Kip Powick Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Email passed to me by a fellow pilot....... I (Kip) never flew the A320...so "no comment" EVERYONE: YYYYYYYYY is a retired US Air pilot and a judge at OSH each yr..and a close friend. Interesting what he thinks of Air Bus??? I had asked him if he knew the pilot Sully.. Hello XXXXXXXX Actually it's Hudson river fame. I didn't know him. I've seen him in the crew room and around the system but never met him. He was former PSA and I was former Piedmont and we never had the occasion to fly together. The dumb "Naughty Word" press just won't leave this alone. Most airliner ditchings aren't very successful since they take place on the open ocean with wind, rough seas, swells and rescue boats are hours or days away. This one happened in fresh smooth water, landing with the current and the rescue boats were there picking people up while they were still climbing out of the airplane. It also happened on a cold winter day when all the pleasure boats were parked. Had this happened in July it would be pretty hard not to whack a couple of little boats. Sully did a nice job but so would 95% of the other pilots in the industry. You would have done a nice job. Don't be surprised if the Airbus fly by wire computers didn't put a perfectly good airplane in the water. In a older generation airplane like the 727 or 737 300/400 the throttles are hooked to the fuel controllers on the engine by a steel throttle cable just like a TBM or a Comanche. On the Airbus nothing in the cockpit is real. Everything is electronic. The throttles, rudder and brake pedals and the side stick are hooked to rheostats who talk to a computer who talks to a electric hydraulic servo valve which in turn hopefully moves something. In a older generation airplane when you hit birds the engines keep screaming or they blow up but they don't both roll back to idle simultaneously like happened to Flt. 1549. All it would take is for bird guts to plug a pressure sensor or knock the pitot probe off or plug it and the computers would roll the engines back to idle thinking they were over boosting because the computers were getting bad data. The Airbus is a real pile of "Naughty Word". I don't like riding on them. Google Airbus A320 Crash at the Paris Airshow in 1998. Watch the video of an Airbus A320 crash into a forest because the computers wouldn't allow a power increase following a low pass. The computers wouldn't allow a power increase because they determined that the airspeed was too low for the increase requested so the computers didn't give them any. Pushing the throttles forward in a Airbus does nothing more than request a power increase from the computer. If the computer doesn't like all the airplane and engine parameters you don't get a power increase. Airbus blamed the dead crew since they couldn't defend themselves. A Boeing would still be flying YYYYYYYYYYY Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canus Chinookus Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Biased or not, it seems like a reasonable scenario. Hopefully we'll know sooner than later what really happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Cronin Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Email passed to me by a fellow pilot.......[...] A Boeing would still be flying YYYYYYYYYYY All the new Boeing beasties I've met are also fly by wire and feature FADEC systems. This guy wouldn't happen to be a crotchety old PBY driver now would he? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon The Loon Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Kip, it's difficult to take a lot of this article seriously. The A320 crash in question was in 1988, not 1998. Secondly, the pilots were not killed and contributed to the post-crash investigation. Thirdly, like it or not, Airbus builds one heckuva resilient airframe. Witness the extremely hard landing of the AT 330 in the Azores - it was flying some 6 months later; the burnt shell of a 340 which burned exactly the way it was supposed to with no loss of life; the fault in the NLG resulting in the 90 degree off-centre nose wheel incident(s). Just a couple of observations... [edit: 320 changed to 330. Dohhhh...] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kip Powick Posted February 2, 2009 Author Share Posted February 2, 2009 ...... it's difficult to take a lot of this article seriously. The A320 crash in question was in 1988, not 1998. As stated, I have no comment either way.... I am not familiar with the A320 never having flown it. The crash in France, (into the trees) happened while I was on the A310 course inToulouse so am familiar with the investigation and the "whys and wherefores" but again,I would not comment on the Hudson Huddle incident and the intracies of the A320 and its thrust system.. Just an email I rec'd and I put it out there as it is like almost everything on this forum...just one fellows opinion. and makes for interesting/humerous? reading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leading Edge Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 I have flown both, including the 320, and this guy does not know what he is talking about. Another uninformed post... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon The Loon Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Another uniformed post... Sorry, but : "uniformed" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fido Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Sorry, but : "uniformed" Well Kip was in the RCAF. Maybe the letter was from a former military guy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kip Powick Posted February 2, 2009 Author Share Posted February 2, 2009 Actually, it was passed to me by the author of a best seller...who, by the way, is well known by many on this forum. He rec'd it from the originator and passed it on to me and asked if it had been around the "loop". I emailed back and told him I posted it on AEF, so perhaps he is also following this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChicoChico Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 10 years experience on FBW Airbus types and I say this guy is not a credible person. He hasn't read the details of the first a320 accident obviously. ....next! Chico Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chockalicious Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Imagine that...an e-mail forward that is full of crap! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IFG Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Perhaps not "chock" full of it, tho' . The anti-Airbus stuff is clearly the usual "crap" (& I haven't even flown 'bus products either ), but one part of his little epistle introduced a little common sense ....... The dumb "Naughty Word" press just won't leave this alone. Most airliner ditchings aren't very successful since they take place on the open ocean with wind, rough seas, swells and rescue boats are hours or days away. This one happened in fresh smooth water, landing with the current and the rescue boats were there picking people up while they were still climbing out of the airplane. It also happened on a cold winter day when all the pleasure boats were parked. Had this happened in July it would be pretty hard not to whack a couple of little boats. Sully did a nice job but so would 95% of the other pilots in the industry. You would have done a nice job .... I absolutely do not want to take away anything from the congratulations to that crew for a job well done, but for a group of folks with such a jaundiced attitude toward press reporting, let's not swallow the kool-aid when they go over the top with it, either, and particularly with any implication that most other crews would have screwed the pooch. Capt. Sullenberger and his crew were dealt some horrible cards that morning, and they played them superbly, but the flop, turn and river were pretty good too. How easily it could have been so much worse, as it has sometimes been for other crews in horrible situations, no matter what they did ... Cheers, IFG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goonybird Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Clearly the guy has no idea what he's talking about. I did nine years on A330/A340 and never had a serious problem with the fly by wire or the fadec. I'm now back on a Boeing only to find it works a lot like a bus, fly by wire and fadec! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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