But I've had my stick back all the time!" the other two get a shock.
The warning "Stall! Push stick forward!" would therefore have saved the day,
even if the copilot pulling back ignored it (and it seems he thought he was
doing the right thing by pulling back, so the explicit advice "Push stick
forward!" might have helped in his mental state), the other two would realise
he was contravening normal response.

~~~
gcp
_The warning "Stall! Push stick forward!" would therefore have saved the
day...the other two would realise he was contravening normal response._

They already got this warning through a "DUAL INPUT" alarm, among all the
other alarms that went off. When the pilots panic, adding warning after
warning is useless, they won't hear them anyway, let alone the nuance in the
stall warning. See for example:
[http://msquair.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/pilots-in-the-
loop-a...](http://msquair.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/pilots-in-the-loop-airbus-
and-the-fbw-side-stick/)

"it turns out that in the circumstances identified as triggering instinctive
responses the value of such alerts is degraded due to the inevitable
attentional tunnelling that operators experience in high stress situations."

Hell, to put it in a software perspective: popping up warning dialogs for your
users is pointless, as they click them away anyway without reading.

Tactile feedback, such as the stick itself moving or resisting input, is not
possible to ignore, so it's not surprising the pilots would have preferred
this.

Note that even in alternate law the plane actually attempts to correct the
stall by itself, so its hard to see how giving an audible warning would have
gotten him to realize he was doing things the wrong way around. He was already
actively working against the correction.
<http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm>

"System introduces a progressive nose down command which attempts to prevent
the speed from decaying further. This command CAN be overridden by sidestick
input."

~~~
seanos
The dual input warning doesn't inform specifically that copilot 1 is pulling
back on the stick. It's clear from the report that was the problem, copilot 1
was pulling back the whole time and nobody realised.

I'm not suggesting adding "warning after warning" but an improvement to the
existing warning, after all, when the plane is heading for the ground the
warning is "Pull Up! Pull Up!" not "Ground!". If you want a software analogy,
"Stall" is akin to "Error: Read Failure" and "Stall! Push Stick Forward!" akin
to "Read Failure: Insert Disk".

Anyway it's a cheap to implement improvement and could save lives.

~~~
gcp
_The dual input warning doesn't inform specifically that copilot 1 is pulling
back on the stick. It's clear from the report that was the problem, copilot 1
was pulling back the whole time and nobody realised._

There is only 1 pilot at a time that is supposed to fly the plane, so the
warning in itself indicates that they are in serious conflict and should
clarify who is flying and what to do. They payed no attention to it. Again,
hard to believe adding more _audible_ warnings would improve that, rather than
make it worse.

At some point they are discussing whether they are ascending or descending,
while the stall alarm is blaring throughout. I don't think anyone will
consider making the stall alarm go "Stall! Losing attitude!".

 _"Pull Up! Pull Up!" not "Ground!"_

Notice how in this case they did get that warning...and it further doomed
them, because Bonin started pulling back again.

~~~
seanos
"At some point they are discussing whether they are ascending or descending,
while the stall alarm is blaring throughout. I don't think anyone will
consider making the stall alarm go "Stall! Losing attitude!"."

Yep, but your missing the fact that they didn't believe it was actually
stalled or about to stall. They thought that was impossible since normally the
fly-by-wire protects against it, so that warning can safely be ignored. That
is why they ignored it. It's kind of like the boy that cried wolf. Normally,
the warning can be ignored and so when it started sounding when it really
mattered, they ignored it. Maybe interlacing "Stall! Stall Protection
Disengaged!" (when in alt mode) and "Stall! Push Stick Forward!" (when stick
back) is the ideal solution.

------
jorkos
On a whole other topic, that's quite the footer....Dustin Curtis is a
superhero!!

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AznHisoka
Reminds me of the Zen story which recommends just focus on doing the next
thing, no matter how chaotic or absurd the situation. "Before Enlightenment
chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment, chop wood carry water."

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raldi
Here's my preferred version of this koan:

<http://i.imgur.com/p7WU7.jpg>

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maeon3
The solution is not to average flight stick data. Had it not, then non
panicking pilot 2 would say why the bleep are you yanking back on the stick
(fleeing the scary bear) when we are losing altitude fast and stalling.

Human panicking error. he thought the 75 stall warnings were due to loss of
flight speed indicators.

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4ad
Much better article about the crash:
[http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/what-
really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877)

I don't feel like this article has any substance, and I am particularly
annoyed by the lack of contrast.

Also, see <http://contrastrebellion.com/>

~~~
baxter
The OP links to the Popular Mechanics article in the first paragraph. I don't
think it was intended as a replacement for the Popular Mechanics article, but
as an addition to it.

~~~
4ad
And I feel it adds nothing to it, plus it hurts my eyes, for reasons explained
in my second link.

Also, pretty pathetic I'm downvoted for personal preferences and opinions.

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ajhit406
Just curious how many purchases popular posts like this drive on Amazon /
affiliate sites. For 10k visits, is it like 1% of traffic? Or more like .1% or
.01%?

Would be cool to be able to preprocess blog posts through a product search
engine that had links to everything (maybe just amazon) mentioned in the blog
post-- then let the author affiliate link to those products and profit!

~~~
kayoone
<http://yieldkit.com/>

