Difficult to know what they could do about the stall warning ceasing to operate owing to a lack of airspeed, other than to perhaps annunciate it on the PFD, although really, you should not be getting anywhere near the flight regime where that would be showing up.

 

PRS are the assessment summaries of the crew when they get checked out by line chiefs on regular flights and on sim rides and stuff. Basically an appraisal of how good at the job they are to see if they need recurrent training or whatever, plus what actual ratings they have. Most of it is likely to be confidential, so I doubt we will see it.

 

Al

What are PRS ratings btw?

 

PRS are the assessment summaries of the crew when they get checked out by line chiefs on regular flights and on sim rides and stuff. Basically an appraisal of how good at the job they are to see if they need recurrent training or whatever, plus what actual ratings they have. Most of it is likely to be confidential, so I doubt we will see it.

 

Al

 

PRS stands for Peer Rating System. Al kinda got it there, though the PRS ratings I was referring to was actually the ratings from your peers; ie. fellow Co-Pilots and Captains. I would refer to what Alan described as being your "Line Check Rating [LCR]". PRS has the advantage over LCR's in that it gives an image of what you really fly like, and not the SOP loving robot we all seem to turn into when there is a LC captain peering over our shoulders.... I'm not saying that you'll fly all too differently w/o a LC captain, some pilots do, some don't, it varies.

 

For those not familiar with PRS, it's a web based system, where you log on and give ratings from 0-10 on different Qualities and Statements, with 0 being dangerously bad and 10 being exceptionally great... AFAIK, if you give someone a rating of less than 3 on a quality or statement, this raises an automatic red flag in the training department and you're in for the tea and biscuits, (after a phone call to the person who submitted the rating of course) and if your average is less that 7; ie. 6.99 and lower; this gets the attention of the department too.... The system is anonymous so you don't know who gave you the rating. We are all encouraged to rate pilots we fly with, and to update our ratings as we fly with them more often. At the end of every calender month an automatic email is sent out listing every pilot you have flown with and requesting you rate them. Again this is totally optional, further optional is that you don't have to give a score for every quality/statement, you may only chose say 15 from the list to rate as you have may not have had an experience where you would be qualified to rate them on it.

 

A small sample of the statements would include;

 

 

Punctuality:

Flying Abilities:

Flying Accuracy:

Adherence to SOP:

Communication Skills:

Understanding of Personal Problems:

Understanding of Professional Problems:

Understanding of Your Abilities:

Understanding Of Aircraft and Systems:

Navigation:

Weather Avoidance:

Ability to Cope in Adverse Weather:

Winter Operations:

Teaching Ability:

ATC Capabilities:

Fuel Economy:

Passenger Announcements:

Passenger Relations:

Ramp Worker Relations:

Dispatcher Relations:

Cabin Crew Relations:

Engineer Relations:

Taxi and Airport Layout Awareness:

Motivation:

Ablility to Motivate:

CRM:

Use of Your Opinions:

Likability:

Dress Code Adherence:

Presentation:

Concentration:

Paperwork:

Chart Preperation:

Briefings:

Estimation Skills:

Calculation:

Decisivness:

Ability to Plan Ahead:

Plan Formulation:

Safety:

Ability to Turn Aircraft Around on Time:

Get-there-itis:

Willingness to Divert:

 

Overall Rating:

 

Hmm, okay I went a bit overboard there and listed quite a lot, but you get the idea. You also have the ability to add specific comments to the PRS system if it doesn't come under the said headings, or you want it brought to immediate attention. Such comments may be anything along the line of "Captain John Smith's passenger announcements tend to have a lot of pauses and contain a fair few Errm, uhhhhr, and argh's." to "Captain Jane Smith tend to leave the cockpit window open even in very cold weather and this is not very considerate to other pilots" ect... You get the idea. The only people who can see the overall rating's and comments for each area is the pilot themselves and the training department, and most pilots like to keep it that way...

 

I've probably gone a bit off track here, but the reason I mention this is that it would be interesting to see the ratings other pilots gave this crew, particularly under the headings of items such as: System knowledge, Get-there-itis, Adherence to SOP, CRM, Safety, Ability to Plan Ahead ect... As these were all the areas that came into play on the night and perhaps had been spotted earlier in the crew...

 

Captain Rónán O Cadhain.

Well, I wouldn't rate the AF crew very highly on:-

Weather Avoidance:

Ability to Cope in Adverse Weather:

plus a few others in the list!

vololiberista

Well, I wouldn't rate the AF crew very highly on:-

Weather Avoidance:

Ability to Cope in Adverse Weather:

plus a few others in the list!

vololiberista

 

From the incident in hand you wouldn't, but it would be very eye opening to see if this was a recurring thing with this crew or a once off that cost them their lives...

 

Ró.

Do you think it's right that the stall warning should stop sounding when the AoA values are deemed 'invalid' by the flight computer because the CAS measurements from the three ADRs are measuring less than 60kt?

Do you think it's right that the stall warning should stop sounding when the AoA values are deemed 'invalid' by the flight computer because the CAS measurements from the three ADRs are measuring less than 60kt?

The point is though "when" the stall warning "does" sound do you pull up or down?

vololiberista

If anyone lets an airliner get to below sixty knots when it is still in the air, it'd probably do just as well if they performed the ******* maneuver to be honest - which in case anybody doesn't know it, is when you let go of everything and say: 'okay *******, you have control'.

 

Al

Do you remember this Al? http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19940426-0

 

78 knots at 1800ft!

which in case anybody doesn't know it, is when you let go of everything and say: 'okay *******, you have control'.

 

Al

 

3:45???

Do you remember this Al? http://aviation-safe...p?id=19940426-0

 

78 knots at 1800ft!

 

A clear case of "We have control" i.e. the crew "and" the a/c systems all doing their bit! "Too many cooks!"

 

With reference to the video, I have seen that before. Explaining the Captain's stripes is very amusing.

vololiberista

In FSX I would put the nose down but I'm no pilot and I wasn't there in the cockpit on that day, and nor were any of us, and that is the problem. We are not in possession of every little stimulation that caused those pilots to react in the manner that they did (wrongly or rightly). In isolation, yes it is very simple to say stall warning = push nose down, but from 2h11m45 the stall warning stops sounding as the AoA is too high and considered invalid (via CAS) but the aircraft is still stalled.. From then onwards the PF is presented with the (potentially confusing) scenario that when the pitch is decreased the stall warning restarts, and then it stops again when pitch is increased. If you can't confirm whether you are actually stalled in the first instance (there seem to be incidents previous to AF447 where stall warnings caused by unreliable IAS indications have lead to nothing, and this may engrained a culture where the crew didn't take as much notice as they should have to the first and second stall warning), then this action/reaction sequence may well not help the situation.

 

If anyone lets an airliner get to below sixty knots when it is still in the air, it'd probably do just as well if they performed the ******* maneuver to be honest - which in case anybody doesn't know it, is when you let go of everything and say: 'okay *******, you have control'.

 

Al

 

But they'd already had clearly spurious IAS readings that could then lead them to question any subsequent IAS readings.

Does anybody know if the stall warning, in the A330, activates also in case of excessive _negative_ AoA?

But they'd already had clearly spurious IAS readings that could then lead them to question any subsequent IAS readings.

 

Which probably takes us back to the decision to fly through the storm in the first place, since as most of us are aware, almost every air accident is the cause and effect of a cascade of decisions or events, as opposed to just one. Like I've said before, anyone who has piloted an aeroplane through a rough storm is not likely to want to try it twice if they could avoid it. There are definitely times when flying in a bad storm, where you are certainly aware that ******* is really the one in control!

 

Al

Oh I agree that it's a case of the swiss cheese holes lining up rather than a single factor. The argument I was trying to put forward was that it is a whole lot more complicated than 'these idiot pilots pulled back all the way into the ocean' and to make those that subscribe to it think a little more.

 

If other aircraft flew through the same storm just fine (I think FLEX alluded to this in an earlier post) and that crew had flown through storms that appeared similar in their weather radar then blame cannot be placed solely there. Surely if we want to place blame somewhere then it should be at the door of that dodgy pitot?

The point is though, that pilots are/should be trained to react instinctively to such things as stall warnings and loss of IAS. Basic pilot training would tell you that if I am pulling back the stick as far as it will go the nose will go up. If at the same time the engines are on max and the a/c continues to fall out of the sky faster than a brick, then what I'm doing isn't working. Nobody put 2 and 2 together. They didn't read what the intruments were telling them. None of them were in the "loop" at any time. They were just observers the whole while.

It comes back to what I have said on numerous occasions. They knew they were in for a rough ride, they didn't "prepare" themselves for the possible consequences. They weren't even discusssed. So when things did go pear shaped they just weren't there!

dodgy pitot?

 

Forget that. It was not remotely the "cause" of the accident. Loss of IAS happens more often than you think. It is followed by a standard recovery. The AF crew didn't follow their own procedures, their own training, their own airmanship. The crew were complacent to the impending and developing situation from the Capt downwards.

vololiberista