MSGID: 2:292/854 131f0436   
   REPLY: 2:250/1@fidonet 644bfbe3   
   TZUTC: 0200   
   Vince,   
       
   VC> My opinion, but only based on the raw info, is that, yes the crew screwed   
   VC> up - bad pitot tubes / non heating etc allowed. Poor training, rating   
   VC> renewals both for a/c type and not.   
       
   VC> Flying a light twin, such as a Cessna C340P I have access to such   
   VC> secondary instrumentation when using even sat navigation, let alone the   
   VC> other tools at my disposal.   
       
   VC> A qualified UK, USA and others, license holder.   
       
   You remind me of my friend Luc, former Fido-sysop, who had an ULM. Flew some   
   200 hours on it and on several occasions tried to overrule professional pilots   
   with 10.000+ hours.   
       
   When commenting on a case like this, you need to read up on it and familiarise   
   yourself with the details. For starters, the full incident-report by the BEA   
   (the French authority which examines aitcraft accidents) and the cockpit-voice   
   recorder transcript are available online. Simply google for it, you have not   
   done that.   
       
   You make it appear that the 3 cockpit crew were novices with hardly experience.   
       
   The captain had 10,988 commercial flying hours, of which 6,258 were as   
   captain, including 1,700 hours on the Airbus A330.   
       
   The co-pilot had 2,936 commercial flight hours, of which 807 hours were on the   
   Airbus A330.   
       
   The relief co-pilot had 6,547 commercial flying hours, of which 4,479 were on   
   the Airbus A330.   
       
   In other words, pretty experienced people.   
       
   You need to go back to the moment of the incident … 2009 ... 14 years.   
       
   Pitot-tube heating was "on". Simple. What was the trouble was ice crystals   
   forming on the pitot-tubes caused by high-altitude freezing rain altering the   
   airflow enough to cause false speed readings and indicating an 'overspeed'   
   condition. To correct that overspeed the nose was lifted a bit, although there   
   was no overspeed. The plane climbed as a result in the beginning but the   
   overspeed stayed, which made the co-pilot, who was in command, lift the nose   
   even higher (the captain at that moment was in the crew rest compartment) and   
   reduce power. As a result the aircraft turned into an aerodynamic stall at   
   high altitude and the stick-shaker started rattling.   
       
   Here you have two different instruments giving contrary information: one   
   saying you are going too fast, the other saying you are going too slow and   
   about to lose lift. What do you do? In the middle of the night? No visual   
   reference... The cockpit crew (co-pilot right seat [pilot in command], relief   
   co-pilot left seat [pilot monitoring]) decided to lift the nose even higher to   
   reduce speed. This worsened the stall condition. The nose 16 degrees up while   
   the engines had been reduced to "flight idle". The flight parameters at that   
   point were so bad that the Flight Management System disconnected and the   
   screens went blank. No more readings were processed and the stick-shaker also   
   disconnected. They figured the stall was solved while in fact it went from bad   
   to horrific.   
       
   Here you have a wide-bodied airliner in an aerodynamic stall, falling out of   
   the sky, in the pitchdark of the night with no visual reference and not a   
   single instrument indicating anything.   
       
   The relief co-pilot called "my plane", confirmed by the co-pilot "your   
   plane"... Pushed the nose down, revved-up the engines and increased the   
   airflow over the wing surfaces. This started to provide correct information   
   again to the flight management system which moved through the zone where the   
   stick-shaker is active, which activated the stick shaker again and suddenly   
   the pitot tubes started providing false information again.   
       
   So here you have a situation where by pushing the nose down and increasing   
   speed, you are getting a warning that you are stalling. It didn't make sense,   
   plus they got again an overspeed warning. Important to understand, under those   
   conditions the auto-pilot disconnected and they were flying by hand ... with   
   faulty instrumentation ... and no visual reference.   
       
   To overcome the new overspeed condition, the co-pilot again pulled his stick,   
   while the relief co-pilot was pushing his stick not understanding what was   
   happening as he thought he was in control...   
       
   They had alerted the captain who exited from the crew rest and saw the   
   instrumentation. He did not demand his left-hand seat but strapped in the 3rd   
   seat. He went through manuals, tried to coach the people in the left hand and   
   right hand seats. He quickly figured out that the co-pilot never released the   
   control stick and actually was flying instead of the relief co-pilot.   
       
   They had been stalling now for minutes and losing a lot of altitude. By the   
   time the condition was discovered, they were too low to lower the nose and   
   speed-up the engines to recover from the stall. The co-pilot realised it   
   suddenly and is heard saying on the CVR in French "But, but ... we are going   
   to crash then?" seconds before impact. At no point during the descent had they   
   been aware.   
       
   The relief pitot-tubes for this particular aircraft were in Paris and were   
   going to installed after the plane arrived.   
       
   Discussion erupted later about could this accident have happened with a   
   Boeing? The answer is a painful "no" because the control columns in Boeing   
   aircraft are interconnected and the relief co-pilot would have noticed   
   immediately the co-pilot was still pulling and intervened. The joysticks of   
   Airbus aircraft operate independently so they can be used differently with the   
   left seat having priority, but when the left seat is not handling the joystick   
   and the right seat is pulling in a cramp ... the nose goes up ... and   
   remember, your artificial horizon is gone because of the lack of   
   instrumentation.   
      
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