Something I would agree with all airlines,, To many lazy pilots these days,, and its really sad, using autopilot the whole flight isnt what flying is all about.. (unless your flying a long haul flight) I completely understand.. I guess we will see where this goes in the future of aviation,, Along with this "future pilot shortage"

Professional flying is all about flying the aircraft the pilot has to fly - not some enthusiasts idealised approach.When enclosed cockpits were introduced I'm sure there were those who talked about lazy pilots and claimed that pilots needed to feel the wind in the face add listen to the hum of the wires.

Professional flying is all about flying the aircraft the pilot has to fly - not some enthusiasts idealised approach.When enclosed cockpits were introduced I'm sure there were those who talked about lazy pilots and claimed that pilots needed to feel the wind in the face add listen to the hum of the wires.

I agree. I see no purpose for the pilot to sit there, and monitor small deviations in altitude, when the A/P is precision. Even I have better things to do on cross countries..........with my two seater. The altitude A/P goes on, and sometimes the roll A/P which can follow a GPS flightplan, or heading. My A/P's are independent. L.Adamson

The "Capt Dave" blog covered this ("Dave" is an A320-type line pilot) and he wasn't impressed. I think his message was that automation won't turn a good pilot into a poor pilot, nor a poor pilot into a good pilot. scott s..

To me the issue is experience, At one airline i worked at,I saw people fresh out of flight school becoming captains 2 years later on the B1900.Not enough &@($* in the seat time to then be making command decisions.It's all about profits. We are now seeing the fruits of deregulation.

I'll throw my two cents in here. Chasing after automation is a red herring. As said above, automation won't make a good pilot bad or a bad pilot good. If one's fundamentals are lacking, no amount of automation will save them. One crash was a turboprop and one crash was a heavy jumbo. Both aircraft are on the opposite ends of the automation spectrum. So automation was not the common cause here. The common link will most likely turn out to be pilots who went through training to be "airline pilots" instead of aviators. Pilots who went through training focused merely at training to a particular test for a particular procedure, instead of training to be aviators who understood flying. They never understood that pitch controlled speed. So when the one day they got surprised by an inflight upset finally came, they ended up pitching up and powering up and wondering why the ground still kept getting bigger because their fundamental understanding of flying was never fully developed. These pilots were doomed to say "I don't know what is happening," as the planes fell because their first instructor never took the time to explain to them the basics of flying during those critical first few hours of their flying careers. When one is put into a surprising or overwhelming situation, one falls back to what they were taught at the most basic and fundamental levels, and unfortunately for those two pilots, they were not provided the right fundamentals by their instructors.

The purpose of automation isn't to make good or bad pilots - it's to improve overall safety. That's the criterion on which it should be judged. If it's the Air France flight being discussed, that fell to the ground because,aving noticed that aiorspeed indications were erratic, the pilots didn't follow the appropriate procedure Vol avec IAS Douteuse (A320) This required setting N₁ and flying a specified pitch angle.

The purpose of automation isn't to make good or bad pilots - it's to improve overall safety. That's the criterion on which it should be judged. If it's the Air France flight being discussed, that fell to the ground because,aving noticed that aiorspeed indications were erratic, the pilots didn't follow the appropriate procedure Vol avec IAS Douteuse (A320) This required setting N₁ and flying a specified pitch angle.

Yes mgh, that is why I said the debate about automation is a red herring. A red herring is something which distracts from the truth. It is not the automation that has caused or not caused anything with these two crashes. These crashes lay completely in the laps of the pilots. Whether these pilots were flying DC-3s or Airbuses, the result of their reactions to an inflight upset would have been the same. On both Colgan and Air France accidents, the aircraft crashed because the pilots did not think to perform a stall recovery. Holding a required N1 and flying a specfied pitch angle would not have saved any of those flights once the plane was stalled. Pitch+Power=Performance only goes so far. Once outside the normal, safe, front side of the powercurve flight envelope, it does not work. That is why you hear "I don't know what is happening" on the CVR of the Airbus. They Pitched and Powered all the way to the ocean. I've got the pitch up, I've got the power up, but why do the houses keep getting bigger? Those pilots did not understand that what they needed to do was to get air flowing over their wings. They did not understand that to get air flowing over their wings, they needed speed. They did not understand that the only way to get speed was to push the stick forward. Imagine one dark and stormy night, mgh is driving to his grandmother's house along a lonely road. Mgh's GPS says "Make next left turn in one quarter mile." Mgh quickly spies a small road to the left and quickly turns onto it. The GPS starts chanting "Off route, recalculating. Off route, recalculating." Distracted, mgh takes a bend too quick, The back end of his car swings out and not knowing what to do, mgh freezes the steering wheel, locks the brakes and ends up upside down in the ditch next to the road. Did mgh crash because of an inaccurate gps databse or did mgh crash because he did not know how to drive out of a skid? To say that the Airbus crashed because the pilots did not follow the proper procedure for Vol avec IAS Doultese is as silly as saying mgh crashed because of an inaccurate gps database. The car crash was because of a failure to handle a skidding car. The plane crash was because of a failure to handle a stalling plane. Failure to follow Vol avec IAS Doultese is a contributing factor. Failure of the pitot tube in icing is a contributing factor. Flight near or within a thunderstorm is a contributing factor. Failure to effect a stall recovery is the cause of the crash. The last time I went through my proficiency check in the sim, we did the stalls an entirely different way from the way we've done them in the past. In the past, the stall event was a precise exercise where we took the plane just to the point of stick shaker and then pitched and powered her out of it while concentrating on holding altitude and heading the entire time. This time, we set the aircraft up on the autopilot, then we pulled the power back, then the instructor engaged us in non-essential conversation. We turned around, talked about football until suddenly, "clack clack clack beep beep beep pow!" went the shaker and the pusher and the sim tumbled forward. From that point on, the goal of the stall training was to first drop the football conversation, then push the stick forward, push the power forward, use gravity to trade altitude for speed, get air flowing over the wing, and bring the plane back to flying. It is unfortunate that it took the lives of all those people on the Dash 8 and the Airbus 340 to force the airlines to finally realize the importance of air flowing over the wing.

Holding a required N1 and flying a specfied pitch angle would not have saved any of those flights once the plane was stalled. Pitch+Power=Performance only goes so far. Once outside the normal, safe, front side of the powercurve flight envelope, it does not work

If the flight crew had followed the procedure it's unlikely that the aircraft would have stalled. In fact they applied nose-up pitch and, despite buffetting and the stall-warning sounding for 54 sec, they continued to apply mainly nose-up pitch and took the aircraft out of its flight envelope in less than a minute from auto-pilot disconnection. In your example the cause of my accident would have been driving too fast. - not the GPS or my ability (or otherwise) to control the skid.

If the flight crew had followed the procedure it's unlikely that the aircraft would have stalled. In fact they applied nose-up pitch and, despite buffetting and the stall-warning sounding for 54 sec, they continued to apply mainly nose-up pitch and took the aircraft out of its flight envelope in less than a minute from auto-pilot disconnection.

Once the plane was stalled, was that the end? Was there nothing that could be done to save a plane once it is stalled? Applying nose up pitch, despite buffeting and the stall warning for 54 seconds, and continuing to apply mainly nose up pitch to take an aircraft out of its flight envelope means they failed to recover from a stall. What does flying a specific pitch attitude and power setting have anything to do with recovering from a stall? So what if they failed to follow the loss of airspeed procedures in the handbook? It only led to the stall. The plane was still saveable after being stalled. Stalling is not the end of the world. Hitting the ground from a stall is the end of the world. But a stall does not mean you have to hit the ground. You can push the stick and fly out of a stall. They had 30,000 of altitude to try and remember that. If you make the argument that failing to follow the loss of airspeed procedure was the direct cause of the crash, then I can make the argument that rolling out of bed that morning by the pilot is a direct cause of the crash. Those are merely middle links in a chain to the crash. Failing to break out of the stall is the very last link in that chain. That was the cause of the crash. If those pilots had better fundamentals, those people would still be alive. Failing to follow the loss of airspeed procedure was not the cause because there were still decisions and actions after that which could have been taken to avert the final fate. Once the pilots failed to recognize and effect a stall recovery, only then was their fate sealed. A driver can't turn the wheel into the skid? A driver can't refrain from locking the brakes? GPS distraction is contributing. High speed is contributing. Dark, wet road conditions are contributing. Inappropriate skid recovery is the cause of the crash. What you do those last moments before the wheels leave the pavement is the determination of whether there is a crash or not.

Failing to break out of the stall is the very last link in that chain. That was the cause of the crash.

Accident investigation is concerned with establish the primary cause and contributory factors. It's rare that the last event in the chain is found to be the primary cause. The sequence of events In the Air France accident was:

1. ASI failed
2. Flight crew failed to follow the published procedure for dealing with ASI and stalled the aircraft
3. Flight crew failed to recognise the stall and took the aircraft outside its flight envelope.

All of those contributed to the eventual accident but it isn't obvious that the last one is the primary cause. It can be argued that any one of the three had not happened there wouldn't have been an accdent - any could be the cause. In my opinion the primary cause is flight crew error. Equipment does fail which is why there are published procedures to mitigate the effects of failure. If the flight crew had followed the procedure the causual chain would have been broken.

What you do those last moments before the wheels leave the pavement is the determination of whether there is a crash or not.

Not necessarily - if you enter a 10 mph corner at 100 mph then an accident is almost inevitable - no matter how much you turn the wheel.

Accident investigation is concerned with establish the primary cause and contributory factors. It's rare that the last event in the chain is found to be the primary cause. The sequence of events In the Air France accident was:

1. ASI failed
2. Flight crew failed to follow the published procedure for dealing with ASI and stalled the aircraft
3. Flight crew failed to recognise the stall and took the aircraft outside its flight envelope.

All of those contributed to the eventual accident but it isn't obvious that the last one is the primary cause. It can be argued that any one of the three had not happened there wouldn't have been an accdent - any could be the cause. In my opinion the primary cause is flight crew error. Equipment does fail which is why there are published procedures to mitigate the effects of failure. If the flight crew had followed the procedure the causual chain would have been broken. Not necessarily - if you enter a 10 mph corner at 100 mph then an accident is almost inevitable - no matter how much you turn the wheel.

It may not be obvious to a non-pilot. However, a stall recovery is a basic skill. And to lack that skill is inexcusable. The first links in these accidents were laid by these pilot's primary instructors who failed to instill in them a strong enough understanding of the fundamentals of flight so that they were unable to draw upon the correct actions during those inflight upsets. There should have been no question that those professional pilots should have been able to instinctively react to an aircraft descending, with no airspeed, with stall warnings blaring, by pushing the stick forward. Of all the things that make up the chain of events to these crashes, their inability to draw upon basic, student pilot level, piloting skills is the most concerning. Pitot tubes fail. ADC computers fail. Autopilots fail. People may not have time to pull upon the QRH to find the Vol Avec IAS Doultese procedure on page XX-XX. But they should have been able to instintively push the stick forward to get the plane flying out of the stall. That is not a checklist procedure. Why? Because that is as basic a skill as walking. There is an assumed basic level of competency that has been shown missing by these accidents. BTW, if you were going at 100mph through the 10 mph turn, that wouldn't be an accident. That would just be criminal recklessness.

Similar with the Colgan accident.

"Because that [flying out of a stall] is as basic a skill as walking." Indeed; it should surely be as basic as understanding how an aerofoil works, which has to be part of the most elementary pilot training, I would have thought.

Indeed stall recovery is a basic skill but had the Air France flight crew followed the Vol Avec IAS Doultese procedure the aircraft would not have stalled so there'd have been no need to recover from a stall. Procedures are there for a purpose which is to mitigate the effects of any failure. They are an essential part of ensuring flight and flight crew should follow them. As this incident shows, failing to follow them can be catastrophic. The similiarities between this and the Colgan accident are that flight crew failures were involved in both.

I suspect if AF had reference they would have easily concluded they were stalled.But they never did. Colgan was a very different situation - wasn't it tail icing at low altitude?They only had moments to react.And BTW how do you un-stall the H-stab? ;)Not by pushing... But that's what AF needed to do...even releasing controls might have helped them.