AirAsia flight QZ8501 was not cleared to fly route, says Indonesia

[Moonlover]

Weather radar is not fool proof, and a degree of interpretation is required. There wouldn't be many pilots who haven't been caught out by the weather radar at some stage of their careers, and had the hell frightened out of them.

There's an old saying.....weather doesn't break aircraft, pilots do, and inappropriate handling in severe turbulence can do just that, but I still contend that it's likely that there was a malfunction that caused the pilots (and computer system) to initiate the rapid climb, aided by severe updrafts in the storm cell/s.

I do recall an accident, also an Airbus in 2001, not long after 9/11. The aircraft was taking off from New York and got caught up in wake turbulence from a recently departed 747. The pilot repeatedly slammed the rudder left/right for about 20 seconds and over-stressed the vertical stabilizer. It broke off and the resulting crash killed over 250 people. Yes, aircraft are pretty tough, but they have their limits and it's often the pilots who screw up in situations like this. It's been mentioned here before and I agree with it. Pilots these days spend too much time watching the airplane fly itself!

[outboard]

It's been mentioned here before and I agree with it. Pilots these days spend too much time watching the airplane fly itself!

Yeah the pilots should get out of the cockpit and go have a few drinks during the flight rather then monitor the plane flying

[Moonlover]

It's been mentioned here before and I agree with it. Pilots these days spend too much time watching the airplane fly itself!

Yeah the pilots should get out of the cockpit and go have a few drinks during the flight rather then monitor the plane flying

I can't quite work out whether you're being sarcastic or not, but the 'have a few drinks' bit suggests that you may be. However there is some truth in the earlier part of your message. sitting around with not much to do does make one drowsy and slows down reaction and thinking times. I believe pilots do need to get out of the seat now and then, walk around some, do a bit of stretching maybe.

But overall, I do prefer to have All that high tech stuff do the flying. I would just like to be sure that the guys (and gals of course) up front are sharp and alert if something does go wrong.

[F4UCorsair]

The problem for the modern pilot is that the he/she is being designed out of the loop. Modern jets take care of themselves if there is an engine failure, for example. The appropriate rudder is applied, throttle on the live engine is advanced to Maximum Continuous Thrust, the flight director gives body angle commands to fly the best speed, etc. A former colleague was telling me recently that Airbus train pilots from 'developing countries' to engage the autopilot at the first sign of a malfunction, and that can't be good. He also said that the A330 autopilot struggles to handle an engine failure, and if it drops out, the pilots are then in the worst possible situation, approaching loss of control, and having to take over at a very critical stage of flight.

Pilot skills are being lost, and whilst the technology is great, when things go pear shaped, you need guys/girls up front with good flying skills. It's great when everything is going well, but if there are multiple failures, and Murphy's Law dictates that's often the case, when the crew are already doing their best to handle one emergency, working like a one armed paper hanger with crabs, (and possibly right on the limit/edge of their skills), it can lead to crew overload and severe mishandling, with potentially catastrophic results.

The current generation of pilots is not as good as those of 20 years ago, and they weren't as good as those of 40 years ago, unfortunate but true.

I think a part of the problem is that current pilots, through cadet schemes, find themselves in the right hand seat of a high performance jet, with as little as a couple of hundred hours total, including jet simulator time, and no grounding in general aviation. Their total experience in light aircraft is navigation exercises under controlled conditions, and never having had to use their heads and develop what was known in the Air Force as 'common dog f***'. 30 years ago the airlines in Australia wouldn't employ a pilot with less than a few thousand hours much of which was required to be twin engined IFR, but companies like Jetstar have a cadet program and they mould ab initio trainees into what they think they want and need.

The above doesn't apply to the Captain on this flight, from all accounts a well experienced, former military pilot, but it may be that the technology, designed to make it easy for modern pilots, let him down, and the results are there for all to see.

[Gillyflower]

Last week I took a flight Bangkok-Paris (13 hours). Had been going for some considerable time and must have been getting close to destination when the Captain announced we had 'technical' problems and were going to land in Vienna. One 1/2 hours later we were on our way again. Twenty minutes later, we still had 'technical' problems and were going to land in Munich. This time we were bundled off the plane with our luggage and Luthansa put on a bigger plane to take us to Paris. We were losing petrol evidently, so that would be why we were surrounded by firemen trucks.

[Basil B]

Basil B, don't use Wikipedia as your principal or sole reference. It's peer reviewed, and even you or I can change detail. Some of it is very reliable, and some of it is very unreliable.

Probable the easiest form of reference, and I do not see any major or misleading errors, and most importantly these references are unbiased.

[Chicog]

Basarnas recovers 91 victims

of AirAsia crash

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | National | Thu, February 05 2015, 7:30 AM

The National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) has recovered 91 bodies of the total 162 passengers on board AirAsia flight QZ8501, which crashed last December.

The National Police’s Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team had identified 64 of the 91 bodies as of Wednesday, Antara news agency reported.

Thirteen bodies are still being identified by the DVI team, while another 14 bodies are expected to arrive at Bhayangkara Police Hospital in Surabaya, East Java.

The search efforts are ongoing in the Java Sea and Karimata Strait, where the aircraft - which was en route from Surabaya to Singapore - crashed on Dec. 28.

On Tuesday, divers from the search and rescue team recovered six bodies from the Java Sea.

Another team is operating in Makassar Strait, searching for more bodies and debris in Mamuju waters, West Sulawesi. The search area was extended to the waters around the Pinrang and Selayar islands in South Sulawesi, where local fishermen recently found bodies.

Of the 162 victims, there were 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans, a French, a British, a Singaporean and a Malaysian.

- See more at: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/02/05/basarnas-recovers-91-victims-airasia-crash.html?#sthash.vFXLHhpj.dpuf

[outboard]

The problem for the modern pilot is that the he/she is being designed out of the loop. Modern jets take care of themselves if there is an engine failure, for example. The appropriate rudder is applied, throttle on the live engine is advanced to Maximum Continuous Thrust, the flight director gives body angle commands to fly the best speed, etc. A former colleague was telling me recently that Airbus train pilots from 'developing countries' to engage the autopilot at the first sign of a malfunction, and that can't be good. He also said that the A330 autopilot struggles to handle an engine failure, and if it drops out, the pilots are then in the worst possible situation, approaching loss of control, and having to take over at a very critical stage of flight.

Pilot skills are being lost, and whilst the technology is great, when things go pear shaped, you need guys/girls up front with good flying skills. It's great when everything is going well, but if there are multiple failures, and Murphy's Law dictates that's often the case, when the crew are already doing their best to handle one emergency, working like a one armed paper hanger with crabs, (and possibly right on the limit/edge of their skills), it can lead to crew overload and severe mishandling, with potentially catastrophic results.

The current generation of pilots is not as good as those of 20 years ago, and they weren't as good as those of 40 years ago, unfortunate but true.

I think a part of the problem is that current pilots, through cadet schemes, find themselves in the right hand seat of a high performance jet, with as little as a couple of hundred hours total, including jet simulator time, and no grounding in general aviation. Their total experience in light aircraft is navigation exercises under controlled conditions, and never having had to use their heads and develop what was known in the Air Force as 'common dog f***'. 30 years ago the airlines in Australia wouldn't employ a pilot with less than a few thousand hours much of which was required to be twin engined IFR, but companies like Jetstar have a cadet program and they mould ab initio trainees into what they think they want and need.

The above doesn't apply to the Captain on this flight, from all accounts a well experienced, former military pilot, but it may be that the technology, designed to make it easy for modern pilots, let him down, and the results are there for all to see.

let me start by saying I am a layman not a pilot so this is as I understand it and is an expression of understanding rather then a technical diagnosis

From my readings and research the problem is not so much the lack of flying skills nor the computers "taking the pilot out of the loop" so much as the transition from one to the other.

Give any modern day pilot an Airbus and make him fly it manually ( ignoring the fact that it is nearly impossible to over ride the auto pilot) and he could and would do it as smoothly as passengers would expect, in total safety, and quite possibly handle any unusual disruptions similar to pilots flying smaller aircraft without the automation.

The auto pilots and computers have proved themselves to be brilliant through thousands of flights every day.

BUT at times the computers find themselves in situations outside of their programmed parameters and will do things outside of pilots expectations.

The Airbus has several different Auto pilot flight modes (called laws) pilots have some control over which flight mode they are in but the computer also will change mode if certain parameters are met or other parameters are no longer met, this can result in a rapid unpredictable changing of modes in extreme circumstances with the computer giving up and the pilot trying to figure out what happened and what the computer did before it gave up and then responding to the situation the aircraft is now in all in a split second.

The only way to train for these situations is in a simulator and a simulator needs data, the data comes from aircraft that have been in these situations whether they survive or crash ( black boxes in both cases) similarly the computers can get smarter with the same data being used to reprogram them.

Flying is a risk , most of the risk has been removed through trial and error, statistically it is the safest form of transport, safer then walking, the disadvantage of having made it so safe is that when something does go wrong there is no standard procedure to correct it so basically you are relying on luck

[F4UCorsair]

Basil B, don't use Wikipedia as your principal or sole reference. It's peer reviewed, and even you or I can change detail. Some of it is very reliable, and some of it is very unreliable.

Probable the easiest form of reference, and I do not see any major or misleading errors, and most importantly these references are unbiased.

Unless you're an expert on anything and everything, you will not see errors. It's only when wikio is in conflict with what you know to be fact that an error appears.

[F4UCorsair]

I don't know whether what you say is right or wrong outboard (I was never endorsed on an Airbus, and was happy not to be so), but Airbus built the A320 to be 'foolproof', taking as much responsibility from the pilot as they could, based on the theory that a significant number of crashes are as a consequence of pilot error. I contend that the number of aircraft saved by pilots' skills is way greater than the number lost to pilot error, so we will never know if those lost to pilot error could have been saved. It seems that a number of Airbus crashes have resulted from pilots not fully understanding the technology.

I recall many years ago visiting a friend who had just transitioned from the Boeing 737 to the A320. I asked him which he preferred to fly. He said the A320 was a beautiful aircraft to fly, but for having an awareness of what the aircraft was doing, when and why, Boeing aircraft were way in front.

I did actually manually fly the A320 for about 10 minutes on that flight, though never endorsed, and it seemed very much like a video game.

[arunsakda]

At least they did not mistakenly shutdown their only operating engine

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