Finally, I'm finding episodes I haven't seen before! The sad part is that these crashes happened in the first place. Gotta love the brilliance of the maintenance people on this one: "Hey, how 'bout we save ourselves some work and time by spraying really high-pressured water on a plane that goes places where temperatures are well below freezing instead of using the cloths like we're supposed to? Great idea! Nah, we don't need no silly protection for the sensors or equipment this thing relies on to keep people safe!" Sigh. Sad for the families and loved ones of the men who died.
Just a small thing, but anyone else notice at first when the controller rejects clearance to do the 360 turns he says "We are not doing this kind of flight, sir." But later when they listen to the CVR he says "We can not do this kind of flight, sir." The first version sounds way more abrasive than the second, that's why I noticed it.
Trying to add drama. These shows have a lot of crap needlessly added. I normally watch a channel on here called Mentour Pilot. He goes through accidents like this. Very informative, zero bullshit drama. He is really good for the layman that don't understand aviation. Explains everything and with visuals. I was apart of a documentary filming at work. They were doing it on one of the aircraft we build. During the filming we had a snow storm. Since we are in an area were it snows like every couple of years, and then its minimal. So even for flurries things around here come to a screeching halt. A lot of people called off work for two days straight. When the show aired the whole damn thing was centered around this storm "OH NO, there was a snow storm, production come to a stop for two days (it didn't, just wasn't that many people working.) Can they make the deadline to move the line?" OH NO, the storm might cause delays in the line move." Then they had execs that you never see driving around the plant on gulf carts. "OH NO, are we going to make it?" Same execs up on the wings "Are you going to make it, do you need anything?" COMPLETE BULLSHIT CRAP. NO ONE mentioned the storm and delaying the line move. Just went about our business and moved on time. Was watching the Concorde one. The one guy said the Concorde was a heavy aircraft and it weighed 135,000 TONS. That's like 270,000,000 pounds. For comparison, the Space Shuttle with the external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters only had a max take off of 2,250 TONS. (4.5 Million pounds) They also made a big deal out of the amount of fuel it took to taxi to the runway. (What a normal car uses in 6 months they would say.) They forgot to add, that the amount of fuel used to taxi to runway only used up TWO PERCENT of the max fuel load. Easy to make up bullshit drama when most the people watching don't have the first clue in what they're watching...
The "memory card" at 15:45 is actually a hard drive control board.... lol. Recognized it as being from one of those old Seagate UltraSCSI drives. But hey, whatever works.
Pilot: the computer turned my steering wheel left and I couldn’t control stop it. Investigator: Yeah but you were going over the designated speed limit.
That's basically what happened. The AoA sensors froze, the computer realized it wasn't getting proper data, and it handed full control of the stabilizer to the crew. Unfortunately, they didn't understand what was happening.
When you train on an airbus, it’s drilled into you to ALWAYS know your FMA (the indications at the top of the PFD). The moment it says “MAN PITCH TRIM” means you are now in Direct Law- so no Autopilot/autothrust/auto trim…basically need to fly the thing like a Cessna 172.
I don't think that computer can be fully disconnedted. Its always there to interpret pilot input before relaying commands to the control surfaces. There is a small external fin that this computer relies on for pitch reference. I think this fin was not covered properly when the paint job was done; preventing it from moving freely. As a result, wrong information was sent to the computer from this fin sensor. This was at the root cause of that catastrophy.
The A320 uses Fly-by-Wire, which means the computers fly the airplane, even while flying without autopilot, so if the computer disconnects, the plane will be difficult to control if not uncontrollable
I've never flown a plane, but I know from watching Mentour Pilot a lot of the reason there are accidents. It amazes me that pilots so often try to recover aircraft using the stick instead of adjusting the trim.
@@Kimberly_SparklesTrim is as important as the sidestick. As for a car, both and more. Gear, throttle, wheel and brakes (but almost never brakes in the event of an upset). All four. But maybe that’s because I’m a racing driver and instructor.
The lack of altitude reduced the time the crew had to recognize and correct the problem. There should be a voice command that tells the pilots what to do. A little text just isn't enough.
It’s bizarre how the episode doesn’t emphasize just how low they did the stall test. One pilot had already objected they were too low for a stall test and then they went even lower and still did it. They started the test at just 3,000 feet.
This makes me apprehensive about the push for self driving vehicles. Not only is there an absence of comprehensive post accident forensics, but also an absence of detailed records on any vehicle. Couple this with the offshoring which continues. And, well, I don't like the prospects. One often overlooked reason for offshoring is to bypass the best practices that are ingrained in US engineers (at least the responsible ones with experience).
Offshore is not the problem, ask Boeing. It’s putting profits over safety. Self driving cars do this as well. Tesla has been testing FSD unregulated due to a technicality that they claim their system is level 2 which should be categorized as level 4 or 5. Self driving companies should accept liability or simply ban them from testing on public roads
I'll assume you don't know anything whatsoever regarding Tesla Motor Vehicles and their models of self driving cars ... There are multiple cameras recording in all directions around the car, processing the local environment in real time. This information is stored inside the solid state drives on board so that they can be removed and examined in the event of an accident. These drives contain data that is NOT normally available to the owner without changing default settings within the system. This essentially functions as a "black box" on board every single Tesla vehicle... there is not a voice recorder or a discrete vehicle systems recording device, but the systems on board contain error logs and the visual record of the vehicle's environment prior to and immediately after an accident. Changing this setup to include vehicle systems function records as well as recording sound would not be a difficult task.
The flight path shown at 7:40 indicates the aircraft never went anywhere near the ocean. It was returning long before that. Yet it went down in the Atlantic. Was any reason given for this conflicting information?
I do not hear them saying it went down in the Atlantic Ocean. I believe it went down in the Mediterranean Sea as they were trying to come into land on the south coast.
These Mayday Air Disaster shows are always so wonky. "They were doing an Acceptance Flight, common in the industry"/"We had no idea what an Acceptance Flight was"'; "They couldn't find anything until they had the brilliant idea to use sonar [to search a huge body of water]"; They filed for an Acceptance Flight/"No way I'm letting you do that, cowboy!" (all paraphrased). Etc. There's an interesting story but the info they give is dumbed-down and apparently passed through Google Translate a few hundred times just to make sure it makes no sense. Really frustrating but really characteristic of Hollywood and the News Industry these days.
Blaming the pilots in this case is not right. Say what you will, but considering companies all over the world want you to put your life and trust in machines and teach their pilots that the machine is never wrong, only you are. Is it that shocking when the pilots trust the machines too much? I say no.
This is very similar to Quantas FL 75 of an Airbus 300 and the two recent crashes of Boeing 737-Max planes. In all cases the automatic, computer driven reactions that are designed to prevent accidents actually did the opposite. All of these systems need manual pilot overrides or complete redesigns.
At 33:46 When investigators re-enacted watering the sensor, all sides were open and exposed so there was that full area where water got in. Not sure if this was really how the investigators did it, or if it was a re-enactment of the investigation without acurately copying the process.
If its an intense time because they have a lot to do in a short period of time - as the expert said - why not just take whatever time you need for it NOT to be as intense or stressful?
I'll bet you they modified the automatic flight control system to verbally remind the pilot to adjust the manual pitch control wheel. If the pilots had heard that message being announced by the computer system then they would've been able to get the aircraft under control again.
The one thing I don’t understand is why don’t they make the manual pitch trim warning auditory should take precedence over everything other than terrain
Honestly, I prefer McDonnell Douglas's warning systems by far over those from other manufacturers. The MD80/90 and the MD11 had a variety of different warning tones plus a verbal explanation of what they meant immediately after, lasting no more than 2-3 seconds. Airbus uses the same chime sound for just about everything I can think of on their planes except for the autopilot disconnect, windshear and terrain warnings, and even then the chime gets added on top of the aural terrain warnings. That sort of alert system makes it so you really have to depend on the pilots immediately saying "ECAM action" as soon as they hear a single chime, followed by reading the display screen and noting any troubleshooting steps or cautions that are on there, which it sounds like these pilots did not do in the heat of the moment. They didn't discuss it in technical terms in this documentary, but it sounds like the airplane went from normal law into direct law, which is even harder to control than alternate law, when the sensors on the outside of the aircraft froze. (You can still use the side stick in alternate law but it's more sensitive, whereas direct law requires manual pitch trim only from my understanding.) The planes at that time did have de-icers built into pitot tubes for air speed, but they weren't as effective as they could have been and I'm not sure if those same de-icers were present on the other sensors on the outside of the aircraft. Ice accumulation on the pitot tubes helped to bring down Air France 447 which they referenced in this episode, pieces of tape helped to bring Aero Peru 603 down which covered the pitot tubes and static ports, and a wasp nest helped to bring down Birgenair 301 by clogging the pitot tubes. Those instruments are very sensitive and they need to be handled with great care.
@@smcdonald9991 That one is definitely straight to the point. I will say the master warning alarm on Boeing 757s/767s/777s which is used for overspeeds is terrifying and attention getting.
I am a bit shocked and curious how we just look over the idea that ATC said no to a correctly filed Flight Plan. I dont excuse anything else but if I file a plan for a recovery flight then I want it honoured.
ATC wasn't saying 'no' to the flight plan. He was saying 'no' to the pilot's request to do the 360s in 'general airspace'. To do the 360 test, the pilot would have needed lots of airspace, which could have put them into the path of another plane. ATC would know more of what's going on in the airspace then the pilots would. Just because a pilot files a flight plan, it doesn't mean that there won't be times that changes to the flight plan might be necessary. ATC can overrule a flight plan if safety is at risk of being compromised. Pilots are also trained to obey ATC even if their instructions contradict the filed flight plan.
This is what happens when the controls are electronics without a MECHANICAL BACKUP. Electronics, in cars and airplanes, is extremely unreliable, mainly, because of tons of noise and high frequency glitches in signal paths and power supply. Electronics gets degraded quickly in such circumstances.
Bizarrely the ep doesn’t emphasize _just_ how low they were when starting the stall test. The co-pilot said we’re too low for a stall test at FL6 yet the captain went another 3k’ lower & began the test @ just 3,000’.
It’s a tribute to Western civilization in terms of how much effort we do in these accident/safety investigations. Recovering tiny sensors from thousands of feet deep in the sea.
I’ve seen way too many of these caused by something maintenance did or didn’t do. I hope maintenance people are being trained better. 7 people died & a plane destroyed bc of improper maintenance - after being assured there would be no problems (by someone who also was on the plane it looked like). ETA: also I hope warning messages have been improved as well. Having a warning that small and not in a color that’s bright and not even bold letters - it’s just ridiculous. How many people approved of the design of that warning? People who design planes and the programs for them should have better common sense!
How eerie similar is this to the 737MAX crashes where the computer trusted the input from a single, stuck, mechanical, attitude indicator. Perhaps flight computers need their own fluid-filled curved tubes to sense their orientation.
Well, hose is similar to heavy waterfall, which, happens very often in the air and on the ground. Britannia has a lot of this. Thus, sensors cannot leak hose water or they will leak any water.
The irony of this incident is that they were there to test if this airplane is fully functional. They went in, I’m assuming, knowing not to trust it until they can confirm that it is fully functional but seems to have done the opposite. During the flight, it seems like they were just going for the extreme tests and fully expected the plane to do what it’s expected to do… seems like the opposite of the objective of this ‘test flight’. At least this what I got from watching this episode. I was also watching it on the background so I’m sure I’ve missed some info that said.
Training on Boeing's aircrafts first it's important so you learn more manual flying before progressing to a more robotic aircrafts like Airbus which are highly automated and mainly driven by a computer system. Emergency doors opening on Airbus vs Boeing are also different as Airbus uses robotic assistance for that maneuver, as well.
Why don't they install drag parachutes on the airliners that could be used in case they lose the brakes on landing or if they get into a dive that's going to rip.The wings off seems aseems a small weight penalty for adding that much safety to the system
I dont understand why the controls cant override the trim. They are electronic controls, cant the system tell when the pilot is pushing with 100# of force, he really really really wants it to go down?
The automation did indeed self disconnect. It was a pilot error not reading that it was the case and forget to apply manual trim (which is normally automatic). This accident was pilot error 100%
It automatically disconnected, the problem is the software didn't make it clear enough that the manual pitch trim had to be manually adjusted in addition to moving the side stick.
@BenoitRAG3 Yes, but when you have seconds to make a decision, and the only thing alerting you to manually adjust the trim is a small text, even an experienced pilot could miss that. They did what any experienced pilot would do, aviate before troubleshooting
I don’t understand why they were cleared to take off in the first if flight control wasn’t going to allow them to do the complete acceptance test. I’m thinking that it was known as to why they were taking off & that it was an acceptance flight.
This isn't the first time a pilot has crashed a plane because they put their trust in automated systems. They glossed over the fact that it wasn't washed the same day the flight took place it was washed 3 days earlier. This is clearly a design flaw if the AOA sensors allow ingress & retention of water they need to have drainage tubes. "Well they didn't see the manual trim warning". The whole sequence took about what 1 min from pitch up to stall whose going to notice an alert that is smaller then the width of a pencil. This could also be viewed as a reason why side sticks are bad, it takes the pilots attention away from the central displays. You're looking left at the side stick and right at the throttles completely missing the important info in the middle.
2:15 I would have to disagree that renting a car, and testing a plane after maintenance are Very Similar. If you rent a car, and you get on the interstate, and it stops, you get out and walk to the nearest gas station or call triple A if you own a tracking device.
You completely missed the point of the analogy. That is NOT what he was saying, he was saying the PURPOSE of the flight, which basically is to w sure that it is in proper working order, just as they would do when one ends a car LEASE, not a rental car. In the U.S., people have an option to buy a car, or lease, which is a LONG TERM “rental” as in YEARS, therefore, they must test all systems to ensure the car does not have damage within the systems, as if they miss something, they’ll miss out on their chance to assign the failure to the person that had said car for the past several years. For cars, it’s akin to renting an apartment versus buying a home and having a mortgage. The man speaking worked in the US NTSB, their version of the BEA in France.
Ok... ok ... ok... There's a lot of things I learn to understand with this show. But seriously, @21:19, who on earth writes their 8's like that? I've never seen that before.
Many, very big engines mean no stall. Over fuselage parachutes as well as passenger and crew parachutes would have saved thousands of lives. Parachutes do not require training.
Automation is nice, yet still built by, humans....my view, take each flight with caution and even with an experience crew, humility is always appreciated. As for instruments, always guarded and on edge, any thing unexpected in the air, stay flexible and take NOTHING nonchalant
Very good job dudes and nicely well done!!! Congratulations 992.82% yo throughout the 3rd sizzling patriotic week of said amazing August y'all. I'd rather we get rid of the automation entirely in aircraft, bring back flight engineers, and stop relying on computers for every damned thing. Let pilots actually FLY the aircraft, instead of being reliant on a system that can and does malfunction at a pretty high rate.
These are same sensors that screwed Boeing on the 737 max. At least with the A320 it doesn’t take over the controls. It would have been nice (hind-site) an audio warning about manual trim. Maybe one of you aeronautical guys can comment on why there are separate systems for elevators and elevator trim. It seems to me they are the same thing in a fly by wire plane.
Elevator trim is used in flight to keep the aircraft straight and level. It’s used because of the variations of weight and balance from flight to flight. Not sue why they’re saying elevator inputs is not enough when it should be enough the elevator is already set for level flight. This episode left a lot of unanswered questions.😊
See… I’m all for computers making things easier, but given that the 737 MAX is STILL having issues relating to computer problems, I’m shocked that nobody seems to realize that maybe, just maybe, computers need to have their roles in aircraft reduced significantly, or at least be fitted with an override switch so pilots can shut them off in case of emergency without loosing all their instruments.
Rain fall is different from a high powered hose. It doesn't force the water in as much and is at a different angle. Have someone shoot you with a fire hose and compare it to standing in the rain.
While a hose may be more pressure or may not be(since you’re hitting said rain at a few hundred mph) it still shouldn’t be enough pressure to get in if it was designed correctly with tight enough clearances and tight enough sealing
I always thought it was so silly that these investigators do these episodes in their native tongues. We all know they are REQUIRED to read and write English if they are pilots, as most investigators are.
I'd rather we get rid of the automation entirely in aircraft, bring back flight engineers, and stop relying on computers for every damned thing. Let pilots actually FLY the aircraft, instead of being reliant on a system that can and does malfunction at a pretty high rate.
@Suisfonia one of the reasons that the F/E became useless over the years and replaced with computers, was that they made mistakes (and i get that I may be wrong and that no human is perfect) and that computers usually don't make mistakes.
@@notgonnadoitm8 Computers do make mistakes, don't fool yourself into thinking that computers are perfect. A flight engineer is there to help ensure that things are running smoothly, I'd be happy if an FE was included even with the automation.
@@Suisfonia I’m guessing you weren’t alive during the 1970’s when planes were falling out the sky weekly. These new jets are too complicated, fly longer distances, and require much more attention then a human could do without becoming fatigued early on in the flight.
There is so much built-in redundancy that these systems most certainly save more lives than they have costed. And every crash involving the failure of these systems is coupled with a lack of understanding of the system. Such as this crash , they had the information to rectify the situation , but they either didn't understand it or didn't see it.
More so caused by due the nature of the flight the pilots having to sit there just watching and wait and see if the plane was gonna save itself instead of using there instincts and know how to help save the plane the second it doesn’t feel right before it reaches the point of no recovery
Each flight we take, is a gamble. Never forget ur just in a tube, 35,000 feet above the earth, at 500 mph, in the hands of software and a couple guys. If a random maintenance worker, spraying water from a hose, can take down an airliner, thats absurd. Great job "aerospace engineers"
Exactly I never liked flying I think it's way more unrealiable than advertised in the name of profits by extremely greedy people, also by time we get this kind of news they have already came up with a story they can sell to the public while leaving out a lot of details.
What? Wheels? Wat a stupidity. This is not very intuitive. Should have been a steering wheel, which can be pushed down ( and up ) significantly. Who flies by stick? Children with Play Stations?
Nowadays pilots rely on computers to fly the plane too much. In long haul flights like 15-hour flights, may be pilots only fly the plane for 10 minutes and the computers do the rest. As a result, their flying skill has deteriorated.
