(WaltBJ) wrote:

Are there two of these 'fly into the trees' accidents? The one I am
familiar with I have the AvWeek writeups somewhere. I used this (among
others) as 'don't do this - think it out first' safety talks with my
av students. The one I'm talking about is the Air France A320 chief
pilot giving a group of disabled kids a ride during a demo flight in
the new airplane. He made a low slow 'silent' pass with engines at
idle, and got too slow, started sinking and couldn't get the engines
spooled up before the tail of the fuelage hit the trees and of course
then not being able to rotate any higher and with the engine FADECs
taking their own sweet time to spool up - crashed, killing some of the
kids and injuring the others. And he was a graduate of the FAF test
pilot school, too. Great example of complacency and hubris.
Walt BJ

I don't think that there's two Walt...your description sounds
like the one we're discussing here...I seem to be gathering that
he expected the autothrottle syst to apply TOGA and when it
didn't (because he was too low - and had selected it off anyway)
he was too late in applying it manually. I believe he applied it
only five seconds before he contacted the trees. You might read
Jerry Grasso's descriptions here, he seems to have a good handle
on it (plus he teaches a very similar system I believe).
--

-Gord.