Co-pilot error caused AA 587 crash

Chris W wrote:

Pete wrote:

Remember that it was an AA
DC-10 that lost an engine at ORD, and AA's maintenance practice
of removing engines with a forklift was the culprit, contrary to
McDonnell Douglas' advice.



That sounds interesting. How was it that removing them with the
forklift caused a problem, and how were they supposed to do it? Just
curious.


They were taking the pylon off with the engine, rather than removing the
engine from the pylon. Reattaching them involved impacts that the pylon
wasn't designed to cope with, and caused cracking.

AA weren't the only culprits, and were not the only ones fined for doing
that.

Sylvia.

"Peter Joosten" wrote in message
...
Jay Beckman wrote:

Some refer to the Paris Airshow, while some just refer to an airshow in
eastern France.

I believe you are referring to the following accident:
http://aviation-safety.net/database/1988/880626-0.htm

According that link the accident happened at the Mulhouse-Habsheim
airport,
indeed in the east of France, on the Swiss border. The aircraft had taken
off and was supposed to land at the Mulhouse/Basel airport.

With best regards, Peter


Peter,

Yes, that's the one I was originally thinking about.

I stand corrected that it was NOT the Paris Airshow...but it was in France.

Jay

Chris W wrote:

Peter wrote:

Yes, the wheels were turned rapidly and the cars did spin out of
control - but there was no indication that any even came close to
flipping over.

Just because a car is spinning, doesn't mean it is out of control.

And I neither wrote nor implied anything to the contrary. But in
the case I was describing the cars were both spinning and out of
control.

Ralph Nesbitt wrote:
Why the FACS failed to limit flight control inputs & why the rudder limiter
failed to limit rudder travel in this incident are two questions that have
not been addressed.

First question: A300-600 is not FBW and there is no computer interpreting
pilot commands.

Second question: The rudder performed as commanded and did not exceed its own
travel limitations. Under normal circumstances, it would not have broken the
tail. However, it was a combination of rapid complete rudder movement with
side slipping of aircraft which put way too much lateral force on the tail fin
which snapped off.

You need a lot of rudder authority in flight if, for instance, you lose an
engine and need to correct for asymetric thrust. But that doesn't give you
carte blanche to play with the rudder with full left to full right rapid
movements while plane in side slipping and buffeted by turbulence.

RVerDon wrote:
It seems to me that any airplane that will lose it's tail simply by using
the rudder pedals is unsafe and shouldn't be allowed to fly.

The only way to do this is to put computer interpretation/authority over pilot
commands so that the computer will move the rudder at safe speeds for current airspeed.

Problem is that pilots outside AA had always been trained to refrain from
using rudder for normal flying. They were never instructed to use the rudder
in flight as a teenager uses a nintendo game paddle. So this was never an
issue before.


So the big question is wether trhe A380 and 7E7 (planes that were launched
after that AA accident) will have computer controlled rudders.

AJC wrote:
And for what it's worth there is a very scary documentary of yet
another AA crash, an MD8X/9X I think, landing during a storm. Again
the culture prevailing at American Airlines was heavily criticized.

However, when another airline had one of its jets decide to leave the airport
and stop the plane at a Burbank petrol station (blocking traffic in a large
boulevard), some pilot who used to post here mentioned that that particular
airline was renowend for having a very cowboy pilot attitude and that this
accident was a perfect example.

So it is interesting that airlines would have "personalities/cultures" which
make their pilots significantly different. One would have expected airline
pilots to be trained more or less all the same way when flying the same planes.

The midair collision over Switzerland is another example: one pilot is from an
airline whose culture says "listen to TCAS", whereas the other pilots had a
culture of "listen to air traffic controller" and those two litterally clashed.

Jay Beckman wrote:

Is that due to the crash at the Paris Airshow several years back?

The A300 is FBW, an Airbus crash in Paris... so much for the educated
infos in this group.

The crash you mention occured at an airshow in Habsheim, near Mulhouse,
which is more than 200 nm from Paris. And the crash wasn't caused by the
FBW system, rather the opposite: The pilot had shut down the computers
surveillance system, because the computer wouldn't have allowed him to
fly his dangerous maneuvre!

Stefan

Stefan wrote:
FBW system, rather the opposite: The pilot had shut down the computers
surveillance system, because the computer wouldn't have allowed him to
fly his dangerous maneuvre!

No, this was a demo of its computer systems capabilities, they woudln't have
shut it down.

Secondly, the big red button isn't to override the computer, it is the
"override the other pilot" button. (eg: to decide who is controlling the plane
when both pilots are wanking their joystick at the same time)

On airbus planes, because they have a joystick with no feedback, one pilot
really deson't feel what the other pilot is trying to do. And one can override
the other by pressing the button, at which point his joystick takes control.

When it launched its 777, it was Boeing that bragged about its pilots being
able to break the flight enveloppe by pulling really hard on the yoke, and
that was marketed as a big advantage over Airbus cockpits where pilots
couldn't break the limits.

Pulling Gs isn't really the issue, it is preventing a stall. And that is where
the computer is far more accurate than a human and this is where engine thrust
does not follow immediatly a pilot's command (it takes time for engines to
increase or reduce thrust). You can't start to climb as soon as you raise
engine thrust is your speed is so low that you are borderline stall at level flight.

Had this been a Boeing plane, the pilot would have heard an alarm and felt his
yoke vibrate indicating he was about to stall the aircraft, and he then could
either have continued to try to climb and stall (falling down on trees), or
tried to level and pickup speed before climbing, giving the same result as the Airbus.

What is not known about that particular indcident is whether then then current
software of the A320 would have warned the pilot that his command to climb
could not be executed due to stall conditions, or whether the pilot was lost
wondering why the plane didn't respond to his command to climb.

The above would make a big difference if the pilot had not yet applied more
thrust to engines. The stall warning might have triggered an automatic reflex
by the human pilot to increase thrust. On the other hand, the pilot should
have known that at current very slow airspeed, he could not climb out and
would need to increase thrust.

Howdy!

In article , nobody wrote:
Pooh Bear wrote:
You're not a friend of John Tarver are you ? He insisted that rudders on big
jets were *purely* yaw dampers.

Isn't he the one who was certain planes have slaps, a combination of slats and
flaps ?

"splaps"... and the P1T0Tube that has nothing to do with measuring dynamic air
pressure...

Just an ID ten T problem...

:-) :-)

yours,
Michael
--
Michael and MJ Houghton | Herveus d'Ormonde and Megan O'Donnelly
| White Wolf and the Phoenix
Bowie, MD, USA | Tablet and Inkle bands, and other stuff
| http://www.radix.net/~herveus/wwap/

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 03:47:24 GMT, "Dave Stadt"
wrote:

Simply not true. Automobiles will not turn over on flat pavement unless
they hit something. It has been a law for decades.

I've seen filmed demonstrations of cars flipping simply by turning.
It was an expose on Jeeps. Seems dealerships were outfitting the
CJ5's with oversize tires and sending them out into the world. People
were flipping them doing what almost amounts to normal driving,
without hitting anything or skidding.

The team doing the expose outfitted one of these Jeeps with sidebars
to prevent the vehical from completely rolling over, then did a series
of J turns in a parking lot. At the terminex of each J turn, the Jeep
dramatically lifted up and would have tipped over were it not for the
sidebars.

Yes, the Jeeps had a high center of gravity due to the oversize tires,
and a narrow track. Otherwise it would have been much more difficult
to get it to tip over. But it DID tip many times simply by turning
sharply, and at a not so fast speed.

Most normal streetcars are built too low to the ground, and have tires
that do not develop enough traction to flip simply by turning or
spinning. They require the additional assistance of hitting a curb or
boulder or dropping a tire into a small ditch while sideways.

SUV's are more vulnerable than run of the mill street cars due to
their higher center of gravity because they are "off road vehicals"
and have extra clearance for off roading, although of course they are
almost never actually used as such.

Corky Scott