Air France 447

[manwest]

The Human Factor, article from Vanity Fair

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash

[Kip Powick]

Thanks for posting

A good read.

[Don Hudson]

I'm not sure why it showed up now. The accident has been thoroughly examined - there's nothing new in the VF article, no insights and no new conclusions or theories. Other than to boost sales, why reiterate the story?

[Kip Powick]

I'm not sure why it showed up now. The accident has been thoroughly examined - there's nothing new in the VF article, no insights and no new conclusions or theories. Other than to boost sales, why reiterate the story?

Don,

I think the story is aimed at the general public, that is the folks that really don't care, or perhaps don't understand the "official version" but may just wonder about the sequence of events.

I am sure those in the 'industry' have read the official report and being aviation and industry wise are well versed in the sequence of events as well as all the "filler' in the Vanity Fair story.

Let's face it, the public probably have no idea what CRM is, or how it is supposed to work. Perhaps the article will enlighten a few readers to at least some aspects of what goes on aerodynamically with aircraft as well as how a little problem can cascade into tragedy when proper corrective actions are not initiated.

[j.k.]

I'm not sure why it showed up now. The accident has been thoroughly examined - there's nothing new in the VF article, no insights and no new conclusions or theories. Other than to boost sales, why reiterate the story?

A friend of mine is a writer and often writes magazine articles, I'm amazed at how long the process is for some of them. He will pitch an idea to an editor and it will get slotted for an issue 18 months even 2 years away. Then he researches/writes/etc with that deadline in mind. He does do some shorter things too, but the longer research oriented ones go through quite a process.

That could be why it's out so far after the fact?

[Don Hudson]

Kip, thank you. The article does explain aspects of our work quite well and is very detailed about the sequence of events. There's a book out on AF447 that's very good; perhaps this is the industry's "Titanic" in the sense that the story itself has taken on different proportions in the public mind than other aviation accidents and continues to "fascinate". It's also a watershed accident in terms of automation dependency, manual flight, FBW software design, the meaning of "protections", the nature of the notion of "experience" as it attends flight crews joining the industry say, in the last dozen years. In this sense, AF447 is disturbingly very much like the Colgan accident at Buffalo, NY and like the Asiana accident at SFO.

In fact one of the many positive outcomes including the examination of FBW protection design, is an NTSB conference in just over two weeks on emerging "Flight Data & Recorder Location" technologies, partially initiated by the loss of AF447, and by the loss of MH370, However, in such accidents, we think, "That's unbelievable!" and "How could they do that?", when really, it's not at all unbelievable. If they are "obvious" with hindsight why not beforehand? Fukushima was such an unbelievable "accident" as was the breaching of levies during Hurricane Katrina, the massive flooding of certain areas of the US and Canada, etc.

I understand what you're saying, and I do believe my expectations are a bit unrealistic - (I've been told that before!), but it is those questions I think that deserve the public's (and the author's) attention as much as the visceral fascination with the "accident". But one can't spread oneself too thin either!

j.k., thank you also - the article is very thorough and "getting it right" would take an enormous amount of time as the sequence is well-known, (but even as there are many theories, still not well understood in terms of "why?"), and writing "correctly" would take great effort in research.

[Gumbi]

You do realize that the author of that article is the son of Wolfgang Langewiesche, author of Stick and Rudder...

[Kip Powick]

You do realize that the author of that article is the son of Wolfgang Langewiesche, author of Stick and Rudder...

I did not realize that....until...I just clicked on his name at the start of the article and Goooooooogled " his Daddy".

Thx

Edited to add...

This is the link to the Legacy 600 and the B737 accident over the amazon...by the same author...another excellent read.

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/air_crash200901

[Don Hudson]

Hi Gumbi;

I knew Langewiesche was the author but didn't know the author was the son. Clearly, both write well and with knowledge.

Agree, Kip, the article was a good one as I recall.

[airt]

W. Langewiesche is an occasional contributor to Vanity Fair. His aviation related writing is excellent. Another of his VF articles was about the Embraer/GOL737 midair. Worth tracking down for the read.

[Kip Powick]

W. Langewiesche is an occasional contributor to Vanity Fair. His aviation related writing is excellent. Another of his VF articles was about the Embraer/GOL737 midair. Worth tracking down for the read.

The link to the story is above in my post

[Seeker]

It's an excellent article that all pilots should read but, if nothing else, read the last two paragraphs:

This is another unintended consequence of designing airplanes that anyone can fly: anyone can take you up on the offer. Beyond the degradation of basic skills of people who may once have been competent pilots, the fourth-generation jets have enabled people who probably never had the skills to begin with and should not have been in the cockpit. As a result, the mental makeup of airline pilots has changed. On this there is nearly universal agreement—at Boeing and Airbus, and among accident investigators, regulators, flight-operations managers, instructors, and academics. A different crowd is flying now, and though excellent pilots still work the job, on average the knowledge base has become very thin.

It seems that we are locked into a spiral in which poor human performance begets automation, which worsens human performance, which begets increasing automation. The pattern is common to our time but is acute in aviation. Air France 447 was a case in point. In the aftermath of the accident, the pitot tubes were replaced on several Airbus models; Air France commissioned an independent safety review that highlighted the arrogance of some of the company’s pilots and suggested reforms; a number of experts called for angle-of-attack indicators in airliners, while others urged a new emphasis on high-altitude-stall training, upset recoveries, unusual attitudes, flying in Alternate Law, and basic aeronautical common sense. All of this was fine, but none of it will make much difference. At a time when accidents are extremely rare, each one becomes a one-off event, unlikely to be repeated in detail. Next time it will be some other airline, some other culture, and some other failure—but it will almost certainly involve automation and will perplex us when it occurs. Over time the automation will expand to handle in-flight failures and emergencies, and as the safety record improves, pilots will gradually be squeezed from the cockpit altogether. The dynamic has become inevitable. There will still be accidents, but at some point we will have only the machines to blame.

[Don Hudson]

Seeker - the emphasis is well-deserved, thanks for highlighting it.

[ed to add]: Regarding that first paragraph of the quoted conclusion of the VF article, I couldn't agree more.

In fact there is a component to that paragraph that hasn't been included or argued probably because it is probably viewed as more a labour/industrial matter, (which I never thought it was!) and not a human performance matter, (which it really was or at least became!), and that is the fact that, two decades ago now, young people were taking a look at "airline pilot" as a career and saying "I don't think so", and those with the talent, the ability, the mental discipline and drive to do well in this career either left, or never entered, preferring more lucrative, rewarding and more secure that garnered more reasonable treatment and actual employer respect than this profession has over the race to the bottom.

I think, and would argue, that the results have come home to roost. The Langewiesche article is the first I have seen expressing this sad reality and it's outcome. I don't think it's about to change now, and "more automation" is a crazy answer.

Regarding the article's last statement, "There will still be accidents, but at some point we will have only the machines to blame." I think I understand what is meant, but we're there already.

Though I certainly like their present use against ISIS, that's like blaming the drones for the proxy wars from darkened underground rooms somewhere in the U.S. The "machines", to follow an old argument, have their makers whether it's hardware, firmware or software. In fact the legal industry knows that blaming designers as well as the pilots has "currency" in our business as they stay conspicuously away from holding the Accountable Executives accountable.

The pilotless, commercially-routine airliner dialog may be marginalized by changes in how we get together, ship our goods or see new places, (notice I do not say, "improvements", because the 19th century Protestant idea of "progress" has already done enormous damage). But I don't think we'll see pilotless flight on the scale that is presently seen on sites like Flight Radar, etc.!

AF447 was a human performance accident, not a technical failure. The airframe, systems and engines performed remarkably well under extreme and non-flight-tested conditions. For example, the elevators remained demonstrably effective throughout the entire descent and were available at any time to get the nose down, return the THS to normal settings, (which could have been done manually at any time), and unstall the wing. Some who know their aerodynamic stuff have examined recovery scenarios as low as 6000ft. In the sim, it took 15000ft but that's from FL350 - the air down low is much thicker of course.

[cavok]

The BEA just released an animation based on the CVR/FDR data. Here's the link to the BEA site, scroll down to the video section: http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight.af.447/mediatheque.php

Here's a link to a YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txxZL14vH-k

[Seeker]

The BEA just released an animation based on the CVR/FDR data. Here's the link to the BEA site, scroll down to the video section: http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight.af.447/mediatheque.php

Here's a link to a YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txxZL14vH-k

The first link crashes Firefox for some reason but the youtube link works fine.

[conehead]

Don; I was intrigued by your mention of "the Protestant idea of progress". What are you referring to? Enlightenment? Please excuse the topic drift, but I'm curious...

[Don Hudson]

Hi conehead; Regarding the Protestant idea of progress, I was recalling the late-19th Century / early 20th Century connections which at the time were being made between the notions of a (European) religious calling, of capitalist ideals & profit-making, and progress, (which in some contexts is a rationlist notion.

Specifically, I was recalling a book I read a long time ago entitled, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" which was an early sociology work by Max Weber. The Protestant (& Lutheran) idea, (ie., a connection between a religious "calling", ("God's work") and the business of making a profit through capitalist principles was taken up with vigour in the early part of the 20th Century. Rationalism was a kind of intellectual backdrop which legitimized a "technical" approach to profit-making, (vice notions of socialism most clearly conceived in Marxism and the Marx's "soft" critique of capitalism in Kapital). These social phenomenon gradually grew together in a blend of economic behaviours which took western culture and their political economies in a certain direction, (rationalist thought which legitimated the notion of "progress" and a legitimating religious calling to business and profit-making). The ideas are rather foreign today as the underpinnings, (what I call the "legitimations"), of capitalism per se are almost invisible to our society, (although the unfathomable greed is certainly making certain parts of this technical method of appropriating wealth visible to ordinary people!).

The notion of "progress" is to me a socially-constructed artifact which legitimates, (in this case, "makes desirable"), certain kinds of social and institutional behaviours. "Progress" is contextual, and in a world in which these notions do not easily find a home either in western society or eastern thought, (one person's "progress" is another's "step backwards"!). I wouldn't want to use the term in any context these days!! Thus, the subtle caution...

Sorry....a lot of chit-chat, but you asked a really exciting question.

[GDR]

Any system will work from capitalism to socialism. However every system is dependent on the integrity and the humanity of those who rise to the top. In the west we are more concerned about the charisma and the ideology than we are about character and there is a price to be paid for that.

[conehead]

Thanks for the reply Don. I find myself wondering about the perception of "progress" in todays society. I watched a news story the other night about a hockey legend, Paul Henderson, and how his leukimia cancer has been virtually "cured" with a new wonder-drug. This drug treatment costs about $100,000 a year, and our government health-care system is saying there's no way they will cover those costs. So, I started thinking about the money spent on various weapons and armament systems by our government today, such as missiles and bombs the RCAF drops each day in the Middle East. I know that every single missile fired from our aircraft costs in excess of $100,000. 1 missile = 1 cancer treatment. I'm also thinking of the multi-billion dollar spending fiascos we witness by our governments, and it makes me wonder where we're headed as a society, and how we got here. The greed we witness...

I guess you were right in saying that one man's step forward is another man's step back...