Brazil TAM Airlines Flight 3054 CVR Released

[SEVEN]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070801/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_plane_crash

 

[bubbers44]

The pilot was having a difficult time reducing the #2 thrust lever to idle so the logic did not allow spoilers and auto brakes and may have increased the power on the #2 engine with the disabled TR according to other reports.

 

[Captain X]

The pilot was having a difficult time reducing the #2 thrust lever to idle so the logic did not allow spoilers and auto brakes and may have increased the power on the #2 engine with the disabled TR according to other reports.

Airbus?

 

[Desert1]

The pilot was having a difficult time reducing the #2 thrust lever to idle so the logic did not allow spoilers and auto brakes and may have increased the power on the #2 engine with the disabled TR according to other reports.

It certainly appeared so. The video showed the A/C appearing to 'power' down the runway. Still can't get the image of that older tape depicting the A-300 (?) plowing through the trees at that airshow in EU. Not a big fan of Airbus 'logic'.

D1

 

[FatesPawn]

The horrific details read before a congressional commission investigating air safety suggest mechanical failure or pilot error contributed to last month's accident in Sao Paulo, taking some heat off a government widely blamed for failing to improve the challenging runway, which pilots worldwide liken to landing on an aircraft carrier.

Phew! If I were the government, I'd feel much better now.

 

[mushroom]

It certainly appeared so. The video showed the A/C appearing to 'power' down the runway. Still can't get the image of that older tape depicting the A-300 (?) plowing through the trees at that airshow in EU. Not a big fan of Airbus 'logic'.

D1

A300 isn't smart enough to cause the France accident. I think that was when they were introducing the A320.

 

[Angus]

Well at least the media experts are on top of it.......

"In the recording the pilots report on the state of the aircraft braking mechanisms. "Reverser one only," one of them says, referring to the sole working thrust reverser. The reverser is used to slow down the aircraft's jet engine upon landing".

"No spoiler," the voice says, talking about the lower lip of an aircraft's wings that are turned downward to catch the air slowing the aircraft, which was also inoperable.

 

[NuGuy]

Heyas,

Now everyone get together and praise the fact that in this country, they can't just thow the CVR tapes to the news hounds.

Nu

 

[bubbers44]

I think another almost identical accident happened in Phoenix landing with one TR inop. They ended up going off the side of the runway with one in reverse and the other in high fwd thrust. Also might have been because the inop TR wasn't put all the way back to idle and the automation took over. Thank God Boeing AC don't do that.

 

[BLUE BAYOU]

If they had selected MED autobrake for landing, with the spoilers not armed-- then the autobrake function would not activate. Automatic braking activates on the A-320 when the ground spoilers extend for LO and MED modes. This is not the first time something like this has happened in the A-320. I remember another incident very similar to this where an aircraft went off the end of a runway when their brakes didn't activate... There is however, the standard practice of using your own feet to override the automatic system though-- apparently, if it was used, it was used too late. Sometimes pilots rely too much on automation. Additionally, there usually is a penalty for landing distance if a reverser is inoperative-- whether or not this played a role in flight planning is yet to be determined.

 

[Marko Ramius]

I think another almost identical accident happened in Phoenix landing with one TR inop. They ended up going off the side of the runway with one in reverse and the other in high fwd thrust. Also might have been because the inop TR wasn't put all the way back to idle and the automation took over. Thank God Boeing AC don't do that.

If it's the incident I think you're talking about, what I heard was that the Captain forgot that the one reverser was inop and he overreacted getting the lever out of reverse. So much so that he got that lever back up to the Toga detent which cause the loss of control since the other lever was in reverse.

 

[PHXFLYR]

Airbus?

What else??


PHXFLYR

 

[Donsa320]

I think another almost identical accident happened in Phoenix landing with one TR inop. They ended up going off the side of the runway with one in reverse and the other in high fwd thrust. Also might have been because the inop TR wasn't put all the way back to idle and the automation took over. Thank God Boeing AC don't do that.

Not quite accurate. Unlike JT-8D installations where if the reverser is pinned then you cannot even get the reverse lever up and into reverse. With inop reverse on the 320 the reverse lever may still be pulled up and into reverse but you would get forward thrust instead. About 80% worth of normal thrust.
Sounds to me like a very poorly written MEL action section, if they read it at all.
As others have said you can still abandon the automation and use the brakes.
IMHO.

 

[Varig]

Flying down here has been dangerous since the GOL accident last year and everybody knew an accident was going to happen in Congonhas airport. It was just a matter of time. The whole system sucks down here. Too bad people are dying but in the long run things won't change. It's a culture thing......

 

[A350]

For the record....the Airbus 320 accident in France was pilot error. The aircraft did exactly what it was supposed to do.

A350

 

[ackattacker]

For the record....the Airbus 320 accident in France was pilot error. The aircraft did exactly what it was supposed to do.

A350

It was supposed to fly into the trees and burst into flames?

It may have done what it was programmed to do, but it didn't do what the pilot expected it to do...

 

[hornet drvr]

The Paris crash occured when the test pilot with all the media onboard, tried to demonstrate a clever safety feature called alpha floor. If you get to slow, the throttles advance to throttle latch and you will accelerate out of the slow "close to stalled" condition. Well that safety feature is disabled below 100', because why? so that we can land!

 

[bubbers44]

Donsa320, I think you need to update your MEL. It now requires both reversers to be used after touchdown even if one is inop to comply with the MEL. PPrune has over 1000 posts faulting the crew for using the older procedure of leaving the inop TR in idle. Thank God I'm a Boeing guy. The pilot controls everything.

 

[ackattacker]

I wasn't trying to dig up this dead horse for fresh beating. Suffice it to say it's a controversial subject, and "for the record it was pilot error" is not definitive.

In any accident there is a chain of events leading up to the crash, and usually there is at least one event in the chain where the pilot does something boneheaded. However it seems like with many Airbus crashes there are also other links in the chain where smart design could have saved the day but did not.

I have seen enough "French Logic" built into airplanes to know that frequently things are wired up behind the scenes in ways that seem counter-intuitive. Everything works fine when everything is working fine, and the pilot is insulated from the bizzare logic. Often however when one piece is not working other seemingly unrelated systems are affected. This TAM crash seems to be one of those cases... and probably will come to be blamed on pilot error because they were supposed to follow some alternate procedure and failed to do so.

However it does bother me when airplanes are designed in such a way as to make your life extremely easy when there are no problems and extremely difficult when one piece of the puzzle is out of place. Flying an Airbus you probably get very used to everything working automatically... brakes, spoilers, thrust, etc. Then suddenly it doesn't and you're supposed to instantly understand that you need to move some seemingly unrelated switch.

 

[PositiveRate]

I have to agree with those that see the France incident as pilot induced.

I believe they were supposed to do that flyby at 300', but ended up at only 50', thus disabling the alpha floor system because the landing logic was met (i.e. idle and <100').

I do think there is a very real argument to be made against designing a plane where there situations like that are even possible. You can create a false sense of security as well as automation confusion in situations where there can't be any.

For example - I'd like to hear if anyone has had to go full aft stick on the line. The airplane is "supposed" to do it with no thought on the pilot's part regarding stall avoidance, but after seeing how slow the damn plane figures some things out, I'd be lying if I said I had no doubts. We had a pilot who went full aftprior to V1 to avoid a runway collision in LAS and that worked out ok...that's the only one I know of personally.

While that's all and good, the fact is that the airbus is a screwy little airplane, where proficiency is defined by how you manage and work around it's quirks. You simply cannot let the airplane fly the way it "wants" (managed speeds, descents, etc) in the terminal environment. Once you surrender to this fact, everything becomes easier.