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Time Magazine has called airline pilot Patrick Smith one of the top 25 bloggers in the U.S. Patrick's latest blog is titled, A rebuttal to the Vanity Fair story on the crash of Air France flight 447. Will the bullshit ever stop?
He is referring to an article by William Langewiesche on the crash of Air France flight 447. Langewiesche is the same pseudo-expert who wrote a puff piece for Vanity Fair claiming the Airbus "fly-by-wire" system saved the lives of the passengers whose plane landed in the Hudson River.
Actually, the fly-by-wire system was a problem. Just before landing - whether on water or land - the plane's nose is lifted to reduce the descent rate so that the plane slips gently onto the surface. Pilots call this "the flare." When flying a conventional airliner, pilots "flare" manually. Or, if allowing the autopilot to land the plane, the autopilot performs the flare just before touchdown.
Why was the fly-by-wire system a problem? The computerized flight control system has a mind of its own. On a conventional airliner, when the pilot moves the controls in the cockpit, the ailerons, rudder, or elevator respond. On the Airbus, when the pilot moves the control - a joystick - the pilot is merely making a request of the computer which flies the airplane based on computerized logic, Though this sounds strange, it works out. At least, most of the time. There have been some dramatic situations in which Airbus pilots have not been of the same mind as the computer and run into problems. One notable example happened in 1988 when a test pilot crashed an A320 during an air show. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296
Sullenberger was not - in the limited time he had- able to out-think the computer. As a result, the plane slammed into the river with three times the force it should have. The rear fuselage broke open. Frigid water rushed in, submerging passengers in the rear of the cabin. Contrary to what Langewiesche claimed, the fly-by-wire system performed no "Miracle On The Hudson." It slammed the plane into the water without flaring. The miracle was that passengers submerged in the rear of the broken fuselage managed to get out.
In his book about this crash, Langewiesche said the plane not only flared but flared at 2000 feet above the river. He devotes an entire chapter to "The Flare."
When flown properlly, no plane is flared more than a few feet above the runway. For example, when a 747 lands on autopilot, at 53 feet above the runway, the "flare" light on the instrument panel comes on. It assures the pilots that the autopilot is ready and able to perform the flare, which starts when the plane is about 25 feet above the runway.
Sullenberger's plane did not flare at all. Rather, it descended toward the Hudson at a 3.1 degree angle and hit the water at that angle. Not only was there no flare, the claim that the fly-by-wire system flared the plane at 2000 is clueless.
Patrick and I discussed Langewiesche's palaver when he wrote the article claiming the Airbus fly-by-wire system saved the day. Patrick, being a nicer guy than me, was not eager to call Langewiesche's work what it was. I went ahead and did a critique of what Langewiesche wrote. Subsequently, Langewiesche wrote the cover blurb for Patrick's most recent book.
Now that Langewiesche is at it again, I'm glad to see that Patrick has had enough and is calling Langewiesche's work what it is.
Here are a few bits and pieces from Patrick's article.
- Langewiesche also gives short shrift to certain Airbus design quirks that may have played a significant role. For example, the fact that the control sticks are not inter-linked. When first officer Pierre Bonin, sitting in the right seat, first pulled the jet into a stall, the extreme inputs he was making weren’t apparent to the pilot in the left seat.
- His (Langewiesche's) contention that piloting jetliners is somehow easy, and his at-times cartoonish descriptions of what the job actually entails, is where the article falls apart (and pisses me off).
- Langewiesche says that “a different crowd is flying now, and although excellent pilots still work the job, on average the knowledge base has become very thin.” He cites “nearly universal agreement of this,” but I’ll tell you it simply isn’t true, and there’s a reason why, at least in this country, the major commercial airlines expect a new-hire pilot to have somewhere around 6,000 hours of flight time before they’ll take his or her resume seriously. Because it takes a lot of fucking knowledge, skill and experience to know what the hell you’re doing in the cockpit of even the most modern and “automatic” jetliner.
- . . . of all the sources Langewiesche quotes in the story, not one of them is an active pilot. As Langewiesche has it, the piloting profession doesn’t amount to much. At one point he writes of pilots: “All of them think they are better than they are.” I wonder if he’d make such a rude and cursory blanket statement about doctors or other professionals.
Patrick finishes by saying, "The point where I had steam coming from my ears came a few pages later: 'In professional flying, a historical shift has occurred,' writes Langewiesche near the end of the piece. 'Pilots have been relegated to mundane roles as system managers, expected to monitor the computers and sometimes to enter data via keyboards, but to keep their hands off the controls, and to intervene only in the rare even to failure'.”
"That is about the most asinine and misleading characterization of an airline pilot’s job that I have ever read in my life."
Perhaps this second round of authoritative sounding palaver would not have been published if the record had been set straight the first time.
Patrick's blog is at http://www.askthepilot.com/automation-and-disaster/
The bottom line for anxious fliers is this: Airbus and Boeing planes, fly-by-wire or conventional, are remarkably safe and equally safe. There has not been a fatality aboard a major U.S. carriers in over twelve years.
Both Patrick's book, Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections and my book, SOAR: The Breakthrough Treatment for Fear of Flying have been named "Best Books of 2014" by Amazon editors.
