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? ;)It's not by pushing... (?)

There was no ice. There was no horizontal stabilizer stall. It was a normal stall. The pilot forgot to add power after slowing to approch speed. When the stall shaker and pusher went off, he reacted by pulling back on the stick and then keeping it pulled back until he hit the ground, exactly the way the Air France pilot did. His handling of the flight controls were similar to those of a student pilot who is put into a stall without any prior instruction on the matter. Also, the failed airspeed indication on the Air France was only very brief. The airspeed indicators were working through almost the entire upset, stall and descent. The reason they had no airspeed indication during the stall was because they had no airspeed.

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.

Procedures cannot mitigate failure when the pilot himself does not know how to fly. One cannot run if one does not know how to walk. The underlying problem in both Colgan and Air France crashes is that the pilots were not able to recall basic aircraft handling skills when required. By insisting on failure to follow vol avec ias doultese, you are just continuing to place a cart in front of a horse. Yes, the plane would not have been in a stall if they had handled the intial automation failure properly. But that is not enough to crash a plane. The planes crashed because the pilots did not know how to control the plane once stalled. These accidents will be classed as loss of control accidents, not failure to follow checklist procedure accidents. There are very very basic skills that are supposed to have been instilled in a pilot undergoing elementary flight training. Skills no different than being able to make an aircraft turn. Such a skill is knowing that you need to push a stick forward to regain airspeed. The common thread of these two accidents and the aspects that makes them stand out together from other accidents, is that the situation stripped away the layers that had been hiding the fact that these pilots did not have those basic skills. That is why training departments now are refocusing on basic aircraft handling knowledge, not failure to follow Vol Avec IAS Doultese. The FAA and training departments already realize the problem with those two crashes were not a pilot's failure to follow any particular checklist, but a failure of a pilot's basic stick and rudder skills. By focusing on Vol Avec IAS Doultese, you miss the primary lesson from these two crashes. That there are pilots out there who have gaping holes in airmanship from their primary training days.

I wasn’t aware that they concluded it wasn’t tail icing…but there was a lot of speculation at the time that it was. And I’m not trying to absolve the pilots. It’s just ironic that if it had been tail icing (a reasonable conclusion appearently) any attempt to pitching down would have been lethal. So initially at least you had to ask, hypervigilance or inexperience? Maybe we can still ask misdiagnosis or idiot ;) I haven’t read the report, but sounds like there’s a consensus already. I can accept an inexperience pilot might stupidly hold backpressure for three minutes…but I can’t accept even an inexperience pilot would hold 30 degrees pitch for three minutes. It’s inconceivable they didn’t understand they were in a stall. But it happened....which may mean there was convincing contrary evindence. Which get's back to the core of thread...can pilots shut eyes and brain...and fly with ears and seat.

I wasn’t aware that they concluded it wasn’t tail icing…but there was a lot of speculation at the time that it was. And I’m not trying to absolve the pilots. It’s just ironic that if it had been tail icing any attempt to pitching down would have been lethal. So initially at least you had to ask, hypervigilance or inexperience? Maybe we can still ask misdiagnosis or idiot ;) I haven’t read the report, but sounds like there’s a consensus already. I can accept an inexperience pilot might stupidly hold backpressure for three minutes…but I can’t accept even an inexperience pilot would hold 30 degrees pitch for three minutes. It’s inconceivable they didn’t understand they were in a stall. But it happened....which may mean there was convincing contrary evindence. Which get's back to the core of thread...can modern pilots shut eyes and brain...and fly with ears and seat.

The experience of the pilots involved were either replete with training failures, or lack of experience. The pilot of the Colgan crash failed almost every checkride he had taken. The failures were not for small things, they were for rather broad failures. The pilot handling the controls of the Airbus had maybe almost 2000 hours if I recall correctly. That means he most likely had no flying experience outside of a focused zero time to airline pilot training program. A pilot with previous experience flying as an instructor, military pilot, regional pilot, cargo pilot, corporate pilot etc., will have many many many more hours than that by the time he is at the controls of an A330 for a destination company like Air France. No, Air France was most likely this pilot's first flying job. The kind of airmanship failure exposed here is not something that has anything to do with modern automation. The things they failed to learn are things which should have been taught at the elementary level. At a level before they got anywhere near a plane with even a basic autopilot. They are failures by their first flight instructor to teach them the proper uses of the flight controls. It has nothing to do with anything modern or vintage, except if you want to look at the structure of the modern airline industry to see how pilots like these find themselves in those cockpits.

Kevin-I have a question concerning the Colgan crash that I haven't seen addressed . As a GA pilot with quite some experience flying in the Great Lakes area with icing (23 years now) I happened to watch a video around the time of the crash given by Nasa talking about tail icing. The recomendation if tail icing was encountered was the opposite of a normal stall e.g. pull back on the stick-of course determining whether it was tail icing was left a little ambigious at least in my mind leading me to wonder how in a split second one could differentiate whether one was getting a normal stall from a load of ice or whether it was from tail ice, and how the wrong decision could be fatal quickly. We know now that tailplane icing was not the case in the Colgan crash-but is it possible that the crew (or pilot) which had little or no experience in icing had watched this video-assumed they had tail icing and therefore pulled back on the stick instead of what they should have done? If I recall much of the cockpit inflight conversation between the two was about icing and the little experience either of them had with icing-perhaps they convinced themselves pre event to expect such and thus reacted so?

Kevin-I have a question concerning the Colgan crash that I haven't seen addressed . As a GA pilot with quite some experience flying in the Great Lakes area with icing (23 years now) I happened to watch a video around the time of the crash given by Nasa talking about tail icing. The recomendation if tail icing was encountered was the opposite of a normal stall e.g. pull back on the stick-of course determining whether it was tail icing was left a little ambigious at least in my mind leading me to wonder how in a split second one could differentiate whether one was getting a stall from a load of ice or whether it was from tail ice, and how the wrong decision could be fatal quickly. We know now that tailplane icing was not the case in the Colgan crash-but is it possible that the crew (or pilot) which had little or no experience in icing had watched this video-assumed they had tail icing and therefore pulled back on the stick instead of what they should have done? If I recall much of the cockpit conversation between the two was about icing and the little experience either of them had with icing-perhaps they convinced themselves pre event to expect such and thus reacted so?

There is no need to make a decision about what kind of stall you are in. The reason is that if you are in a tailplane stall, the result is an unusual nose down attitude. If all you did was react naturally as you would if you find your aircraft suddenly in an unwanted nose down attitude, which is reduce power and pull back on the stick, you've just done the proper tailplane stall recovery. There is no stall warning for a tailplane stall because the main wing of the plane is not the one actually stalling. So you wouldn't even have to think stall. You just react as you were trained to for a nose low unusual attitude recovery. Either way, Marvin Renslow's control movements were not appropriate for either kind of stall. He pushed the power forward. Which is not what you do if you were thinking tailplane stall. The only thing it looked like he was doing was trying to climb the plane.

I suppose that makes sense though after watching the Nasa video it was not clear to me. My first instructor was in a tailplane stall before they were recognized and I remember all he said was he did not know what happened but he recovered from what he thought was the end just as he landed on the runway-scared the #$# out of him. Experience level perhaps played more of a roll here? Scares me that this crew was flying in icing conditions with no experience with either of them in icing in an area that has routine icing in winter and both had less hours or experience than me. Is that their fault or their companies? Again-perhaps the PIC was diligent, had watched the Nasa flick that came out about then, and did in split second what he thought was correct.... It might be worth watching the video which came out right about this time-I see some of the comments also ask the question what I am stating....http://www.ask.com/v...mCFWRzw-hQp_EdA It is always easy to blame the pilots...

We'll never know what he was thinking. So you just have to ask yourself what is the most likely thing to have happened. That somebody who was a marginal pilot at best, as indicated by his training records, when presented with an unusual situation failed to switch gears in his head from handling the plane like he does everyday to handling the controls in a way he may not have done since certain exercises as a student pilot. Or he was just so alert and vigilant that he thought he was faced with a rare type of situation that few pilots had even heard of, and then handled the controls in a way that sort of maybe looked like a tailplane stall recovery, but was still more consistent with somebody who was just trying to desperately make a plane climb in normal flight. I know we hate to just blame the dead pilot, but is that bias fair to the unsuspecting passengers whose lives are handed over to the pilot? Just because a pilot is dead does not mean he did not screw up and deserves no blame.

Perhaps true-but I'd fault the company placing a pilot and copilot in a flying environment neither were familair with with experience as more of a factor-and as someone who has had more than my share of emergencies-I know that the reaction and results are seldom what one trains for or expects-especially with the low time and experience this flight crew had. Who was responsible for placing them in this situation?

Perhaps true-but I'd fault the company placing a pilot and copilot in a flying environment neither were familair with with experience as more of a factor-and as someone who has had more than my share of emergencies-I know that the reaction and results are seldom what one trains for or expects-especially with the low time and experience this flight crew had. Who was responsible for placing them in this situation?

That is fodder for an entirely separate thread in its own right. Which I alluded to in an earlier post with my cryptic comment about the structure of the modern airline industry and how pilots like this find themselves in the cockpits they are in. The links in these accident chains lead all the way to the decisions made at the head offices in the name of cheap fares and cost cutting.

I suspect if AF had reference they would have easily concluded they were stalled.

When the 54 sec stall warning began the aircraft was stll climbing

Yes, the plane would not have been in a stall if they had handled the intial automation failure properly.

My point exactly. Following procedures is an essential part of the safety system. You condemn pilot training but, apart from your opinions, what evidence do you have support them.

You condemn pilot training but, apart from your opinions, what evidence do you have support them.

The fact that we've completely changed our stall training.....as I earlier described in detail. And netiher would they have had to properly handle the automation failure if they had not been near the thunderstorm. So the crash had nothing to do with not following vol avec ias doultese, it was because they flew too close to the thunderstorm. Mgh, neither of those are the cause of this crash. Those are merely contributing factors. The reason they crashed was because those factors stripped away enough layers of safety and automation that the pilot's lack of stick and rudder skills became apparent. Those factors placed the aircraft in such an undesired state that all that was left was either luck or the crew's basic piloting skills to prevent the worst undesired outcome. Both of which was unfortunately lacking. This is not a failure to follow checklist crash like the Northwest DC-9 in Detroit many decades ago. This is not a controlled flight into terrain accident like the 757 at Cali. This is not a weather accident like the Delta L1011 at DFW. This is not a flight instrument failure accident like the 757 that took off with its static ports taped up. Each of those had their take aways, such as sterile cockpits, FMS procedures, LLWS radars, plane wash cards, etc. This is going to go down as a loss of control accident, like the Colgan at Buffalo. The pilot just never learned that pitch is for speed. The takeaway from these two accidents will be proper stick and rudder usage.

The fact that we've completely changed our stall training.....as I earlier described in detail.... ...The pilot just never learned that pitch is for speed.

It doesn't necessarily follow that beacuse your airline completely changed its stall training all other airlines need to do the same. Unless you have detailed knowledge of the pilot's training your last statement is pure supposition.

It doesn't necessarily follow that beacuse your airline completely changed its stall training all other airlines need to do the same. Unless you have detailed knowledge of the pilot's training your last statement is pure supposition.

The changes were mandated by the FAA for all airlines under its supervision. Marvin Renslow's training failures were detailed out in the documentation that was part of the NTSB's docket on the Buffalo crash. They showed that he had trouble with specific tasks such as takeoffs, landings, go-arounds, and flight. The changes to airline training mandated by the FAA is supposed to reemphasize stick and rudder usage during situations such as stalls. Previously, stalls were not done in training. Merely approaches to stalls which were then flown out of at the first sign of minimum controllable airspeed. The assumption was that pilots at that level already knew how to recover from a stall and the demonstration in training was that the pilot could precisely fly the aircraft near the fringes of its envelope. In case you don't see it, the reason I link Air France to Colgan is because the two pilots died with their hands in the exact same positions. If these pilots had been taught that pitch was for speed at the beginning, both their hands would not have been where they were when their aircraft hit the earth. And from personal experience as a pilot and instructor, I can deduce that they were not taught that from the information that is available. If you want to deride that as "supposition," that is perfectly fine by me.

Kevin I'm sure you have a far better understanding of AF447 than me.I’m just an armchair pilot ;) enjoy the discussion and insights.I do recall reading an Airbus captain’s interpretations of the ACARs. IR1, 2, 3 fault. This is the most unimaginable thing that could happen. IR = Inertial Reference System, provide the aircraft Attitude, Flight Path Vector, Track, Heading, Acceleration, Angular Rates, Ground Speed, Vertical Speed, and aircraft position. So with all 3 IR fault... you have now lost all Attitude and vertical speed, information. Since ISIS has already failed, you now have a situation where the pilot is flying blind. http://www.iag-inc.com/premium/acars2.pdf I don’t believe everything I read on the internet ;)But statements by the AF crew make much more sense in that light…Such as if they trusted a false pitch reference. (I’ve never-ever read that…it’s just my comment)Still do we know know what info they had and was it to be trusted? And I grant you the crew ultimately didn’t use their fundamental training..

The only equipment failure was a momentary failure of the airspeed indication. There were no other equipment malfunctions. Their attitude, altitude and vertical speed indications were all available.