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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 10 2013 @ 02:54 AM EDT |
> Why weren't they watching the speedometer?
Because on these big boats the auto-throttle is s'posed to do that for you.
But only if both Flight Directors are on, or off, not one of each as seems
to be the case here. The habit of descent on idle is relatively recent
for fuel economy reasons.
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| Authored by: lnuss on Wednesday, July 10 2013 @ 09:04 AM EDT |
"Why weren't they watching the speedometer?"
They should have been watching a lot more than the airspeed indicator, as it's
more complex than that. Speed control in an aircraft is different from that in a
car. Autothrottle, in and of itself, doesn't control the speed, though it
certainly will try. But you still have to either have the autopilot tied in with
it (they were too low for that) or you have to manually keep the pitch attitude
(and glide path) where they belong.
On jets (unlike on piston engines), there is a delay after moving the power
levers to add power until the time the power increase actually happens (called
spool up time) that can be several seconds, depending on the aircraft.
In any aircraft pitch controls airspeed and throttle controls altitude, on a
long term basis (steady state, that is, more than a few seconds to sometimes
almost a minute), but in a short (transitory) period there is an interaction
between power and pitch such that both airspeed and altitude (or rate of
descent) are affected.
But in any case, it certainly appears the pilots were not monitoring the
aircraft sufficiently. If they were, as stated above, surprised at the speed
being low, then they weren't doing their jobs properly, and it would sound to me
as if they didn't really know what they were doing.
(quals for statements above -- I used to be a flight instructor).
---
Larry N.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 10 2013 @ 11:17 AM EDT |
Some news reports say the pilots were focusing on the fact they were not lined
up correctly on the runway and were working that issue and not monitoring
airspeed.
If you saw the post-crash videos, it was clear they hit the ground 10-20 yards
off mid-line of the runway.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 10 2013 @ 12:03 PM EDT |
Turning off the automatics is asking far, far too much of pilots these days.
Even when the weather is CAVOK with light winds.
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| Authored by: albert on Friday, July 12 2013 @ 11:05 AM EDT |
MSM is a waste of time.
I'm really interested in what caused those cabin fires. A ruptured center fuel
tank (between the wings) could account for one, but AKAIK, there are no fuel
tanks forward of that.
No fire damage to intact wings? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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