all passengers now

Hmm. The investigation into the AIr France crash reveals that pilots are apparently no longer trained to fly at high altitudes:

William R. Voss, the president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va., said the lack of sufficient training for high-altitude upsets was not unique to Air France.

“There is not really time being devoted anymore to these issues,” Mr. Voss said in a telephone interview earlier this week. “It’s a problem across the industry.”

Mr. Voss said long-time safety regulations requiring strict vertical separation of planes in the air have meant that pilots no longer fly manually at altitudes above 24,500 feet. “They never get to feel what the aircraft is like at altitude,” he said.

I suppose the next stage will be: “Of course he can fly a plane! He used to be in charge of bollard positioning for Serco!”

Comments

[Barry Freed]

My brother is a pilot (first officer) flying internationally for a major US airline (all Boeing); I'm seeing him this weekend so I'll be sure to ask him about that.

[CMcM]

never mind planes: what happens if driverless cars become the norm? Apparently Google has brought up Nevada for this purpose is the place where this might start...

[CMcM]

P.S. , yeah, I know - but, actually, Dude, I'm fully confident I can find my jetpack, I've just mislaid it...

[ajay]

I am slightly surprised at the assertion that there's no angle of attack indicator in the cockpit. I would have thought this is what the artificial horizon does. Barry, could you ask your bro about that too?

[john b]

My Aussie flight-journo mate shares my dad's (non-pilot but long-time mates with many pilots and flight-journos; Dad and Ben are unacquainted) view that AF's standard procedures are suicidally dangerous compared to those of every other developed-world airline. If this were the case and AF management wanted to stay out of jail, it'd be helpful for them to spread the media meme that everyone else was equally bad and they were unlucky.

(*cough*News Corporation*cough*)

[Alex]

The question of an alpha (or AoA if you're old fashioned) indicator refers to a phase of the investigation when it was thought that they lost the Primary Flight Displays as well as the Integrated Standby Instrument System, and therefore the attitude indicators. It turned out that an independent alpha meter is an extra-cost option and AF didn't specify it, as the 2x PFDs and 1x ISIS were thought to cover all eventualities.

However, it later turned out that the PFDs were working all the way to the sea, and they did in fact go all the way from FL350 to zero in a stable stall with the sidestick fully back and the PFD correctly showing the plane hugely nose high, so the question hasn't been material for a while.

As opposed to "WTF?", for which I can only advance the analogy with current international economic policy I brought up with D^2 over pints a while ago.

[john b]

Thanks Alex. I was pretty sure that every modern plane has an alpha indicator on the PFD, but not "downloading Airbus PDFs to check" sure. So in other words, we know for a fact that the pilots *did* have one, and the people claiming otherwise are just FUD-spreaders.

Air France's PR company appear from brief Googlage to be Ruder Finn. Anyone know if they're up to Edelman in their Dark Arts skills?

[Barry Freed]

Ajay, Alex has that covered in his usual precise and thorough manner but I'll ask him about that too.

[Cian]

never mind planes: what happens if driverless cars become the norm? Apparently Google has brought up Nevada for this purpose is the place where this might start...

Nevada I can see. North London, I think, would be a challenge.

[Barry Freed]

One thing about the Air France thing too is that there is a real divide between Airbus and Boeing and how they deal with pilot control.

Anyway, my brother said that they regularly train for stall recovery at altitude (over 25,000 feet) although much more time is spent on stalls closer to the ground because, well, closer to the ground so much less time to react. As he read the story he exclaimed "You never pull up on a plane [in a stall] never ever even if you're 2000 feet - even 1000 feet - above the ground."
And that he never trained to do anything but that. He said the story itself seemed somewhat confused as if the reporters didn't have a good handle on the mechanics of flight but that it was also apparent from the details given that the pilots didn't have much of a clue as to what was going on since their airspeed indicator was out.
My brother flies 757s and 767s. They have 3 separate angle of attack or alpha indicators though he was pretty indifferent as to which term one uses as the instruments are integrated into some other display (I can't recall the name).

Nevada I can see. North London, I think, would be a challenge.

Cairo would be the brass ring.