Commercials pilots: stall warning, and they pull up!

[Anvilfolk]

So I saw these news today: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wir...inglePage=true


I was super surprised... so commercial airline pilots get a stall warning while in level flight, and their instinct tells them to pull the nose up? Then the plane stalls for real and crashes, killing everyone. This is serious! I mean, really? I'm wondering whether I want to fly again!

I was just wondering what your thoughts on this were...

[ATAG_Doc]

They need to lay off the AI control.

[TomcatViP]

It's a very good question and a freaking matter to be concerned with as a citizen.

I do have noticed this trend since the last ten years with pilot "natural" skills falling down. The fact is that young commercial airliner pilots (as might be in military) hve less and less interest in aviation than the years before.

The career (old) advantages have drawn a new array of public in aviation jobs (pilots, engineer, mechanics) that does not makes any diff btw average technologies and aviation sciences. [I do recall engineer's talks about the relative technological advance btw auto industry and planes with a surprising opinions candidly surfacing as the end result -And I won't name the plane manufacturer's plant were this conversation has occured ]

The direct effect is that such individuals are not committed them self the way it should be. I mean that the level of awareness in competencies has drop from active research motivated by personal interest, passion and the desire to excel down-to minimal requirements for job qualifications.

Obviously this is not to be generalized to the majority of individuals but as more the aviation industry (in North country) is seen as a job heaven with sexy outfits (you see my pilots wings) the more it will drag in that kind of individuals and screen out by direct Newtonian relation the more talented ones.

Sadly when flying in Eu as a can packed passenger I can feel alrdy the diff btw companies only during climb out and landing.

But what is scaring me the most with the kind of story like the airfrance crash is the wall of smoke layered by professional representatives in such accidents when any Aviation professional should hve agreed much earlier that the pilots reacted strangely to the situation.

Note1 : A330 hve rear CG balancing resulting that "bckward" pilot's induced oscillations during stall might be needed to put the plane out of a stabilized stall - only pure speculation from me due to the size of the balancing arm

Note2: for the AirFrance fight 447 crash go to : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

[Wolf_Rider]

Cockpits of the future will carry a pilot and a dog...

The pilot's job is to feed the dog, and the dog's job is bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything

[bongodriver]

I can assure you none of us are trained to pull up, the case in point was not the whole story, the aircraft was caught in severe weather with much windshear, and the pitot probes were blocked, the pilots had alot of confusing information to deal with, ultimately their response was a gamble...

Tomcat is right to suggest newer pilots are loosing many basic skills, here in europe we have pilots flying the heavies who have never flown a 'propper' light aircraft in training, they hold these new and bizarre 'multi-crew' licenses having done all their training in simulators, he is also right in saying the newer guys are doing the job because 'they can', instead of it being a life long ambition it is now just another career path with a nice uniform.

[Jungmann]

For an exhaustive look at this issue in regards to the Air France 447 crash, take a look at the several threads at http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/4...age-found.html. See what the pros say about it.

Jungmann

[Madfish]

Originally Posted by bongodriver

I can assure you none of us are trained to pull up, the case in point was not the whole story, the aircraft was caught in severe weather with much windshear, and the pitot probes were blocked, the pilots had alot of confusing information to deal with, ultimately their response was a gamble...

You make it sound like you're a pilot with a major airline. Without looking into the details let me say one thing: I'm suprised that you say it's a gamble!

At that flight altitude with a stall warning - bad weather or not (should've been over-, underflown or avoided in the first place?) - it was only a gamble because they didn't do what would've been done ususally - either leveling out that plane OR descent to get out of that stall, or am I wrong there?

Would there be any reason to not descent until you get out of the stall or at least level it out before pulling the controls back?

I guess the age of safe travel is over until we get fully automated machines. Real people can't ever be good pilots by sitting there sleeping for the whole flight and only flying simulators back home to get some experience. That's not trained at all - it's the opposite.