[len56]

well thats just depressing, the plane crashed entirely due to human error.

why ignore a stall warning?

every time I read "Bonin continues to hold the stick back" it makes me really angry for some reason... what he's doing sounds so ridiculous...

[WillS]

Again, there were multiple factors here. To me, the most confusing would be the stall warning. Airbus has its stall warning (and other manufacturers too) sound when the plane is stalled but moving faster than 50 knots. The CVR shows that the stall warning was intermittent, creating an even more confusing prospect for the pilots. The two pilots were also probably given conflicting information on their PFDs, as the FO was switching the Air Data information around to try to form a more coherent picture. This was pilot error, but it's not completely pilot error. These guys were obviously competent aviators.

[Maestro]

Here is something I learned recently about the background of most pilots today.

My original perception was most all pilots had military experience and training or they had engineering or aeronautical background. However, this is not true, many pilots have no real technical back ground or experience. Very few understand principles behind why a plane flies.

I can not tell how surprised I was when I talk to pilots about the Mythbuster show about can a plane take off if it was on a conveyor belt heading in the opposite direct and every single one of the say no it can not. I live in an area where many of the pilots live who work for the major airlines so I had a good sample size. They had not clue that yes a plane can take off from a conveyor belt and did not realize the principles of flight.

The majority of the pilots only know what they learn in the airline flight classes and in a flight simulators. As the Popular Mechanic article pointed out these pilots may have panic and lack the ability to use creative through to work themselves out a simple problem. They relay solely on training which in this case failed them since they had no idea what the plane was actually doing.

We all should be scared, as the article said, all new plane are fly by wire and the computer in most all instances will keep the pilot out of trouble but there is still a chance the plane can do things not expected. I even worry more with the next generation who think they can fly because they sat in their bedroom for years and flew MS Flight simulators. If you think this is not an issue just watch how kids drive today, some think they are in a video game and do not understand why a real car does not respond like in a game.

People this is a walk up call, we should have people who have firm grasp of engineering and physic flying a plane not someone who went to school for liberal arts or played video games their entire teen years and went to some airline flight training school.

[Express]

you're not trying to compare flying to driving are you?

[The Ghost of Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by Maestro

Here is something I learned recently about the background of most pilots today.

My original perception was most all pilots had military experience and training or they had engineering or aeronautical background. However, this is not true, many pilots have no real technical back ground or experience. Very few understand principles behind why a plane flies.

this is by in large not true. while military pilots are fewer and fewer in the airlines, the quality of civilian pilots isn't bad. all civilian pilots train very hard for many years and thousands of hours before they ever get a chance to step into an airline's simulator for type training. this is both ground training and flight training. much of the training IS learning about how the plane flies and IS knowledge that one must know to get even a basic pilots license.

Originally Posted by Maestro

I can not tell how surprised I was when I talk to pilots about the Mythbuster show about can a plane take off if it was on a conveyor belt heading in the opposite direct and every single one of the say no it can not. I live in an area where many of the pilots live who work for the major airlines so I had a good sample size. They had not clue that yes a plane can take off from a conveyor belt and did not realize the principles of flight.

so every time you see someone in a suit with epaulettes, do you run up to them and ask them their opinion about a discovery channel show then judge their flight knowledge off their opinion about something completely unrelated to flying? please

Originally Posted by Maestro

The majority of the pilots only know what they learn in the airline flight classes and in a flight simulators. As the Popular Mechanic article pointed out these pilots may have panic and lack the ability to use creative through to work themselves out a simple problem. They relay solely on training which in this case failed them since they had no idea what the plane was actually doing.

wrong, wrong, wrong, and completely baseless. what do you know about flight training? like i said before, there are thousands of hours of training before one even gets to an airline's simulator. you don't just run out to X airline and apply to be a pilot, you are given an interview, and then you're suddenly training in a sim to become a 777 pilot. the process usually goes: college and study aeronautics, get all licenses through flight instructor (about 270 flight hours by the book), then either one of two ways to get to the airlines: 1.) flight instruct for anywhere from 200-800 hours to build time and experience 2.) fly right seat in a small private operation for years and years before getting the chance at the airlines. either way, you don't go study philosophy at your local drive-thru college and suddenly become an airline pilot. in most cases, you can become a doctor in a shorter amount of time.

Originally Posted by Maestro

We all should be scared, as the article said, all new plane are fly by wire and the computer in most all instances will keep the pilot out of trouble but there is still a chance the plane can do things not expected. I even worry more with the next generation who think they can fly because they sat in their bedroom for years and flew MS Flight simulators. If you think this is not an issue just watch how kids drive today, some think they are in a video game and do not understand why a real car does not respond like in a game.

why the fuck should we be scared? that's ludicrous. i'm not a real big fan of fly-by-wire, but it's not a flawed system. it works perfectly every day thousands of times around the world in airbii and boeing alike. also, i have news for you....those people that grew up playing MSFS are your future elite pilots. no one else wants to become a pilot. it's not a glamorous career anymore. it's for people that are 100% committed and passionate about flying. the pay is terrible and the benefits are almost zero. people get into flying because they enjoy flying and they're doing what they love to do best. it's not just a job for any of those pilots, because the pay sucks, the hours suck, and being away from home so much really puts a damper on personal relationships back home.

Originally Posted by Maestro

People this is a walk up call, we should have people who have firm grasp of engineering and physic flying a plane not someone who went to school for liberal arts or played video games their entire teen years and went to some airline flight training school.

again, you couldn't be more off base. it doesn't work like this at all. your whole post is a bunch of dribble that proves how much you don't know about the topic. so instead of throwing out your fears and assumptions as fact, perhaps you should research your topic a bit more.

[Q4P]

Wow there is a lot of misinformation here. I have a light sport license as well as a recreational license and that took me over 50 hours of flying and studying numerous books which included the basics of how a plane flies. To become an airline pilot you need to have in order; a private license with IFR rating, commercial rating, multi engine rating, a Jet rating if you are going to be flying a jet as well as an ATP certificate which takes at least a minimum of 1200 hours to obtain. Most airlines won't even hire you without a couple thousand of hours under your belt; do you honestly think that these pilots don't know / understand how a plane flies?

[NYCGP]

Fuckin' Magnets..

[Maestro]

The Ghost of Tom Joad,

I am an engineer by, education, experience and aptitude, and I can tell you just because someone is "trained" to do something does not mean they understand the scientific or engineering principles. Even my 16 yr old son can tell you anyone can memorize or study to pass a test, however, it proves nothings about whether they actually understand the principles and can use that information to solve a real world problem.

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying all pilots do not have the skills or knowledge or know how to be best at what they do. I am also not saying the training they are getting is not the best or adequate. However, just because someone is trained to fly does not mean they understand why the plane flies, trust me this is not an easy concept to understand and lots of engineer can not explaining and I can not fully explain it. The lack of understand or the lack of aptitude make the whole situation worse when the plane is mostly flown by a computer. Grant it the computer is quite capability to manage the flight of the plane, but if the human lacks the technical understanding of the entire systems these kinds of problems happen.

No, I do not go up to pilots in the airports, I have plenty of friends and neighbors who are pilots for all the major airline as well as corporate pilots and I have has numerous conversation with them. My comment about Mythbuster was about a real physics experiment and principle of flights and as I said before almost all of them argued a plane would never take off if placed on a conveyor belts and they will tell you all the reasons why not. That alone shows me they have no understanding why a plane flies. Even when I showed them it does take off they could not understand why they simply said common sense would say it would not.

Also, most of the airline today do not always hire only pilots with flight experience and training. All my friends who are pilots were hired right out of college, none of them with any engineering or technical background (most had business degrees or some sort of liberal arts degree) and were put through pilot training programs. Most all of them did not have passion to fly they could not get a job in the career of choose and the one who do have a passion and knowledge of flight actually work in the private sector for all the reason you sited. Yes they did not get behind the controls of a plane for many years, however, they are flying for major airlines. Their flight experience is rote memory skills, they will tell you exactly what to do because it is what they were taught to do. They are told not to think just follow procedure.

In the article they said the Pilot got into trouble because it appears he was relaying on training or this rote memory and it failed to help him since the plane was doing things which were not part of his knowledge base, he failed to problem solve in real time.

So do you want a pilot who was trained to fly or one who knows how to fly because he understands the physics.

[Express]

trained

[PINeely]

Stall warning comes on. Pilot pulls the nose up.

WHAT?

[WillS]

Originally Posted by Maestro

The Ghost of Tom Joad,

I am an engineer by, education, experience and aptitude, and I can tell you just because someone is "trained" to do something does not mean they understand the scientific or engineering principles. Even my 16 yr old son can tell you anyone can memorize or study to pass a test, however, it proves nothings about whether they actually understand the principles and can use that information to solve a real world problem.

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying all pilots do not have the skills or knowledge or know how to be best at what they do. I am also not saying the training they are getting is not the best or adequate. However, just because someone is trained to fly does not mean they understand why the plane flies, trust me this is not an easy concept to understand and lots of engineer can not explaining and I can not fully explain it. The lack of understand or the lack of aptitude make the whole situation worse when the plane is mostly flown by a computer. Grant it the computer is quite capability to manage the flight of the plane, but if the human lacks the technical understanding of the entire systems these kinds of problems happen.

No, I do not go up to pilots in the airports, I have plenty of friends and neighbors who are pilots for all the major airline as well as corporate pilots and I have has numerous conversation with them. My comment about Mythbuster was about a real physics experiment and principle of flights and as I said before almost all of them argued a plane would never take off if placed on a conveyor belts and they will tell you all the reasons why not. That alone shows me they have no understanding why a plane flies. Even when I showed them it does take off they could not understand why they simply said common sense would say it would not.

Also, most of the airline today do not always hire only pilots with flight experience and training. All my friends who are pilots were hired right out of college, none of them with any engineering or technical background (most had business degrees or some sort of liberal arts degree) and were put through pilot training programs. Most all of them did not have passion to fly they could not get a job in the career of choose and the one who do have a passion and knowledge of flight actually work in the private sector for all the reason you sited. Yes they did not get behind the controls of a plane for many years, however, they are flying for major airlines. Their flight experience is rote memory skills, they will tell you exactly what to do because it is what they were taught to do. They are told not to think just follow procedure.

In the article they said the Pilot got into trouble because it appears he was relaying on training or this rote memory and it failed to help him since the plane was doing things which were not part of his knowledge base, he failed to problem solve in real time.

So do you want a pilot who was trained to fly or one who knows how to fly because he understands the physics.

Give it a rest. No one was hired right out of high school, they had flight experience and were given a practical by an FAA Examiner to get their ATP. Don't parade around here with false knowledge. I worked my ASS off to become a captain for NW, now DL, and your tone and ignorance is frankly insulting. I fly the A320 series, and am type-rated for the A330. There is a lot of systems managing that is done, but stick-and-rudder flying is not lost on us. Knock it off.

[The Ghost of Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by Maestro

The Ghost of Tom Joad,

I am an engineer by, education, experience and aptitude, and I can tell you just because someone is "trained" to do something does not mean they understand the scientific or engineering principles. Even my 16 yr old son can tell you anyone can memorize or study to pass a test, however, it proves nothings about whether they actually understand the principles and can use that information to solve a real world problem.

as pilots, we're not engineers. that's not what we went to school to do. if i had a dollar for every know-it-all engineer i've met along the way, well...you know the rest. flying is more than passing a test, which furthermore dilutes your argument. flying is as much (if not more) of a hands-on skill as it is a rote memory/arithmetical skill.

Originally Posted by Maestro

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying all pilots do not have the skills or knowledge or know how to be best at what they do. I am also not saying the training they are getting is not the best or adequate. However, just because someone know how to fly does not mean they understand why the plane flies, trust me this is not an easy concept to understand and lots of engineer can not explaining and I can not fully explain it. The lack of understand or the lack of aptitude make the whole situation worse when the plane is mostly flown by a computer. Grant it the computer is quite capability to manage the flight of the plane, but if the human lacks the technical understanding of the entire systems these kinds of problems happen.

and how do you, as an engineer, judge when a pilot's training is up to par with your standards? are you qualified to judge that? i'm going to say no because you've shown no knowledge of piloting. i don't really care what your knowledge is of the principles of flight, but just like you argue that pilots don't know how airplanes fly, you don't know how to fly a plane. in reference to AF447, there are some pretty gleaning fuck ups by the flight crew that caused this accident. overreaction followed by freezing being the biggest. there was no debugging or process of elimination, they just overreacted and made a pretty innocuous situation a disaster. sure, they could have dusted off their aerodynamics and flight physics textbooks and read up about critical angles, but none of that is going to work if they didn't stop and identify what was happening first. how is your engineering prowess going to help the pilots identify pitot ice? i'm trained to stop, identify, and react, not reverse engineer an emergency situation.

Originally Posted by Maestro

No, I do not go up to pilots in the airports, I have plenty of friends and neighbors who are pilots for all the major airline as well as corporate pilots and I have has numerous conversation with them. My comment about Mythbuster was about a real physics experiment and principle of flights and as I said before almost all of them argued a plane would never take off if placed on a conveyor belts and they will tell you all the reasons why not. That alone shows me they have no understanding why a plane flies. Even when I showed them it does take off they could not understand why they simply said common sense would say it would not.

again, your gotcha questions still prove nothing about those pilots' abilities. do you seriously think for a second that those guys don't know how an airplane flies? do you think that because they don't have advanced knowledge in fluid dynamics or geometry, etc., that they can't operate an aircraft safely? as a pilot, our responsibility is to get you from point A to point B safely. we don't build planes. i can guarantee that what i learned in my aerodynamics and flight physics classes doesn't hold a candle to what aircraft engineers learn. but then again, i don't really care what they know, because my job isn't their job. i understand enough to know how the airplane is able to do what it does, and every professional pilot must know the same thing in order to even get a federally issued pilot's license.

Originally Posted by Maestro

Also, most of the airline today do not always hire only pilots with flight experience and training. All my friends who are pilots were hired right out of college, none of them with any engineering or technical background (most had business degrees or some sort of liberal arts degree) and were put through pilot training programs. Most all of them did not have passion to fly they could not get a job in the career of choose and the one who do have a passion and knowledge of flight actually work in the private sector for all the reason you sited. Yes they did not get behind the controls of a plane for many years, however, they are flying for major airlines. Their flight experience is rote memory skills, they will tell you exactly what to do because it is what they were taught to do. They are told not to think just follow procedure.

i find this very, very hard to believe. airlines or private ops don't just hire college grads that are looking for any job, then put them through paid training. never in a million years. the only training an airline will give you is for their procedures, rules, and they'll train you in the aircraft type that you'll be flying. never ever do they hire a person with 0 hours that just wants to fly. that would be stupid. the dropout rate from pilot school is very high. some people don't have the chops, some people don't have the brains, and some people just can't afford to go through the school, which btw is very expensive. airlines don't have money to spend to send someone to a full battery of schooling and training. it doesn't work that way. and for you to brashly say that pilots just do what the checklist says is completely wrong as well. all i have to say about that is you seem to think you can engineer the 'dumbass pilot' out of the plane...well perhaps you should study near disasters more than you should study disasters. there are thousands more examples of near disasters that are averted because of those little lab rats in the cockpit. you can't put a price tag on that.

Originally Posted by Maestro

In the article they said the Pilot got into trouble because it appears he was relaying on training or this rote memory and it failed to help him since the plane was doing things which were not part of his knowledge base, he failed to problem solve in real time.

according to the CVR log, looks like the pilots didn't do shit they were trained to do, but instead, merely froze in confusion. no one was in charge and both of the FO's that were flying just tried to over correct the other. by the time the captain made it to the cockpit, it was already too late. like i said before, if there had been just a little authority in the cockpit, it would have been as simple as just saying 'okay let's just let go', and the plane would have just gone back to straight and level flight.

Originally Posted by Maestro

So do you want a pilot who was trained to fly or one who knows how to fly because he understands the physics.

i want a pilot that knows how to fly the plane he's flying. the most important thing IMO is knowing the aircraft's systems that you're flying. the pilot is merely an operator of the systems. we didn't design the plane. we all know the basic physics, but you can't expect us to know everything about laws and principles of the physics when our job isn't that. we get you there safely. should an emergency arise, do you really want someone there to explain physics or get your ass on the ground safely? i'll take the latter.

[PINeely]

Originally Posted by Maestro

People this is a walk up call, we should have people who have firm grasp of engineering and physic flying a plane not someone who went to school for liberal arts or played video games their entire teen years and went to some airline flight training school.

This is laughable. First, by your logic, anyone who drives a car or operates a tractor or even goes fishing in a flat-bottom boat should have degree-level knowledge of inertia, friction, torque, internal combustion engines, fluid dynamics, angular momentum... well, you see where I am going with this. You can absolutely train someone to operate machinery even if they don't understand it (pilots DO understand so your point is moot anyway. They are trained about these aspects of flying in ground school). Humans are very, very, very good at imitative learning.
Second, do you have any idea what it takes to learn to fly? I began learning to fly about a year ago, and they told me, "Sure! We'll teach you to fly a plane. Ten thousand dollars, please." Do you think that the average person has that kind of money to spend on flight lessons, let alone anything? How about the average kid who "went to school for liberal arts or played video games their entire teen years?" Do you think that airlines can afford to send all of their prospective pilots to flight school? Hell no, you get your own license and come to the airline when you have it. The money is so much but that doesnt even begin to compete with the time investment. You spend hundreds of hours learning. You spend the hour equivalent of days at Ground School before you even get into the seat, then you fly countless supervised hours before you can finally make your first solo flight. And at the end of all of this you are only familiar with a Cessna 152.

[PINeely]

One more thing, as mentioned above by someone most airlines won't even consider you for a job without thousands of flight hours under your belt. Know who pays for these hours? You do, and Av Gas is really, really expensive shit.