Let's hope whatever the cause it is permanamtly fixed and the 162 souls on board did not suffer unduly...

 

The one comfort that will come out of this plane makers will ...we hope never let this happen again....

 

Thought go all families who lost someone..

 

Best

 

At the moment it is still all speculation.

It is a fact that Airbus sent out an AD to A320 operators to advise of an issue with certain pitot tubes. In certain conditions they could ice up, and it would trigger Alpha Floor due to the erroneous information received from iced up pitots. The Alpha Floor logic would command a climb or descend command which must be overridden by the crew.

 

This AD was based on an incident previously where the crew took manual control and continued the flight without incident. In this case (again speculating) the crew may have lost horizon and recognised the situation too late and entered a stall. I do recall pitots being worked on in 767s about 5 years ago to mitigate these issues and 777s had the same.

 

It is unfortunate, but the picture is pointing that way.

The Airbus flight protection systems should prevent the aircraft from entering a stall situation, so something went wrong, that could be caused by a computer malfunction (Possible), the pilot intentionally disables the protections (also possible), or inaccurate sensor data picked up from the Pitot tubes which will result in inaccurate data to the computers and gauges. The Airbus A3XX  has a history of this problem (most notably AF447), so I tend to lean towards the latter

It is indeed looking that way, but it is an industry wide problem. Airbus does not manufacture pitot tubes, they are actually chosen by the customer from their favourite supplier. We have seen 767s and 777s as well as A330s with these issues. It needs to be looked at more closely.

It is indeed looking that way, but it is an industry wide problem. Airbus does not manufacture pitot tubes, they are actually chosen by the customer from their favourite supplier. We have seen 767s and 777s as well as A330s with these issues. It needs to be looked at more closely.

 

The problem though with Airbus' is the flight protections. If because of the faulty data being interpreted by the flight computers The protections may not allow the pilot the freedom of control he needs to recover. He can disable them, but in the heat of the moment, he may not do so, or if he did the delay may be to late for him to recover. A Boeing pilot has full control at all times (Except maybe for the 777, and 787, but then he just has to exert more pressure on the yoke to release the protections, where an Airbus pilot has to switch off the protections on the overhead) which could prevent complete loss of control.

The problem though with Airbus' is the flight protections. If because of the faulty data being interpreted by the flight computers The protections may not allow the pilot the freedom of control he needs to recover. He can disable them, but in the heat of the moment, he may not do so, or if he did the delay may be to late for him to recover. A Boeing pilot has full control at all times (Except maybe for the 777, and 787, but then he just has to exert more pressure on the yoke to release the protections, where an Airbus pilot has to switch off the protections on the overhead) which could prevent complete loss of control.

not necessarily. There is a misconception that Airbus will not let you do this or that, usually by people who are not familiar with them. Alpha Floor is an envelope protection that will keep your flight in the safe parameters of pitch and speed. Put it this way, if the 737 had Alpha Floor, then Turkish Airlines may not have crashed at Amsterdam, or Sharm El Sheik, etc. etc.

The 777 that nearly crashed out of YPPH had a similar issue...the failure of an IRDU channel provided wrong data to the system and the aeroplane went crazy...the pilot was able to bypass the channel and make a landing back at YPPH, there is no pushing on the yoke to remove the protections. A few months later a QF A330 had a similar issue and again the crew was able to manually take the aeroplane back to a safe landing.

 

Aeroplanes these days are highly intricate machines with a lot of systems and automation. I dont believe the problem lays in Airbus or Boeing philosophies, but with crews unable to properly monitor and recognise a problem as it is developing.

 

The days of crews needing to know basics of pitch/roll/yaw as well as meteorology have passed. These days you need to add ICT/Microelectronics as well as Networking. We are still seeing an evolution in the role, but it needs to be accelerated.