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My interpretation is AF447 had one pilot refusing to let go of bad assumptions, exhibiting extremely poor stick and rudder skills, and going rogue with the cont
by protastus 4y ago
My interpretation is AF447 had one pilot refusing to let go of bad assumptions, exhibiting extremely poor stick and rudder skills, and going rogue with the controls. It's a scenario of one individual exercising profoundly bad judgement, further enabled by his peer not forcefully taking over.
Loss of pitot tubes only implies loss of air velocity indicator. The attitude indicator, the altimeter and the thrust levers worked fine. I still can't believe they intentionally reduced thrust and pitched up for an extended amount of time, and not only thought this was a good idea, but didn't crosscheck the most fundamental instruments to confirm that the plane was flying level. And then proceeded to ignore stall warnings and stick shaker.
The human error was so severe that I'm not convinced that better alarms could substantially mitigate. At the end of the day, if a pilot forgets how to fly a plane, then their peer (presumably still capable of independent thought) needs to have the presence of mind to take over.
- bell-cot 4y agoOhh, yes. Reading it, part of me wanted there to be a "power down cockpit, transfer all control to a real pilot back at Air France HQ, via satellite data link" override system. Or at least an extremely loud robo-voice blaring "Get these clueless dumbf*cks out of my cockpit, and get a REAL pilot in here" through the entire plane.
- nocoiner 4y agoSadly, there was a real pilot on the plane - he was on his rest period when the incident started. He had come back to the cockpit and correctly diagnosed the issue, but was too late to save the plane.