What from what I’ve read and seen videos of, this flaw with 2 faulty AOA sensors being declared valid is now fixed. All 3 AOA values are checked against the load factor being experienced. So if there is a change in load factor, there should be a change in AOA. If 1 does change but 2 don’t then 2 will be rejected. But they can be revalidated again if it returns to normal
In any event, if there is a discrepancy on such critical sensors, the pilots should be informed. In addition, I have long thought it wise to have an emergency full manual control override on both Airbus and Boeing jetliners. Though given the often sub optimal flying skills of commercial pilots these days, that may not always help when the plane's computers are trying to kill you.
@@Sean_Coyne the problem is they didn’t know there was an emergency until the stall warning went off. The aircraft did go into full manual control after the stall but the pilots didn’t realise hence why their trim was left at full up. The reason why there’s no warning for loss of 1 sensors is because you still have 2 working. Only 2 are used to compute the AOA value, the third was used for comparison and a swappable one. If you loose one there is no difference in the flying capability and there’s nothing the pilots can do about it anyway.
@@Sean_Coyne Agreed, a full override as a last resort allows a pilot to revert to seat of the pants flying (if he has some orientation). It is one thing when your commands are ignored for good reason, quite another when ignored for bad reason - and there is already no time to think. It is more unnerving than people think to have commands blocked - confidence crashes.
As someone not particularly bright or one who wasn't a good student.. nor from aviation field.. I really need to dig up on what exactly does 'load factor' mean... in this setting.
Wow! I had never heard of this accident. Your professional quality video productions rival the best I have seen anywhere including those from FlightSafety, AOPA, FAA, Boeing and anything else I'm aware of on UA-cam. You are doing on UA-cam what Simon Hradecky and AV Herald have done for aviation on the Web, that would be the #1 go-to-source for accurate aviation information, education and perspective. Pure excellence-thank you! The relationships between this and the two MAX crashes was interesting to me. In the MAX crashes Boeing was criticized (rightly so) for having MCAS design logic rely on only one AOA probe (per flight segment). When the MAX AOA gave erroneous readings MCAS accepted those erroneous readings anyway and drove the horizontal stabilizer to full nose down limit. In this crash this Airbus had three AOA probes. Two of the probes were frozen (Air France 447). I would suggest; given a situation where two frozen probes are providing the same or nearly identical readings, and then neither of those probes register any AOA change over long periods of time while the airplane is clearly changing altitudes, configuration and speeds (IAS) should be also recognized as being "erroneous readings". But the design logic accepted these two same AOA readings as valid even though they were both illogical and erroneous. That error resulted in the stabilizer moving inappropriately, which resulted in an undesired aircraft state, upset, from which the crew did not/could not recover. Years ago, in recurrent training, we flew the Turkish Airlines Flight 1951 Boeing 737 Amsterdam accident profile (obviously in the full motion simulator and not in the airplane). First we thoroughly briefed the accident and the profile. As in this case the horizontal stabilizer was allowed to go to the full nose up deflection limit and then the engines were brought to TOGA (Takeoff Go Around-essentially maximum thrust). Even thought I had been told exactly what was going to happen I was still STUNNED when the jet's nose pointed up to the heavens even though I had the yoke mechanically buried to it's physical limits commanding nose down. The airplane wasn't having anything to do with my nose down commands; it was pitching up, standing on it's tail and I could not control it. Again, even thought I had been told exactly what to expect, I actually froze for a second or two in unbelief. It took maximum sustained nose down electric trim and maximum nose down elevator input (through the yoke) to regain pitch control. Even with all that going on the recovery took time, recovery was not instantaneous. If this happens at low altitude, recovery, is at best very difficult, probably unlikely and perhaps impossible.
Thank you very much for your kind and wel written comment! Yes, I can only imagine how that must have been... as a guy who has only flown airbus airliners in his career, I must confess the trim is a true blindspot for me. If the PFD doesn't flash the big USE MAN PITCH TRIM, I rarely give it a second thought after departure. This accident really taught me something!
In my opinion, the person on the ground crew who allowed the airplane to be pressure washed is guilty of manslaughter• Thank you for making a very complicated subject easy to understand by us laymen !:-) ⚡️🙏⚡️
Heartbreaking to see lives lost because the mechanics couldn’t be bothered to do their jobs properly and also that the pilots didn’t do their job properly either 😢
Great content as always! I'm glad I'm able to support you as a Patreon member. I encourage everyone else who enjoys these videos and can afford it to kick in what they can too!
You put everything so clear and you videos are so good! I really enjoy your videos and your description of the events! It's very sad that they lost lives just because of not proper mentioning of what procedures they had to do. Thank you so much, captain!
Thank you for another excellent video. This is a tragic accident that happened due to a constellation of problems that came together to lead to the ultimate crash. I always appreciate your analyses!
Nicely done as always. And this is why the bell icon exists. Related to the video, the transition from Normal law, to Alternate Law to Abnormal law is never fully clear to pilots on ECAM. If it were at the very least pilots would know they have degraded flight envelope protection and disable flight protection computers and know they have an unrestricted envelope and thus must hand fly accordingly.
What I don’t get is according to the report the characteristic speeds still displayed on the PFD’s but kept decreasing with the airspeed reduction. Alpha Max was somewhere around 70 knots when the stall warning went off. Surely someone must have looked at that and thought “that can’t be right” Also a CHECK GW message appeared on takeoff. That should have been a warning too
Correct. According to the final report the CHECK GW message was overlooked however. The crew never mentioned it. As to the low characteristic speeds: I know hindsight is 20:20, but slowing an A320 down below 100kts... I don't know who would intentionally do that!
Hi I love your channel . I was a bit worried because I have not heard from you in over ten days and your films are very professional and informative . I am sort of a creature of habit and was after a bit more and I sort of got worried a bit. Hope all is good . I truly enjoy your films . They are very good.
Hi there, thank you! All is well, I just got a lot going on right now and my latest video is delayed due to some difficulties with my simulator. It should air early next week!
I know you are a busy person so thank you for the reply. I appreciate the science and educators on UA-cam. Thank you so much for the answer and hope you have time to accomplish your current situation. All the very best got the bell rung so will catch up then . Got to say I regularly play your uploads random and repeat and they are a joy.
In addition, they should have briefed what the minimum airspeed would be, and if no action from the plane, they would record it as a fault and abort the test, and also the third pilot should have been watching the speed and said airspeed airspeed, when/if it fell to the pre-agreed minimum levels
There was an incident... I think in asia somewhere, where an A330 took off with all 3 pitot tubes still covered. It went into alternate law and pilots had to fly with no airspeed indicators. Brutal. Have you done a video on this event? Super effort by the pilots brought the plane down safely.
I test software for a living (well.. more than just test it). I would not like testing planes - I’m very good at finding ways to break things, and would not like doing so with aircraft systems. (I was “happy” enough crashing software that runs on airplanes - yes, been there, done that, got the atta-boy for figuring out how)
Poor cockpit design, insufficient AOA erroneous function detection. Another item on Airbus's long list of "we'll fix it after it kills a lot of people first."
And the 737 Max was better? Bearing in mind that Ethiopian had purchased the AOA DISAGREE warning but it was useless without the AOA indicators on the PFD. On this aircraft whilst the AOA is not displayed as a value, the fact the Alpha Prot and Alpha max strips were moving relative to the speed should have been a huge indicator something was wrong with them.
It's so odd that, despite the exterior of the plane being made to be battered by the elements, a worker was able to spray water into the angle of attack sensor so that it didn't work. Isn't that thing facing frontward, where rain could get in? It didn't dry out in 3 days? They must've REALLY power washed that sensor.
@@AirspaceVideos Aren't they also heated (on the outside), as long as the aircraft is running? This would not have prevented the accident, since the water entered the probes while the aircraft was on the ground.
Quote from the A320 flight crew operating manual (ICE RAIN PROTECTION, 1.30.50 PROBES HEAT): "The probes are heated: - automatically when at least one engine is running, or when the aircraft is in flight. - manually, when the flight crew switches ON the PROBE/WINDOW HEAT pushbutton switch On the ground, the TAT probes are not heated and pilot heating operates at a low level" I guess the operators expect water to be a problem during flight, but the pressure washer created some very uncommon conditions that were not expected to occur on the ground.
As an avionics architect it is my duty to analyze failure scenarios. Accidents tend to be from an unfortunate chain of unexpected events that conspire to an eventual accident. So an important concept is to break partial chains of causality, thus minimize the possibility of a complete chain to occur. Instance FMS controls COM & NAV radio tuning. If FMS software crash it will reset all COM & NAV to a default. This is the OPPOSITE of safety bkoz an FMS software fault can "export" its consequences to other systems that should otherwise continue.
I feel like for every situation where airbus automation saves a pilot from a mistake, it causes a crash which would have been a minor inconvenience in a Boeing (or at least older Boeings, with direct controls).
Again a chain of events resulting in a Swiss cheese model, but I think the biggest mistake was to perform the test at a low altitude. At high altitude they would have time to realize something was wrong with the system, and to recover.
You telling me they can't even spray-paint a goddam airplane without it causing a deadly accident? Yup, flying is the "safest" mode of travel. I can spay-paint my Honda Civic a million times over and it will never break down.
The paint didn’t cause the sensors to freeze. If you took the cover off your Honda Civics electrics and then sprayed them with a jet wash I bet they’d stop working. How many plane crashes have their been in the last week compared to how many people have died in car accidents?
This ticks me off with how stupid it is. The computers need feedback evaluation. If the pilot is commanding things that cause nose-up, and the angle of attack sensors don't change, something is wrong with one or the other if it happens frequently / continuously over a long period of time. It's not even difficult to implement such systems. The planes also have a gyro, which can be used to extrapolate angle of attack information.
Mechanical failure of stall system couldnt cost lives of passengers had it been on normal duties...... Pilots were negligent to carry out stall tests below 14000ft.... Theyre chances of recovery wouldve been much greater at 14k
This is like Aeroperu 603 crash. A blocked sensor tube gives false data and pilots can not recover the plane. I hope the maintance crew was held responsible.
I’ve watched hundreds of these accident videos and so often it’s the Pitot probes or airspeed probes at fault. This looks very similar to the recent China flight that crashed
Does the airbus have manual trim wheels and could they have saved the plane by adjusting the trim to a more neutral position after they lost control of the attitude? Or by banking left and right to reduce lift and keep the nose down while working on the trim problem? Seems like the second unrecoverable stall could have been avoided if it was possible to correct the trim or the attitude. I still find it scary that the trim on these aircraft can adjust to a degree where it basically overrides the elevators. This is not the first time a large jet has had the trim set wrong or the jack screws break or something and caused pilots to lose control of the attitude. You'd think trim adjustments would be limited to where the elevators can command nose up and nose down no matter where the trim is set. I guess maybe the discrepancy in the handling due to different loading makes this impractical? Cus then you would have less trim adjustment to account for load?
I'm still wondering why the Airbus didn't auto-trim back down when the pilot commanded full nose down? I though Airbus always auto-trims on sidestick input alone.
It seems like there should be some kind of cockpit warning when even one sensor isn't reporting correctly, to warn the pilots that there may be trouble with those systems.
@@duckyishappy again….it would be misleading in this case because the system here detected AOA 3 was faulty when actually it wasn’t. And it hadn’t failed because it triggered the stall warning
@Game Plays 1230 how? The raw AOA data is only available by looking at the maintenance section of the MCDU and initially they had no to little reason to suspect there was a problem.
One would think that there are heaters and water ingress detection in such critical sensors, in addition, a constant AOA reading should be easy to detect flag. Seems negligent.
Is it normal to have 3 pilots and 3 engineers on a TEST flight, esp the first one after major maint? Risking 6 lives instead of 2? That would be like doing a software test affecting crucial live data, without a backup. Sounds like little respect for the test flight process or good CRM. Is it also normal not to cover tubes when painting? Senseless, dumb, tragic incident. I hope the airline and its executives paid dearly for this.
It's normal to have 3 pilots for sure: 2 are handling the aircraft, the 3rd is managing and reading the test procedures. It's also quite normal to have engineers on board on such a special flight. Usually, if done correctly and by the book, these flight tests are perfectly safe.
The limiting factor for the A320ceo is the max. cabin pressure differential. The envelope ends at 39'800ft - therefore FL390 or 39'000ft is the maximum reasonably flyable level.
Wouldn’t Airbus want to include a coarse gyro, to verify the AOA sensors are actuating? Heck, simple software could deduce the plane MUST have changed angle of attack throughout the flight and determine the two frozen sensors were not rotating? And no warning was given to the pilot by the system that one AOA sensor was being ignored?! It was the only working one too. Poor flight software. And at the end, the pilot is commanding nose down, and the elevator is stubbornly refusing. Unbelievable. Even that Microsoft Word paperclip assistant was smarter that this plane. Sheesh.
The elevator was moving when the pilots commanded it. The stabiliser was fully up and because it’s larger it overcomes the elevator. The stabiliser would not autotrim because the aircraft had entered direct law as per design. The modern A320’s reportedly now use load factor to determine if the AOA’s are working If the pilots were told that one AOA was rejected they wouldn’t know it was the only working one. They should have know something was wrong when warnings appeared immediately after takeoff and when the alpha max strip on the airspeed indicator was at 70knots instead of around 100
The PFD doesn’t display AOA data but they should have noticed the solid red back on the speed scale indicating the point the aircraft should suddenly increase thrust and prevent a stall kept dropping instead of staying still
The piliots also were not farmiliar with the protection laws as well... the low speed protection only works if aircraft is in Normal Law... but on the PFD it displayed two amber crosses which means that the aircraft was operating in a degraded Law (alternate/direct).... that is why they had the stall warning. You cannot get a stall warning in Normal Law.
Not entirely true The aircraft only reverted out of normal law after it had pitched up. It would have gone to alternate law but because the gear was down when AOA 1 and 2 gave different readings the aircraft went straight to direct law. The stall warning can trigger in normal law but it is usually below the Alpha Max threshold which is never normally exceeded so therefore never heard
@@tomstravels520 in normal law even with full pilot backstick at low speed, you cant stall... alpha prot and alpha max protections will kick in and if still full backstick it will go into toga lock... Vsw (stall warning speed) is only in ALT and direct law. therefore you cant stall in normal law.
@@tuluksvui747 seeing as an Airbus pilot has agreed with me I’m pretty sure I’m correct. Alpha max is not THE point an aircraft would stall its still a couple of degrees below it. If the stall warning was inhibited in normal law then AOA 3 would not have activated just before the aircraft stalled. Also I’m pretty sure it would be illegal to disable the stall warning even if you had protections to prevent a stall incase a scenario like this occurred. The aircraft did not enter alternate/direct law until it had already stalled. With the frozen AOA sensors the aircrafts Alpha Max kept lowering relative to the speed. Read the report if you don’t believe me
But why the horizontal stabilizer was stuck to the fully down position even when the pilot applied full nose down? Shouldn't auto trim kick in? Or maybe the pilot should have used manual trim? Or just he didn't thought of that during the panic of the situation?
The stabiliser was automatically moving up as the aircraft slowed down to maintain level flight. However the aircraft entered direct law (the gear was down) as it stalled which stops the autotrim from working. So now it was full up and the full down on the elevators wasn’t enough to overcome it. They should have manually trimmed down but didn’t notice they had lost autotrim
@Game Plays 1230 it needs to because the aircraft cannot land easily in alternate law. Gear down signals the plane is going to land so switches to direct law so it lands more like a 737
The livery used for this simulation is inaccurate. What is depicted is the current Air New Zealand A320 livery. At the time of crash the ANZ livery was blue... Just look at crash photos of the tail with it's BLUE Koru design floating in the sea.
The AOA sensors now cross check against load factor so it can be voted against that instead of each other apparently. Makes it easier to identify a faulty sensor even if 2 are frozen in place
@@mdavid1955 if there is a fault with the sensor then an ECAM warning is displayed but I think that means if it’s actually stopped providing data. Erroneous will be rejected but as there is no change to the flight controls laws if only 1 is affected then pilots don’t need to be made aware until 2 fail
@Game Plays 1230 1 out of the same 3 systems failing makes no difference to the flight as the 3rd is a hot spare. The failure will be present in the post flight report
@Clayson Antoons if you had a yoke you would just use the motor trim to bring the nose down. Maybe a trim knob on the side stick would have been useful.
I think it's pretty reasonable to claim that even with malfunctioned AoA sensors, a serious or fatal accident would not have occured until a very large number of flight hours had elapsed if proper flight procedures were followed. Proper reporting of things like engine restart parameters or critical flight instruments should be displayed even though the A320 and 737 are fundamentally 1980s tech, but that wasn't the major thing here. Hope the industry is aware of this accident.
Not a chain of events but dumb design where water under ANY circumstances (even pressure washing) can enter the sensor and freeze, and where mismatch of sensor readings is considered “normal” and not indicated to the pilots. This is what really caused the crash. Other events are serious violations but not direct cause of crash.
There were plenty of warnings something was wrong the pilots just didn’t notice or make sense of them. Such as the CHECK GW message before takeoff and the Alpha Max strip on the PFD moving down with the airspeed which should never happen. Any sensible pilot would realise there is a problem related to either the FAC or AOA sensors
You need the sensors to move. The tighter you make the seal to keep HIGH PRESSURE WATER that should never be directed at it anyways, the less likely it can move properly due to friction. The seals are adequate for the job. Some dotard blasting high pressure water so that it bypasses the seal is a whole other issue. Pick your poison but what ultimately caused the crash was lack of aviating. Performing procedures last second, high risk, close to terrain, and not verifying certain minimums were met... they could have landed and been enjoying some after flight beer but they decided to proceed. It's not easy but following procedures help to ensure you have time to react if things don't go right... just like this situation.
Shouldn't it also be seen as an issue in the A320's software that the automatic trim can lead to a situation where control inputs become impossible? If it was programmed that a sufficiently strong input will rapidly change the trim if it is set far off center, the control could have been permanently recovered either immediately after the stall or after the nose had pitched up again.
When the aircraft entered the stall it entered direct law (as the gear was down) which gives pilots total control and disables the autotrim. However the trim was left at the full up position and needed to be manually moved down again
The most important point has been completely missed. The pilots were not qualified test pilots. The author, the 145 commenters so far, and the airlines involved all failed to properly recognize or emphasize this fact. A family physician is not qualified to perform brain surgery. Only qualified test pilots should perform such test flights. Hint: If you aren’t sure what a qualified test pilot is, then you aren’t one. Hey Mentour Pilot guy - I generally like your videos and am not blaming you for this hole in your educational Swiss cheese. But please look into this idea and use your influence to help train pilots to know the difference between a test pilot and a wannabe who is in over their head.
1. I am not mentour pilot. 2. I mentioned in my video that they were not qualified to carry out the aerial work that they were sent on. 3. A test pilot license is not required to carry out acceptance flight. The completion of a course as technical pilot is sufficient.
@@AirspaceVideos 1. My apologies for mistaking your identity 2. You seem to be taking up a very defensive posture here. I am not trying to attack you. I am a highly qualified and experienced test pilot. You do not appear to be. I am just trying to share information with you and others that clearly is needed as evidenced by this accident. 3. Your “mentioning” that the pilots were not “qualified” is the whole point of this discussion. My claim is that there was not sufficient emphasis of this point and it was not clear enough. 4. The claim that an undefined “technical course” is sufficient should be justified. 5. The argument that a test pilot “license” Is not required by regulators is fallacious and irrelevant. 6. If you want to have a more productive discussion about this feel free to contact me directly.
Rubbish aeroplane. The computer should never override the pilot. That's why the A 380 was discontinued coz it's rubbish and expensive and heavy and ugly. Don't talk about the fuel burn and operating costs
Such restrained and non sensationalised production.🤍💙👍🏼👌🏽 Thank you for this. However one shudders to think, that if this is possibly the situation in Deutschland (famed for its discipline or in being meticulous, detailed)... then shudder to think what all muck might be there elsewhere.
The fact that just a Livery weighs up to 600 pounds really puts into perspective just how massive these airplanes actually are
And that’s only an A320! Imagine how much paint it would take for a 747 or A380.
Well a gallon of water weighs over 8 lbs. so 600 lbs of paint isn't really that much.
You can estimate amount of paint on A350 by just picking paint chips from a runway 😅
I was sort of surprised it's not more. That's only the weight of like, 3 passengers.
@@ross4 One passenger if you are talking about the weight of your average rural trailer park resident.
Just checked my phone to see a vid uploaded, can't wait to watch!
What from what I’ve read and seen videos of, this flaw with 2 faulty AOA sensors being declared valid is now fixed. All 3 AOA values are checked against the load factor being experienced. So if there is a change in load factor, there should be a change in AOA. If 1 does change but 2 don’t then 2 will be rejected. But they can be revalidated again if it returns to normal
ah, interesting!
In any event, if there is a discrepancy on such critical sensors, the pilots should be informed. In addition, I have long thought it wise to have an emergency full manual control override on both Airbus and Boeing jetliners. Though given the often sub optimal flying skills of commercial pilots these days, that may not always help when the plane's computers are trying to kill you.
@@Sean_Coyne the problem is they didn’t know there was an emergency until the stall warning went off. The aircraft did go into full manual control after the stall but the pilots didn’t realise hence why their trim was left at full up. The reason why there’s no warning for loss of 1 sensors is because you still have 2 working. Only 2 are used to compute the AOA value, the third was used for comparison and a swappable one. If you loose one there is no difference in the flying capability and there’s nothing the pilots can do about it anyway.
@@Sean_Coyne Agreed, a full override as a last resort allows a pilot to revert to seat of the pants flying (if he has some orientation). It is one thing when your commands are ignored for good reason, quite another when ignored for bad reason - and there is already no time to think. It is more unnerving than people think to have commands blocked - confidence crashes.
As someone not particularly bright or one who wasn't a good student.. nor from aviation field.. I really need to dig up on what exactly does 'load factor' mean... in this setting.
Wow! I had never heard of this accident. Your professional quality video productions rival the best I have seen anywhere including those from FlightSafety, AOPA, FAA, Boeing and anything else I'm aware of on UA-cam. You are doing on UA-cam what Simon Hradecky and AV Herald have done for aviation on the Web, that would be the #1 go-to-source for accurate aviation information, education and perspective. Pure excellence-thank you!
The relationships between this and the two MAX crashes was interesting to me. In the MAX crashes Boeing was criticized (rightly so) for having MCAS design logic rely on only one AOA probe (per flight segment). When the MAX AOA gave erroneous readings MCAS accepted those erroneous readings anyway and drove the horizontal stabilizer to full nose down limit. In this crash this Airbus had three AOA probes. Two of the probes were frozen (Air France 447). I would suggest; given a situation where two frozen probes are providing the same or nearly identical readings, and then neither of those probes register any AOA change over long periods of time while the airplane is clearly changing altitudes, configuration and speeds (IAS) should be also recognized as being "erroneous readings". But the design logic accepted these two same AOA readings as valid even though they were both illogical and erroneous. That error resulted in the stabilizer moving inappropriately, which resulted in an undesired aircraft state, upset, from which the crew did not/could not recover.
Years ago, in recurrent training, we flew the Turkish Airlines Flight 1951 Boeing 737 Amsterdam accident profile (obviously in the full motion simulator and not in the airplane). First we thoroughly briefed the accident and the profile. As in this case the horizontal stabilizer was allowed to go to the full nose up deflection limit and then the engines were brought to TOGA (Takeoff Go Around-essentially maximum thrust). Even thought I had been told exactly what was going to happen I was still STUNNED when the jet's nose pointed up to the heavens even though I had the yoke mechanically buried to it's physical limits commanding nose down. The airplane wasn't having anything to do with my nose down commands; it was pitching up, standing on it's tail and I could not control it. Again, even thought I had been told exactly what to expect, I actually froze for a second or two in unbelief. It took maximum sustained nose down electric trim and maximum nose down elevator input (through the yoke) to regain pitch control. Even with all that going on the recovery took time, recovery was not instantaneous. If this happens at low altitude, recovery, is at best very difficult, probably unlikely and perhaps impossible.
Thank you very much for your kind and wel written comment! Yes, I can only imagine how that must have been... as a guy who has only flown airbus airliners in his career, I must confess the trim is a true blindspot for me. If the PFD doesn't flash the big USE MAN PITCH TRIM, I rarely give it a second thought after departure. This accident really taught me something!
great video! I really like the cockpit alarms you play in your videos as it gives the viewer a taste of what the atmosphere in the cockpit was like!
I've seen several videos about this accident. None of them explained the cause as clearly as this one. Now I understand what happened. Well done.
Your visuals are awesomely high quality! Thanks for the hard work and great video
In my opinion, the person on the ground crew who allowed the airplane to be pressure washed is guilty of manslaughter•
Thank you for making a very complicated subject easy to understand by us laymen !:-)
⚡️🙏⚡️
Woh, manslaughter is a good word to describe my take in this story. :)
wow, its amazing how many things go wrong before an accident. Great video once again !!!
Heartbreaking to see lives lost because the mechanics couldn’t be bothered to do their jobs properly and also that the pilots didn’t do their job properly either 😢
@Game Plays 1230 What are you on about? Doing a stall test at 3000 feet. Darwin award rewarded instantly. Good they didn't kill any innocent people.
Testing out the plane at 3000 feet is what made them look stupid
Great content as always! I'm glad I'm able to support you as a Patreon member. I encourage everyone else who enjoys these videos and can afford it to kick in what they can too!
thank you so much, as always!
You put everything so clear and you videos are so good! I really enjoy your videos and your description of the events! It's very sad that they lost lives just because of not proper mentioning of what procedures they had to do. Thank you so much, captain!
There are very good reasons for specific height limitations when carrying out non standard flight test manoeuvres as clearly indicated here.
A tragic (but unfortunately perfect) example of Dr. Reason’s Swiss cheese model of accident causation. Damn.
Never heard of this one. Interesting.
Good job as always.
Thank you for another excellent video. This is a tragic accident that happened due to a constellation of problems that came together to lead to the ultimate crash. I always appreciate your analyses!
This one is screaming "perfect storm"!
Thanks again Airspace.
As mentioned below, heartbreaking.
Detailed explanation as always. Happy Easter / holidays.
thanks, to you too!
I like this music too I’ve heard this once or twice on Disaster Breakdown channel
Nicely done as always. And this is why the bell icon exists. Related to the video, the transition from Normal law, to Alternate Law to Abnormal law is never fully clear to pilots on ECAM. If it were at the very least pilots would know they have degraded flight envelope protection and disable flight protection computers and know they have an unrestricted envelope and thus must hand fly accordingly.
the lowest is Direct Law... shown by two amber crosses on the PFD
What I don’t get is according to the report the characteristic speeds still displayed on the PFD’s but kept decreasing with the airspeed reduction. Alpha Max was somewhere around 70 knots when the stall warning went off. Surely someone must have looked at that and thought “that can’t be right”
Also a CHECK GW message appeared on takeoff. That should have been a warning too
Correct. According to the final report the CHECK GW message was overlooked however. The crew never mentioned it.
As to the low characteristic speeds: I know hindsight is 20:20, but slowing an A320 down below 100kts... I don't know who would intentionally do that!
Tragic indeed, but at least no passengers on board.
Very sad due to the fact, that this test was recommended to exactly detect this kind of defects...
great video again
Excellent, a really clear explanation.
How many accidents could be avoided if maintenance was done correctly...
Hi I love your channel . I was a bit worried because I have not heard from you in over ten days and your films are very professional and informative . I am sort of a creature of habit and was after a bit more and I sort of got worried a bit. Hope all is good . I truly enjoy your films . They are very good.
Hi there, thank you! All is well, I just got a lot going on right now and my latest video is delayed due to some difficulties with my simulator. It should air early next week!
I know you are a busy person so thank you for the reply. I appreciate the science and educators on UA-cam. Thank you so much for the answer and hope you have time to accomplish your current situation. All the very best got the bell rung so will catch up then . Got to say I regularly play your uploads random and repeat and they are a joy.
@@AirspaceVideos SU9 broken it?
So many ways this could have been prevented. I bet if they just did the test at the proper altitude they would have been fine. So sad
In addition, they should have briefed what the minimum airspeed would be, and if no action from the plane, they would record it as a fault and abort the test, and also the third pilot should have been watching the speed and said airspeed airspeed, when/if it fell to the pre-agreed minimum levels
The intro was like, "all seems going well until it didn't"
There was an incident... I think in asia somewhere, where an A330 took off with all 3 pitot tubes still covered. It went into alternate law and pilots had to fly with no airspeed indicators. Brutal. Have you done a video on this event? Super effort by the pilots brought the plane down safely.
I haven't yet!
I test software for a living (well.. more than just test it). I would not like testing planes - I’m very good at finding ways to break things, and would not like doing so with aircraft systems. (I was “happy” enough crashing software that runs on airplanes - yes, been there, done that, got the atta-boy for figuring out how)
u doing a really good job with this videos
Yet another video on how automation sometimes kills. Sad:(
It was a bad choice from humans on ground that killed. They weren’t supposed to pressure wash the plane.
Poor cockpit design, insufficient AOA erroneous function detection. Another item on Airbus's long list of "we'll fix it after it kills a lot of people first."
And the 737 Max was better? Bearing in mind that Ethiopian had purchased the AOA DISAGREE warning but it was useless without the AOA indicators on the PFD.
On this aircraft whilst the AOA is not displayed as a value, the fact the Alpha Prot and Alpha max strips were moving relative to the speed should have been a huge indicator something was wrong with them.
It's so odd that, despite the exterior of the plane being made to be battered by the elements, a worker was able to spray water into the angle of attack sensor so that it didn't work. Isn't that thing facing frontward, where rain could get in? It didn't dry out in 3 days? They must've REALLY power washed that sensor.
Not exactly, they are located on the side of the fuselage. But as far as I know, the sensors were eventually redesigned to be more waterproof
@@AirspaceVideos Aren't they also heated (on the outside), as long as the aircraft is running? This would not have prevented the accident, since the water entered the probes while the aircraft was on the ground.
Quote from the A320 flight crew operating manual (ICE RAIN PROTECTION, 1.30.50 PROBES HEAT):
"The probes are heated:
- automatically when at least one engine is running, or when the aircraft is in flight.
- manually, when the flight crew switches ON the PROBE/WINDOW HEAT pushbutton switch
On the ground, the TAT probes are not heated and pilot heating operates at a low level"
I guess the operators expect water to be a problem during flight, but the pressure washer created some very uncommon conditions that were not expected to occur on the ground.
Apparently that's from an old version of the operating manual (as of 2000). I don't know if this was changed after the 2008 incident.
The probes are heated, not the housing itself. Probe heat didn't help at all here.
As an avionics architect it is my duty to analyze failure scenarios. Accidents tend to be from an unfortunate chain of unexpected events that conspire to an eventual accident. So an important concept is to break partial chains of causality, thus minimize the possibility of a complete chain to occur.
Instance FMS controls COM & NAV radio tuning. If FMS software crash it will reset all COM & NAV to a default. This is the OPPOSITE of safety bkoz an FMS software fault can "export" its consequences to other systems that should otherwise continue.
love this channel now
Horrible crash, well explaned. You did a tasteful job here and not easy to do.
I feel like for every situation where airbus automation saves a pilot from a mistake, it causes a crash which would have been a minor inconvenience in a Boeing (or at least older Boeings, with direct controls).
Again a chain of events resulting in a Swiss cheese model, but I think the biggest mistake was to perform the test at a low altitude. At high altitude they would have time to realize something was wrong with the system, and to recover.
You telling me they can't even spray-paint a goddam airplane without it causing a deadly accident? Yup, flying is the "safest" mode of travel. I can spay-paint my Honda Civic a million times over and it will never break down.
The paint didn’t cause the sensors to freeze. If you took the cover off your Honda Civics electrics and then sprayed them with a jet wash I bet they’d stop working. How many plane crashes have their been in the last week compared to how many people have died in car accidents?
That was interesting!! 👍✈✈👍
@4:20 love the gear down at cruise lol
This ticks me off with how stupid it is. The computers need feedback evaluation. If the pilot is commanding things that cause nose-up, and the angle of attack sensors don't change, something is wrong with one or the other if it happens frequently / continuously over a long period of time. It's not even difficult to implement such systems. The planes also have a gyro, which can be used to extrapolate angle of attack information.
That’s why modern Airbus use the load factor as a comparison
Mechanical failure of stall system couldnt cost lives of passengers had it been on normal duties......
Pilots were negligent to carry out stall tests below 14000ft....
Theyre chances of recovery wouldve been much greater at 14k
So many deaths and accidents caused by someone saying "It'll be fine..." :/
*Haven't been receiving any video notifications from this channel..*
?
This is like Aeroperu 603 crash. A blocked sensor tube gives false data and pilots can not recover the plane. I hope the maintance crew was held responsible.
I thought all probes were heated to prevent ice in the first place
They are…..on the outside. And only when the aircraft is running
I’ve watched hundreds of these accident videos and so often it’s the Pitot probes or airspeed probes at fault. This looks very similar to the recent China flight that crashed
Except the China jet was traveling at 350 knots, was above the stall according to the ADSB.
Does the airbus have manual trim wheels and could they have saved the plane by adjusting the trim to a more neutral position after they lost control of the attitude? Or by banking left and right to reduce lift and keep the nose down while working on the trim problem? Seems like the second unrecoverable stall could have been avoided if it was possible to correct the trim or the attitude. I still find it scary that the trim on these aircraft can adjust to a degree where it basically overrides the elevators. This is not the first time a large jet has had the trim set wrong or the jack screws break or something and caused pilots to lose control of the attitude. You'd think trim adjustments would be limited to where the elevators can command nose up and nose down no matter where the trim is set. I guess maybe the discrepancy in the handling due to different loading makes this impractical? Cus then you would have less trim adjustment to account for load?
Yes, the A320 does have trim wheels.
I'm still wondering why the Airbus didn't auto-trim back down when the pilot commanded full nose down? I though Airbus always auto-trims on sidestick input alone.
It seems like there should be some kind of cockpit warning when even one sensor isn't reporting correctly, to warn the pilots that there may be trouble with those systems.
This would have misled the crew further. They would then assume AOA 3 was faulty when actually it wasn’t
@@tomstravels520 not that kind of warning, just a general warning that the system is having a fault.
@@duckyishappy again….it would be misleading in this case because the system here detected AOA 3 was faulty when actually it wasn’t. And it hadn’t failed because it triggered the stall warning
@Game Plays 1230 how? The raw AOA data is only available by looking at the maintenance section of the MCDU and initially they had no to little reason to suspect there was a problem.
Why would the minimum altitude for a stall test be at 3000 feet? That seems unnecessarily low.
They weren't doing a stall test. They were testting the system that prevents stalls was working.
One would think that there are heaters and water ingress detection in such critical sensors, in addition, a constant AOA reading should be easy to detect flag. Seems negligent.
The AOA sensors are heated but on the outside, not the inside
@@tomstravels520 Thank you. I was looking to see if anyone asked about heaters for those items.
Is it normal to have 3 pilots and 3 engineers on a TEST flight, esp the first one after major maint? Risking 6 lives instead of 2? That would be like doing a software test affecting crucial live data, without a backup. Sounds like little respect for the test flight process or good CRM. Is it also normal not to cover tubes when painting? Senseless, dumb, tragic incident. I hope the airline and its executives paid dearly for this.
It's normal to have 3 pilots for sure: 2 are handling the aircraft, the 3rd is managing and reading the test procedures. It's also quite normal to have engineers on board on such a special flight. Usually, if done correctly and by the book, these flight tests are perfectly safe.
This accident was a true group effort.
Oh my God they're going to pignon via Bordeaux
You need to meticulous in air space engineering,no room for error
Another great video as always, but you’ve been influenced by Americans, a sea is not an ocean. It never went anywhere near an ocean!
Just a friendly FYI, the max service ceiling of the A320 is 41k ft, not 39k ft. No worries, still enjoyed the video. 😉👍✌️
If I recall correctly, Airspace has said that he’s an A320 pilot himself. I’m sure he knows the limits of the A320 variant involved.
The limiting factor for the A320ceo is the max. cabin pressure differential. The envelope ends at 39'800ft - therefore FL390 or 39'000ft is the maximum reasonably flyable level.
Wouldn’t Airbus want to include a coarse gyro, to verify the AOA sensors are actuating? Heck, simple software could deduce the plane MUST have changed angle of attack throughout the flight and determine the two frozen sensors were not rotating? And no warning was given to the pilot by the system that one AOA sensor was being ignored?! It was the only working one too. Poor flight software. And at the end, the pilot is commanding nose down, and the elevator is stubbornly refusing. Unbelievable. Even that Microsoft Word paperclip assistant was smarter that this plane. Sheesh.
The elevator was moving when the pilots commanded it. The stabiliser was fully up and because it’s larger it overcomes the elevator. The stabiliser would not autotrim because the aircraft had entered direct law as per design. The modern A320’s reportedly now use load factor to determine if the AOA’s are working
If the pilots were told that one AOA was rejected they wouldn’t know it was the only working one. They should have know something was wrong when warnings appeared immediately after takeoff and when the alpha max strip on the airspeed indicator was at 70knots instead of around 100
Great video! Thank you...
Shouldn‘t they have noticed, that their pfd stopped working (kept showing 4 degrees up) and did anything change to prevent this?
The PFD doesn’t display AOA data but they should have noticed the solid red back on the speed scale indicating the point the aircraft should suddenly increase thrust and prevent a stall kept dropping instead of staying still
They wont be making any more mistakes.
What maintenance did they have to undergo
Yeah….When everything is going fine and Suddenly the Airplane starts falling out of the Sky….You could be in for a bad day?
The piliots also were not farmiliar with the protection laws as well... the low speed protection only works if aircraft is in Normal Law... but on the PFD it displayed two amber crosses which means that the aircraft was operating in a degraded Law (alternate/direct).... that is why they had the stall warning. You cannot get a stall warning in Normal Law.
Not entirely true
The aircraft only reverted out of normal law after it had pitched up. It would have gone to alternate law but because the gear was down when AOA 1 and 2 gave different readings the aircraft went straight to direct law.
The stall warning can trigger in normal law but it is usually below the Alpha Max threshold which is never normally exceeded so therefore never heard
Thomas, I really should employ you as a moderator 😄👍🏻
@@AirspaceVideos 😂
@@tomstravels520 in normal law even with full pilot backstick at low speed, you cant stall... alpha prot and alpha max protections will kick in and if still full backstick it will go into toga lock... Vsw (stall warning speed) is only in ALT and direct law. therefore you cant stall in normal law.
@@tuluksvui747 seeing as an Airbus pilot has agreed with me I’m pretty sure I’m correct. Alpha max is not THE point an aircraft would stall its still a couple of degrees below it. If the stall warning was inhibited in normal law then AOA 3 would not have activated just before the aircraft stalled. Also I’m pretty sure it would be illegal to disable the stall warning even if you had protections to prevent a stall incase a scenario like this occurred. The aircraft did not enter alternate/direct law until it had already stalled. With the frozen AOA sensors the aircrafts Alpha Max kept lowering relative to the speed. Read the report if you don’t believe me
But why the horizontal stabilizer was stuck to the fully down position even when the pilot applied full nose down? Shouldn't auto trim kick in? Or maybe the pilot should have used manual trim? Or just he didn't thought of that during the panic of the situation?
The stabiliser was automatically moving up as the aircraft slowed down to maintain level flight. However the aircraft entered direct law (the gear was down) as it stalled which stops the autotrim from working. So now it was full up and the full down on the elevators wasn’t enough to overcome it. They should have manually trimmed down but didn’t notice they had lost autotrim
@Game Plays 1230 it needs to because the aircraft cannot land easily in alternate law. Gear down signals the plane is going to land so switches to direct law so it lands more like a 737
As I previously mentioned...
Wow manslaughter is a good word to describe my take in this story.
Cheers all :)
The livery used for this simulation is inaccurate. What is depicted is the current Air New Zealand A320 livery. At the time of crash the ANZ livery was blue... Just look at crash photos of the tail with it's BLUE Koru design floating in the sea.
Did Airbus modify the slow speed warning system?....to require that all 3 sensors have be functioning and report it's status via the ECAM system?
The AOA sensors now cross check against load factor so it can be voted against that instead of each other apparently. Makes it easier to identify a faulty sensor even if 2 are frozen in place
@@tomstravels520 Does it give a warning on the ECAM readout if something is amiss?
@@mdavid1955 if there is a fault with the sensor then an ECAM warning is displayed but I think that means if it’s actually stopped providing data. Erroneous will be rejected but as there is no change to the flight controls laws if only 1 is affected then pilots don’t need to be made aware until 2 fail
@Game Plays 1230 1 out of the same 3 systems failing makes no difference to the flight as the 3rd is a hot spare. The failure will be present in the post flight report
many plane crashes are caused by maintenance's lazy work
Just asking, could this have been avoided by having a yoke rather than a joystick?
No it wouldn’t have made a difference.
@Clayson Antoons if you had a yoke you would just use the motor trim to bring the nose down. Maybe a trim knob on the side stick would have been useful.
Yeee, it seems they took test as a formality, not something actually needed.
I think it's pretty reasonable to claim that even with malfunctioned AoA sensors, a serious or fatal accident would not have occured until a very large number of flight hours had elapsed if proper flight procedures were followed. Proper reporting of things like engine restart parameters or critical flight instruments should be displayed even though the A320 and 737 are fundamentally 1980s tech, but that wasn't the major thing here. Hope the industry is aware of this accident.
Sorry to say but that was a misery paint job, not protecting any of the measuring devices.
Not a chain of events but dumb design where water under ANY circumstances (even pressure washing) can enter the sensor and freeze, and where mismatch of sensor readings is considered “normal” and not indicated to the pilots. This is what really caused the crash. Other events are serious violations but not direct cause of crash.
There were plenty of warnings something was wrong the pilots just didn’t notice or make sense of them. Such as the CHECK GW message before takeoff and the Alpha Max strip on the PFD moving down with the airspeed which should never happen. Any sensible pilot would realise there is a problem related to either the FAC or AOA sensors
You need the sensors to move. The tighter you make the seal to keep HIGH PRESSURE WATER that should never be directed at it anyways, the less likely it can move properly due to friction. The seals are adequate for the job. Some dotard blasting high pressure water so that it bypasses the seal is a whole other issue. Pick your poison but what ultimately caused the crash was lack of aviating. Performing procedures last second, high risk, close to terrain, and not verifying certain minimums were met... they could have landed and been enjoying some after flight beer but they decided to proceed.
It's not easy but following procedures help to ensure you have time to react if things don't go right... just like this situation.
Shouldn't it also be seen as an issue in the A320's software that the automatic trim can lead to a situation where control inputs become impossible?
If it was programmed that a sufficiently strong input will rapidly change the trim if it is set far off center, the control could have been permanently recovered either immediately after the stall or after the nose had pitched up again.
When the aircraft entered the stall it entered direct law (as the gear was down) which gives pilots total control and disables the autotrim. However the trim was left at the full up position and needed to be manually moved down again
Jesus can change yr life ❤
Second person to comment on this video.
I have some good news for you. You're actually first. We'll done. Huge achievement 🙂
@@lost_poet_
GREAT COMMENT! Your channel deserves more subs! Keep it up!
@@greggstrasser5791 48 subs with 0 videos posted. I don't even know why people are subscribing 🤔
@@lost_poet_
I had a channel for about 13 years before they finally banned me. Same deal. I think it's some sign of general approval from kids.
The most important point has been completely missed. The pilots were not qualified test pilots. The author, the 145 commenters so far, and the airlines involved all failed to properly recognize or emphasize this fact. A family physician is not qualified to perform brain surgery. Only qualified test pilots should perform such test flights. Hint: If you aren’t sure what a qualified test pilot is, then you aren’t one. Hey Mentour Pilot guy - I generally like your videos and am not blaming you for this hole in your educational Swiss cheese. But please look into this idea and use your influence to help train pilots to know the difference between a test pilot and a wannabe who is in over their head.
1. I am not mentour pilot.
2. I mentioned in my video that they were not qualified to carry out the aerial work that they were sent on.
3. A test pilot license is not required to carry out acceptance flight. The completion of a course as technical pilot is sufficient.
@@AirspaceVideos
1. My apologies for mistaking your identity
2. You seem to be taking up a very defensive posture here. I am not trying to attack you. I am a highly qualified and experienced test pilot. You do not appear to be. I am just trying to share information with you and others that clearly is needed as evidenced by this accident.
3. Your “mentioning” that the pilots were not “qualified” is the whole point of this discussion. My claim is that there was not sufficient emphasis of this point and it was not clear enough.
4. The claim that an undefined “technical course” is sufficient should be justified.
5. The argument that a test pilot “license” Is not required by regulators is fallacious and irrelevant.
6. If you want to have a more productive discussion about this feel free to contact me directly.
will do!
Rubbish aeroplane. The computer should never override the pilot. That's why the A 380 was discontinued coz it's rubbish and expensive and heavy and ugly. Don't talk about the fuel burn and operating costs
Such restrained and non sensationalised production.🤍💙👍🏼👌🏽
Thank you for this.
However one shudders to think, that if this is possibly the situation in Deutschland (famed for its discipline or in being meticulous, detailed)... then shudder to think what all muck might be there elsewhere.