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I'm no pilot, and I haven't read the long discussion here, but I can't see how the pilots can be blamed. That Airbus has nonsensical design. Asynchronous stic

I'm no pilot, and I haven't read the long discussion here, but I can't see how the pilots can be blamed. That Airbus has nonsensical design. Asynchronous sticks, so the other one in the seat couldn't see the other stick being pulled back? Then averaging of the async controls, allowing one stick to work against the other? As for "alternate law," why was there no alarm like the Stall warning to repeatedly tell those in the cockpit that controls were now in Manual Override? Who thought any of that was a good idea? It was bad design that doomed that plane, not the humans inside trying to deal with a design that could thwart anyone. EDIT: Also, I must add that it seems to me just to be able to engage with reality, a bloody string with a weight hanging from the cockpit ceiling would have shown that the airliner was climbing, from the angle it was hanging. Low-tech and it sounds stupid, but with cockpit crew so alienated from physical reality due to computer mediation and no visual cues due to the clouds, it would have immediately shown them what was really happening.

Tloewald 15y ago
Consider the positive impact of having a weight on a string flailing around in a cockpit when the shit hit the fan. The articificial horizon works on this same principle, but pilots are known to ignore it anyway. The whole point of instrument flying is to se aside your senses and common sense and look at your instruments. One of the problems was that the plane was unexpectedly stable during the stall so the pilots might have dismissed the stall warnings as disconnected from reality.
jwr 15y ago
It's been done before. From the excellent article "The Turn": > Pilots, too, have relied on pendulums. It is said that an airliner inbound to New York in the 1950s lost all its gyroscopes in heavy weather over Block Island. The captain was a wise old man who had risen with the airlines from the earliest airmail days and was approaching retirement. A lesser pilot might have fallen for the trap of intuition. But the captain simply took out his pocket watch, dangled it from its chain, and began to swing it toward the instrument panel. Flying by the pendulum and the compass, he proceeded the length of Long Island in the clouds. After breaking into the clear near the airport, he landed and wished his passengers a good day. (the entire article is really worth reading: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/langew/turn.htm http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/langew/turn.htm) But in this case the pilots didn't even need to do that. Their gyros were working correctly, so they had an artificial horizon right in front of them. The attitude of the plane was known. They even recovered their airspeed indicator after 30s (the second one after a minute)! All that was needed was for the pilot to stop pulling on the stick…

Tloewald 15y ago

Consider the positive impact of having a weight on a string flailing around in a cockpit when the shit hit the fan. The articificial horizon works on this same principle, but pilots are known to ignore it anyway. The whole point of instrument flying is to se aside your senses and common sense and look at your instruments. One of the problems was that the plane was unexpectedly stable during the stall so the pilots might have dismissed the stall warnings as disconnected from reality.

jwr 15y ago

It's been done before. From the excellent article "The Turn": > Pilots, too, have relied on pendulums. It is said that an airliner inbound to New York in the 1950s lost all its gyroscopes in heavy weather over Block Island. The captain was a wise old man who had risen with the airlines from the earliest airmail days and was approaching retirement. A lesser pilot might have fallen for the trap of intuition. But the captain simply took out his pocket watch, dangled it from its chain, and began to swing it toward the instrument panel. Flying by the pendulum and the compass, he proceeded the length of Long Island in the clouds. After breaking into the clear near the airport, he landed and wished his passengers a good day. (the entire article is really worth reading: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/langew/turn.htm http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/langew/turn.htm) But in this case the pilots didn't even need to do that. Their gyros were working correctly, so they had an artificial horizon right in front of them. The attitude of the plane was known. They even recovered their airspeed indicator after 30s (the second one after a minute)! All that was needed was for the pilot to stop pulling on the stick…