Just a pointer to an article I caught in an online magazine the other day about increasing automation in aircraft.http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/...,639298,00.html

Just a pointer to an article I caught in an online magazine the other day about increasing automation in aircraft.http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/...,639298,00.html

Is the problem increasing automation of aircraft designs in principle? Or is the problem shoddy engineering on the part of Airbus Industrie?I must point out that the accident rate for the Airbus family of aircraft is very high -- and not just because of flight computer problems.

Hello,

Is the problem increasing automation of aircraft designs in principle? Or is the problem shoddy engineering on the part of Airbus Industrie?

Bigs and interesting questions .. this debate is running from ages ....

I must point out that the accident rate for the Airbus family of aircraft is very high -- and not just because of flight computer problems.

Honestly this can be called a urban rumour :)Regards.Gus.

Hello,Bigs and interesting questions .. this debate is running from ages ....Honestly this can be called a urban rumour :)Regards.Gus.

Jamaica, Queens, ....... was a 777 .......... Oh wait ... No it wasn't. It was a ... darn it, I can't remember.Brazil -- Atlantic Ocean was a 777 ........... Oh wait ... No it wasn't. It was a ... darn it, I can't remember.Article in magazine was a 777 ................. Oh wait ... No it wasn't. It was a ... darn it, I can't remember.Recent crash off [Emirates?] was a 777 ... Oh wait ... Not it wasn't. It was a ... darn it, I can't remember.My memory is failing me. I keep thinking that Airbus aircraft have a very high accident rate compared to the latest Boeing designs. Please help me out. Remind me of those Boeing recent design accidents.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxI'm not partisan. I'm simply concerned about safety. When the A310 was new in the USA I rode the Continental fleet of Airbuses back and forth between Denver and NYC every 1-2 weeks for eighteen months. Today, based on its safety record, you could not get me to board any aircraft built by Airbus Industrie, just as I would never board a DC-10 or MD-11 based on its safety record, even though Boeing bought McDonnel-Douglas.Believe what you like. As for me, I pay attention to the news about major aviation accidents.

Jamaica, Queens, ....... was a 777 .......... Oh wait ... No it wasn't. It was a ... darn it, I can't remember.Brazil -- Atlantic Ocean was a 777 ........... Oh wait ... No it wasn't. It was a ... darn it, I can't remember.Article in magazine was a 777 ................. Oh wait ... No it wasn't. It was a ... darn it, I can't remember.Recent crash off [Emirates?] was a 777 ... Oh wait ... Not it wasn't. It was a ... darn it, I can't remember.My memory is failing me. I keep thinking that Airbus aircraft have a very high accident rate compared to the latest Boeing designs. Please help me out. Remind me of those Boeing recent design accidents.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxI'm not partisan. I'm simply concerned about safety. When the A310 was new in the USA I rode the Continental fleet of Airbuses back and forth between Denver and NYC every 1-2 weeks for eighteen months. Today, based on its safety record, you could not get me to board any aircraft built by Airbus Industrie, just as I would never board a DC-10 or MD-11 based on its safety record, even though Boeing bought McDonnel-Douglas.Believe what you like. As for me, I pay attention to the news about major aviation accidents.

Only recent Boeing design screw up I can recall is the center fuel tank problem. Remember China Airlines?Anyway. No urban myths here, the writing's on the walls-- errr in the NTSB's database.

Do you mean like the BA triple-7 that lost both engines on approach to Heathrow and they still don't really know why, but guess that a fuel heat exchanger might have gotten blocked on both engines within seconds of each other?scott s..

Do you mean like the BA triple-7 that lost both engines on approach to Heathrow and they still don't really know why, but guess that a fuel heat exchanger might have gotten blocked on both engines within seconds of each other?scott s..

For me the question is whether this accident was due to a 777 engineering design error. I don't think so. Time will tell.Many of the early third generation Boeing-designed passenger jets have experienced corrosion problems and apparent design problems such as the 737 rudder-hardover problems -- sometimes with catastrophic results -- but to my knowledge in each case these were high time airframes. Except for the rudder incidents Boeing can't be faulted for inadequate periodic inspections performed by their customers.I think the current generation of Boeing designs is safe. Would I fly in a known-to-be-antique Boeing? The answer is yes, but a reluctant yes, and then only if it was a USA or UK flag carrier.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxAs I said, I'm not partisan.

Hello,Amazing speaking about design failure for the Airbus planes and add that a possible design failure for the boeing 737 rudder system.No one of the investigations results in Airbus crashes pointed to a basic design failure to today.Don't read only the press .... read also the final reports of the investigations.BTW .. I think the accident rate will be more defavorable for the Airbus in the futur .. cause it's will be more Airbus flying than Boeing .. but the average number will still the same ... if safety still as today in general.Regards.Gus.

Hello,Amazing speaking about design failure for the Airbus planes and add that a possible design failure for the boeing 737 rudder system.No one of the investigations results in Airbus crashes pointed to a basic design failure to today.Don't read only the press .... read also the final reports of the investigations.Regards.Gus.

I haven't read the 777 Heathrow accident report but I've read essentially everything else relating to major air crashes in the First World, going back to the 1930s. I have a collection of 90+ official accident reports. I've read them very carefully because the detective work interests me.Now ...For the third time, I'm talking about the designs of fourth generation passenger jet aircraft. Not those of the 50s, not those of the 60s, not those of the 70s/80s -- those of the 90s and 2000+. By this time there shouldn't be any fatal design errors. The latest Airbus products seem riddled with them. If your pride in Airbus Industrie prevents you from seeing this, so be it.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThese aircraft, plus Concorde and Space Shuttle, show what happens when government is allowed to micromanage aerospace vehicle design.

Hello,

The latest Airbus products seem riddled with them.

Wich design errors are pointed out by the accidents reports about Airbus ?Regards.Gus.

Hello,Wich design errors are pointed out by the accidents reports about Airbus ?Regards.Gus.

The crash in Queens is ultimately attributable to a software rudder control law design error. Per unit travel of the rudder pedals the rudder effectiveness INCREASED with increasing airspeed, allowing an agressive copilot to turn what should have been simply turbulence discomfort for the passengers into a loss of the vertical stabilizer, which in my opinion should never have been able to snap off at the attachment lugs in the first place.As for the other three crashes, all recent, to my knowledge the accident reports have not yet been published. But the airworthiness directives have. Is there any doubt in your mind that the design of the static ports and pitot tubes for these aircraft was disastrously defective?I had my doubts about the Brazil crash -- serious doubts. But not any longer. Yes, there is a redesign of the static and dynamic airflow sensors, and the fleets are being retrofitted with it. But what's next, Belga1? What will you say when yet another way is found to lose an airframe to catastrophic failure in mid-air? I have no doubt there will be such accidents in the future, all we don't know now is the precise failure sequence that will lead to airframe destruction.

Hello,

The crash in Queens is ultimately attributable to a software rudder control law design error. Per unit travel of the rudder pedals the rudder effectiveness INCREASED with increasing airspeed, allowing an agressive copilot to turn what should have been simply turbulence discomfort for the passengers into a loss of the vertical stabilizer, which in my opinion should never have been able to snap off at the attachment lugs in the first place.

Your sumrize of the report is not really exact.Please read it again.For the AF447 (Brazil) it's very too early for point anything in a just beginning very difficult investigation cause the few elements availablesHope the black boxes will be recovred and particulay the CVR.About bad designs and flaws it's some school cases ...For Airbus .. it was the Absheim and the Mount St Odile accidentsI the two .. accusations of flaws in the controls design were made and resulted in trials.The two cases were lost by the accusation.For Boeing it was a case of a flaw for the lock of the cargo doors (B747) causing the lost of life in a accident (door opened in flight)This was tracked by a family of a victim (Australian) and the case was win.For defunct Douglas it was the Ermenonville DC-10 THY accident caused by a flaw design of the lock of cargo door ( opened in flight and total los of the plane)It was also a problem with the redundancy of the moving surfaces command.The case was win.From memory it's possibly still trial to come for the 737 rudder problem and also for the Airbus in NY.Regards.Gus.

Hello,Your sumrize of the report is not really exact.Please read it again.For Boeing it was a case of a flaw for the lock of the cargo doors (B747) causing the lost of life in a accident (door opened in flight)This was tracked by a family of a victim (Australian) and the case was win.For defunct Douglas it was the Ermenonville DC-10 THY accident caused by a flaw design of the lock of cargo door ( opened in flight and total los of the plane)Regards.Gus.

The crash in Queens would not have happened if the copilot had not been stomping on the rudder pedals. However, his doing so revealed the fatal flaw in the design of the software rudder control algorithm. The fact that the vertical stabilizer snapped off speaks for itself -- inadequate safety margin in the strength of the design of the attachment. The forces exceeded the design specification to be sure -- and the design specification therefore was inadequate.It doesn't matter what layman juries or judges award to victims and/or their families. They are not professional engineers, and they can be swayed to give the wrong decision by a clever attorney. Indeed, civil suits are not about right and wrong, or about good/bad engineering design. They are simply about which side has the better attorney.As for the DC-10, it's not a modern design but it's still in service. You cite the cargo door latches design which is true -- bad design. But the aircraft's hydraulic lines are routed in such a way as to make the aircraft fatally vulnerable to anything that causes the cabin floor to collapse, or anything that compromises the integrity of the cabin roof in the vicinity of the tail, where the hydraulics for the slab tail located -- and are completely vulnerable to a disintegration of the center engine fan disk, which is what happened in the Sioux City crash.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxBelga1,Please feel free to ride Airbuses any time you like. Please feel free to avoid riding in Boeing products whenever you like.It's your life, not mine, and I'm not going to tell you what to do with it. However, I'm certainly going to tell the readership what I do and why I do it. You -- and I -- are free to say what we think. The readers will take in all this information and decide for themselves what's right for them.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxEDIT: I forgot to mention that in the Queens crash the engine pods were torn from their pylon mountings. There are mechanical fuse plugs in the pylon attachments that will deliberately fail before the wings will. However, in the case of the Queens crash there is no evidence for this having been a normal happening, nor is there evidence against it. Therefore ...Based on the locations where they landed I strongly suspect that the engines tore off before the vertical stabilizer did. If so, this too shows the incredible lateral G-forces that the defective rudder control law software allowed to build up.

Hello,I'm not yet sure about my personnal choice :)Anyways I flyied as pax twice or three a month during 30 years and had no choice (employer choice prevailed :) )in any kind of planes-choppers and with any airlines and in any continents within the limit of availability.I still there ... lucky one certainly :)Anyways I still not sure .....Some I readed from professionals .....

On October 19, 2002, about 2000 eastern daylight time (EDT) [or 0000 coordinated universal time (UTC)], a Boeing 757-200, TF-FII, operating as Icelandair flight 662, experienced a stall while climbing from flight level (FL) 330 (i.e., 33,000 feet) to FL 370. The flight lost about 7,000 feet during the recovery and then diverted to Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI), Baltimore, Maryland. There were no injuries to the 191 passengers or 7 crewmembers and no damage to the airplane.ANALYSIS/CONCLUSIONSDuring the takeoff roll as the captain was about to call "eighty" knots, the first officer called "hundred." The captain noted that the standby airspeed indicator agreed with the first officer's and decided to continue the takeoff and address the anomaly of his airspeed indicator after takeoff. The pilots indicated that EICAS messages appeared and disappeared several times after takeoff and during the climb, including the messages MACH/SPD TRIM and RUDDER RATIO. Checklists for MACH/SPD TRIM and RUDDER RATIO messages did not mention an unreliable airspeed as a possible condition. The modifications associated with Boeing Alert Service Bulletin 757- 34A0222 (and mandated by FAA Airworthiness Directive 2004-10-15 after the incident), which had not been incorporated on the incident airplane, would have provided a more direct indication of the airspeed anomaly. According to information in the Icelandair Operations Manual, these EICAS messages (in conjunction with disagreements between the captain and first officer airspeed indicators) may indicate an unreliable airspeed. Overspeed indications and simultaneous overspeed and stall warnings (both of which occurred during the airplane's climb from FL330 to FL370) are also cited as further indications of a possible unreliable airspeed. The crew did take actions in an attempt to isolate the anomalies (such as switching from the center autopilot to the right autopilot at one point during the flight). However, this did not affect the flight management computer's use of data from the left (captain's) air data system, and the erroneous high airspeeds subsequently contributed to airplane-nose-up autopilot commands during and after the airplane's climb to FL370. During the climb the captain's indicated airspeed began to increase, and the overspeed warning occurred. The first officer indicated that at this time his airspeed indication and the standby airspeed indication both decreased to about 220 knots and his pitch attitude felt high. Despite agreement between the first officer and standby airspeed indications and the pilots' belief that the captain's airspeed indicator was inaccurate, control was transferred from the first officer to the captain. Pitch attitude continued to climb and airspeed continued to decay after the captain assumed control. The airplane's pitch attitude became excessively high until the airplane's stick shaker activated and the airplane stalled. Although stall recovery was eventually effected and the airplane was leveled at FL300, the lack of appropriate thrust and control column inputs following the stall delayed the recovery. Evidence from the investigation indicates that anomalies of the captain's airspeed indicator were caused by a partial and intermittent blockage of the captain's pitot tube. The reason for the blockage was not determined.Source: http://www.rnf.is/media/skyrslur/2002/M-08...kyrsla_NTSB.pdf

Around 1990 or so I had this very scenario occur on a 767 during climbout over the Rockies one dark, overcast winter night. The captain's airspeed was the problem as the F/O's airspeed compared correctly with the Standby Airspeed. We flew the F/O's airspeed to destination and the Captain's airspeed slowly corrected as we descended into warmer air (relatively speaking - it was minus 15 or so), on final.The same EICAS messages occurred to us as did on the Icelandic 757. We did not have to use pitch-power responses as my airspeed was unaffected. We wrote it up of course.As industry experience shows, the problem, although extremely rare, isn't new, isn't isolated to the Airbus A330 and almost never leads to an accident if the causes and the procedures for dealing with the failure are understood. Going back to "old designs" is not the solution.

Flying .. be pilot or pax can be a dangerous occupation .. not allway .. fortunately.Regards.Gus.

Now you might say "But Mike, but Mike, sometimes your conclusions go against those of NTSB and other accident investigation agencies. How can you say such things when you disagree?"The answer is, NTSB isn't The Deity. If you read the accident report for the 1978 mid-air collision between a PSA 727-200 and a C-172 resulting in both aircraft crashing into a residential neighborhood in San Diego, California, you will find that NTSB put the blame squarely on the 727 flight crew, though one board member did dissent.I also dissent. By the investigators' own conclusions, the crew was flying directly into the sun, which was relatively low in the sky at that time (around 9am in late September). The dissenting member and I both agree that if the crew had seen the other aircraft, the mid-air would not have happened, and that the crew was operating VFR and therefore had an obligation to "see and be seen". But the real problem was the antiquated ATC procedures for the airspace around major airports, just as the real problem in the case of the Queens crash was the aircraft design, not the copilot. In the case of PSA 182, the FAA immediately ordered an emergency assessment of ATC procedures around airports, resulting very soon in the "inverted wedding cake" controlled airspaces. Since FAA did that, I can recall only one airliner collision that can be attributed to inadequate monitoring of traffic by a flight crew -- the Cerritos DC-9/Navion midair -- and even here it can reasonably be argued that ATC should have kept these aircraft apart. What else is ATC there for?xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxEDIT: The following is in response to your post #14 above ...The final sentence says it all ... "Evidence from the investigation indicates that anomalies of the captain's airspeed indicator were caused by a partial and intermittent blockage of the captain's pitot tube. The reason for the blockage was not determined."The question is whether the reason for the blockage was a design error, not whether the blockage could or could not be explained in this particular case. But in the case of the Airbus static port system, the design error was known and a manufacturer's service bulletin issued, calling for the replacement of the static port system fleet-wide -- at the operators' convenience.Quite obviously that bulletin was not sufficiently urgent -- but it's being acted on now with high priority -- because it's a design flaw that has led to several near- and actual fatal crashes.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxPlease don't try to "pull rank" on me regarding your experience as a passenger ... I've been flying since I was four years old, which was in 1948. I have flown in more different aircraft more times than you would believe possible because I too flew on business -- from 1964 through 1989, in addition to flying frequently as an ordinary traveler from 1948 through 1954.I've ridden in propliners, both coast to coast many times and across the Atlantic several times. I've ridden in trans-Atlantic in jetliners many times, including 707s in the late 50s and early 60s. I've ridden in helicopters many times. I've ridden in bizjets several times. I've ridden in turboprop airliners several times. I've ridden in commuter airliners many times, both turbines and propjets. I also have a pilot's license though I quit flying at 110 hours -- and I've got probably a couple of hundred hours as a passenger riding with other GA pilots.So I'm not afraid to fly, just choosy these days about which aircraft I'll ride in and which carriers I'll fly with.I've been reading about aviation since age 4, just before I started travelling as a passenger. I stand by all of my remarks and observations.