Interesting show on Discovery today

wrote in message
ups.com...

Kev wrote:
GDBholdings wrote:
Now I was wondering if the airline manufactures and the airlines have
now
added an audible warning when all or part of the autopilot is
disengaged.
Seems if there was such a warning then this crash may never have
happened

The same for that L-1011 crash back in the early 70's that flew down to
the ground in the Everglades, when the crew accidentally disengaged the
autopilot, while trying to figure out why a light wasn't working.
You'd think there'd be a loud buzzer for at least a second.

Kev

The "real" problem is that the Autopilot in that particular airbus is
designed to disengage due to movements of the yoke (the pilots daughter
didn't, but the pilots son did manhandle the yoke to try to turn the
plane), what this did is turn off the heading function on the
autopilot, but not soudn the 3x3 dong alarm that sounds on airbuses
when the autopilot is disengaged, the planes bank angle continued to
increase, as less lift was on the verticle axis the planes altitude
function (which remained engaged) tried to pull it back onto altitude
which caused it to do a series of aerobatic acts in the air. The G
forces being generated prevented either the pilot or co-pilot from
reacting, as they could not reach the yoke against the forces acting on
them. When they finally reached the yoke it was way too late.

The accident would not have occured if the pilot had not yielded his
seat to kids. When I look at my seat I think of it as "my commander
chair", it's a privelege which has to be earned to sit in the left seat
of an aircraft and be "pilot in command" at the airline level, anyone
who hasn't earned that has no place sitting in that or the seat to the
right of it when a plane is in flight... they are more than welcome in
the jumpseats (well... not in the US, but thats going to change also in
a few years... Air Tahiti here I come).


I sat left seat once in a Bombardier Challenger in the FL's. Of course I was
smart enough not to touch anything unless asked to.

--------------------------
DW