That accident was caused by having extremely incompetent pilots at the controls, which in turn was maybe caused by a misplaced feeling of "the plane can fly itself anyway, the pilots are only there to monitor it".
These people should never have been allowed to fly a plane under those conditions (at night, above see, not clear weather, two cadets at the controls while the captain is resting).
Folklore has it that on long haul cross ocean flights, it isn't unusual for everybody on the flight deck to fall asleep.
In a car, you are parked serenly on the side of a road and have all the time in the world to play.
In an airplane in an emergency, you are too busy. When the engine quits at
25,000 feet, you start to lose cabing pressure since the turbos are no longer running. In a smaller plane like a Cessna 152, the engine will windmill and probably clear itself. In a Malibu, the engine is much bigger and simply quits turning.I don't know if the prop pitch control works with the engine stopped so you could find a pitch angle that spins the engine, but again, you are too busy to play with it. I didn't feel that using the battery to try to start the engine would work because the air is so thin at altitude there isn't much chance of clearing the engine. It is the same as driving to Pike's Peak in Colorado, which is about 15,000 feet. In a normally aspirated engine, the engine runs very rough and loses power. It would be very hard to start if you managed to flood it.
Back in the plane, you have the gear out to increase the drag and pointed the nose down to increase the descent rate so you can get down to breathable altitude before the cabin loses pressure. But the most you can get safely is around 4,000 feet per minute. At 25,000 feet, it will take about 3 minutes to get down to breathable altitude, which is manageable. There are oxygen bottles under the seats, but these cost $600 each to replace so you try to not have to use them.
Meanwhile, you have contacted the tower and declared an emergency. You have clearance to land, but there is a lot more going on than simply drifting down through the clouds. You are checking for other A/C, you have turned on all the lights including the cabin lights, you are planning the landing approach, checking to see you have enough altitude to make the runway, checking to see if there is anything else you need to do, and doing all the thousands of other things to get back on the ground safely. There isn't time to play with the engine. You are too busy.
After we landed, the ground personnel tried to start the engine, but it was too badly flooded and they had to tow the aircraft off the runway and back to the apron. So if it wouldn't start on the ground, it certainly wouldn't start at altitude.
After I bought the Malibu, I bought a little Cessna 152 so any of my employees could learn how to fly. One day the manager of my CAD department came back from lunch drenched in sweat. I said, "Ha, you soloed. Better than sex, isn't it?"
She replied with a resounding "YES!"
I recommend anyone with a bit of spare time learn how to fly. There is no other human experience like it.
With gliders a normal procedure to loose height fast is to spin. In a fully developed spin you are loosing ~400ft/s. The descent rate is initially lower, which is just as well as normal training allows spin entry at 1000ft AGL (or typically 3 spin+recoveries from a 2000ft launch :) ).
In the UK gliders regularly fly at 20kft. IIRC oxygen is advised above 10kft and mandatory above 12kft.
Alternatively, it ensures that wives know their husbands don't have/need a mistress.
Well, have a trial lesson at least!
When the computer runs out of ideas there not much else it can do but relinquish control to the pilot and tell him to fly the plane But if the pilot isn't used to flying manually other than in a simulator that might not end well. retired fighterpilots might be better in that regard, but watching "aircrash investigation" there's also a number of those who have needlessly insisted on flying manually and making mistakes that a computer wouldn't have
Or at some major airports. When the ADS-B extenions finally ran out last year there were still major airports that did not have ADS-B setup for the controllers. So mandate was for planes, not FAA or contract towers, if you can believe that.
A modern ATC tower really feels more like a musuem when it comes to the equipment. It all works, likely for many decades as can be seen from the stuff in use. The FAA actually does a pretty good job though. I've had to deal with them for random things and they're one of the better federal agencies.
It's still just garbage airbus design where apparently pilot and copilot can fight over the controls with no haptic feedback that they're even doing so. Tacking on another alarm isn't helpful. Even on a cessna, you can fight over the controls, but you will both feel it. Chains and cables are superior to any euro-committee design.
Americans still aren't over the fact that Airbus made the better plane...
There are always details that can be done better, in this case some alarm when both sidesticks are in use.
What about the Boeing MAX where the pilot and THE PLANE could fight over the controls? At least Airbus does not have that problem.
it has a warning and there is a priority switch to have either left or right controls have sole control of the airplane.
from when Sully ditched in the Hudson,
15:27:26.5 priority left. [auto callout from the FWC. this occurs when the sidestick priority button is activated on the Captain's sidestick]afaict on Boeing the controls even on fly-by-wire planes are mechanically connected so they don't add, the strongest pilot wins. But they can be disconnected with the side effect that some control surfaces are only controlled by the controls on the same side
They didn't.
So you're saying yet another alarm going off in stressfull situation is the solution? Stupid.
Fair enough. The vertical stabilizers just snap off the airbuses as they crash into the ocean. It's completely automatic. Heck, there was probably an alarm for that too.
This pilot for Colgan Air just fought the stick-pusher until the plane crashed, all he had to do to save the plane was just follow its lead:
Utterly creepy how this plane goes down in near silence on the CVR with the crew almost blase about the situation til the end.
Of course we will get the same issues in cars when the self-driving becomes standard and the drivers license will become even more of a formality than it already is in some countries.
When you are not teached how to control a car in normal and abnormal circumstances, and when you never practice these things because the car normally drives itself anyway, at some point in time you will crash because either the car systems malfunction, or they get in circumstances that the software cannot handle. The driver at the controls either is not paying attention, or he/she is not able to solve the situation because they have not learned it or have not practiced in enough.
However, that does not mean that as a whole the world becomes less safe! It may well be that all the time when the system behaves normally (no matter if on a large plane, a small plane, a car) it works so much better than manual control that it saves many more lifes in that operation than the few lifes that get lost when the system malfunctions.
Still, people will focus on the malfunctions and criticize the systems.
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