I was making an unfair inference about the pilot's mental state, so I removed it. With that being said I still strongly question the relation of the drone to the crash physically and believe the effect of the drone on the pilot's decision-making is the interesting part of this story. Landing as an evasive maneuver doesn't make a lot of sense to me and the actual cause of the crash seems to be a situational awareness issue.
Couldn't the same thing happen with a drone? After all they are being controlled by someone one the ground. If you notice it behaving erratically or ATC notices and contacts you about it you could correct the issue. In fact that is exactly what happened in this situation the drone's autopilot was overridden by another pilot to prevent it from crashing.
This sounds to me like a case of fundamental attribution bias. We have no idea what was going through his head at the time. We're all human, and we all make mistakes sometimes. It's easy to just assume that the pilot is an incompetent decision maker, but it's way more likely that he or she just overreacted (or maybe wasn't given all the data needed to make a good decision)
maybe they just felt like throwing that in there. its actually possible for pilots of real airplanes to confuse ground/sky during disorientation periods after taking some Gs regardless of the avionics warnings.
its not really possible for drone pilots unless they're flying drunk.
its kinda easy to throw in random little things in news articles since nothing is checked.
just look at any news item about something you know very well and you'll be upset how almost everything is wrong - why would news about anything else be accurate then?
I'd like you to inspect the issue and explain what happened and why (and start to fix that if that's not intended) rather than sharing what you think could have happened.
Unless you're not in position to do that, in which case it doesn't matter you're on the Copilot team (anyone can throw hypotheses like that).
Please also don't tell me we're at the point where we can't tell why AI works in a particular way and we cannot debug issues like this :-(
> As the video indicates a stall at 10kft isn't really a big deal for a halfway competent pilot
I don't know about that. I count at least two secondary stalls while the pilot was trying to recover. Or maybe you are saying the pilot is not halfway competent?
I don't really follow. How are you going to recommend changes which help the pilots make correct decisions if you don't say that this event occurred because these pilots didn't make a correct decision?
I think you should perhaps reconsider your line of argument in relation to your own footnote.
What you are saying is directly contradicted by the article unless you apply a very unconventional reading to the word "authority". What you're saying is also contradicted by just looking at an image of a 737's tail arrangement. Lastly, you're claiming that two pilots fell out of the sky to their deaths and it simply never occurred to them to try pulling back hard. I find that not just implausible, but bordering on poor taste.
Realizing I should go watch the video, did he say at what height it would be recoverable?
For example, there's been at least one high-profile plane crash in the past (Lauda Flight 004) where a thrust reverser (diverts the jet output forward instead of backwards, used to slow you down quick during landing) deployed mid-flight. That should have been recoverable, but turns out Boeing only projected outcome at low speeds and altitudes. The outcome at cruising speeds/altitudes turned out to be far different and the plane went down.
While cruise wouldn't be an issue (don't think they get up that high!) I'd expect the outcome of a drone hitting a flight control surface might vary between takeoff, landing, and lowish-altitude holding.
>The fact that the co-pilot in question kept holding the stick to the back stops was the main reason that the aircraft wallowed into the sea. Weirdly, he did let go of the stick for a brief few seconds, which was the only time during the harrowing descent that the aircraft started to behave normally, but then he pulled it back and held it back right up until impact.
This description isn't consistent with what's in the accident report. Where are you sourcing it from?
I saw that, but I'm not convinced that the course deviation endangered anyone on the ground. It might have screwed up the landing, but that's not the same thing.
I’m not talking about the captain, I’m talking about the other pilot at the controls, Robert. He also held the stick back for some time, but he appears to have done this in the mistaken belief that the correct recovery procedure had been tried and failed.
https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/2012-07-08/final-af4... indicates that the startle response played a major part in the accident. And in fact I don't think it could possibly have been otherwise, several minutes of failure to think rationally about the problem of dropping out of the sky even while trying to pitch up admits few other solutions.
> It does appear that this pilot had really lost situational awareness.
Totally. The instructions were "taxi Bravo hold short of Kilo" and "cross 31L at Kilo"; read back was correct but instead of turning right at Kilo and crossing 31L, the pilot turned left, then right, and crossed 4L at Juliet.
Wasn't the one pilot pulling back fully on the stick and not communicating that he was doing that? And weren't the pilots aware that they were in a stall scenario? Which means that pulling back fully was the exact wrong thing to do?
My impression is basically that it was almost entirely the fault of the pilot that was pulling back the whole time. Of course, it sounds like Airbus' controls could provide _a lot_ more feedback to pilots, especially when there are divergent inputs.
> The fly-by-wire system malfunctioned and the pilots got confused.
The Wikipedia summary of the investigation report sounds quite a bit different.
It says there was an intermittent malfunction that could be cleared by following a procedure, which was done three times during the flight, with no impact on flight safety (AIUI). The fourth time, instead of following procedure, the pilot toggled the flight computer's circuit breaker, which he is not allowed to do in flight, which reset the flight computer completely, disabling various automated systems that they would now have to re-start, which they did not do. Then the plane entered a stall and due to communication issues pilot and co-pilot gave contradictory control inputs which resulted in no control input to the plane.
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