Commercials pilots: stall warning, and they pull up!

[Iku_es]

Maybe you're right Madfish, maybe I'm being overprotective with the pilots, I dont't know.

The fact is that I'm tired of listening on the news, "experten" attacking pilots after an accident without a basis, people that know nothing about airplanes, selfproclaimed aviation experts.
I don't know if this happens in your country, but here in Spain it's very common. Everyone knows about everything and talks a lot about it (and they don't have a clue, of course). This makes me feel sick sometimes.

But as I said, we don't have the official crash report, we only know the information that was leaked.
Let the pro's establish the causes of the accident, and then we judge the pilots.

I'm not saying that the scenario I described before is what actually happened. It was only an scenario, that maybe fits, i don't know.

Also I expressed myself bad (english is not my native language), I wasn't trying to say that the alarm scared them, the alarm itself is not scary, it's designed to catch the atention of the pilots because something dangerous it's happening. The thing that would have scared me is the inconsistent readouts, and the overhelming situation.
I think is a rule in all emergencies, but if you panic you're dead. You need to calm down, assess the situation and act acordingly.
Emergency situations are trained in sims to avoid panic, and are mandatory

But as I've said sever times, we don't have enough information. We know the stall warning was triggerd several times and that it kept going on and off, and that the pilot keep pulling the stick.
But what about the rest of the info?
- ECAM messages: These messages are crucial in order to know why the pilots reacted the way they did.
- Autothrust status: Were the autothrust enabled or overrided? If overrided:
- Power settings: Were the engines in IDLE, Manual, MCT, CLB, TO/GA?
- Alarms/Warnings: Were more alarms triggered? Bank angle, overspeed, smoke in the lavatory?
- Altimeter status?

I'm also very interested in the reason for the nose up. No pilot will deliberately raise the nose during a stall, I'm sure of that. Its counter-intuitive and a suicide. Anyone who has attended to a flying lesson will confirm that this is repeated several times, and trained.
Every real life pilot, and most of the simpilots knows this.

The only emergency reason to pull up without risk of ground collision I can think about in this moment is overspeeding and approaching VNE.

Even more of a clear sign that human pilots should be replaced as soon as possible

You're joking, aren't you?. I'll never fly in a plane with no pilots aboard. As a software designer, i'll not trust my life 100% to a piece of software without and human backup, sorry, I can't.

[Madfish]

Hehe, don't worry about language - many of us aren't native english speakers either, including myself.

You're right about overspeeding. But that wasn't the case I'd assume - since they had reduced throttle because of turbulences.
Most likely there wasn't any altimeter problem either. (can still change but right now blackbox says altimeters were fine) But then again - how would the plane drop so fast? They must've know there was no way they were too low.

Much of the information you said we don't have is actually available already. The blackbox was analized and the reports reveal much of the info you request. Check the wikipedia link, sources are given there.
Of course, since it's not final, the situation can still change drastically. But it's very unlikely that the blackbox data will change that much.



Regarding human pilots though - what do we still need them for? All Airliners are fly by wire or optics. Humans don't fly the plane anymore - they only make decisions. Decisions that sometimes save or destroy the plane of course.
I'm very sure we'll have "pilots" for a long time still but the question is are they still pilots? In the past I'd have said yes but for the future...?

Some human input will probably always be necessary. But 90% of the pilots duties can be done by a computer and much more efficiently and safer. Even in emergencies - checklists like back in the old days? A computer could run them in under a second.

Further the probability of human error is actually extremely high. And even just driving a car you realize that concentration is a big problem already. Especially when you're basically just a passenger as well - sitting there and dozing off. Humans are by far the most critical element - both during the design process and also during the service time of course.

I believe the pilot of the future would have to be educated almost only in emergency situation management. Flying itself could be done by the computer.

So as it'd appear I'm the opposite of you regarding that. I'd very much prefer a computer over a human pilot. Of course this will still take a few years but I believe it's possible. And also I believe that the area of real influence that a pilot still has over a plane is shrinking more and more. This goes especially for military pilots which are basically outdated already and will be completely replaced by autonomous drones and remote controlled systems within the next 30 years I assume.

It'd be very interesting to see how many airliner accidents could've been prevented if a computer was controlling the plane. I know a few. Contrary it'd also be interesting to see how many accidents of computer failure didn't result in a crash because a human pilot saved the plane.

A great example this reminds me off was the hudson river incident. To my knowledge the pilot could've made it back to an airport but no one even questions his decision because things went well. Lucky pilot or just an ace? But then again, this was a gamble that, although surprisingly, went extremely well.