The signs of an imminent wing stall would also have been much more apparent to a pilot hand-flying the controls. Another reason the autopilot should have never been on, IMHO. Autopilots are nice (if/when they work) but icing and turbulence are two situations that come to mind immediately as to places they should not be used. Ironically the times a person might naively assume they'd be most useful (in relieving crewmember stress/workload) but in those situations, the crew absolutely needs to have DIRECT control of the aircraft (meaning the control surfaces/inputs) and feedback.

If anyone here can provide me with good reason(s) to the contrary, I'd love to hear them. I'm not saying it's impossible they exist, but I'm skeptical. My initial reaction to seeing this is that it was irresponsible to be using the autopilot as a crutch in the way they seemed to be doing.

I wonder if Mr. Hotshot Captain actually had any "hands-on" experience for any of his "600+ hours" in winter/ice flying or whether he'd always used the autopilot for those too and simply gotten lucky up to that point.

I have a real problem with their decision to (mis)use cockpit resources as they apparently did.

No idea how to get numbers for feeder airlines. But you can look up numbers for the majors.

United (UAUA) has 6,400 pilots, trailing 12-month revenue of $19BN, and trailing 12-month operating income (loss) of ($1.9BN).
Hypothetically, if every UAUA pilot received a $50K/yr raise, that's 1.6% of revenue - so ticket prices would have to rise by 1.6%.

Would I pay that? Of course. Domestic airline ticket prices are cheap. Coast to coast for $160 - cripes, you can spend that on cab fare during the trip. Fares could go up 50% and still be reasonable, in my opinion.

But if they couldn't get that 1.6%, then operating loss would be ($2.2BN).

Personally, I wish we could back to the pre-deregulation airline industry. Tickets were more expensive, but airline travel was a better experience. For passengers. I guess for pilots, flight attendants, etc too.

Not really- taxi drivers get robbed and shot all the time, and often have to clean up puke. If anything, those are the dudes that are underpaid.

Honestly Cap'n, i don't do thinly vieled anythings.

If i wanted to make a sexist statement, i'd just do it.

For instance, women make for lousy middle linebackers. See? ;)

I understand your defensiveness though, i hold no grudges Captain.

Fixed, and i agree 100%. With all this.

But Porsche monkey's hat is still stupid. ;)

Not true.. my ex girl friend... wait... uhh... nevermind.. dammit :( ;)

Just make sure to call me out when I post on the next m14 thread.


In turb the autopilot can do a way better job then me at keeping peoples lunches inside them. The aircraft I fly even has a mode for it... to reduce the gain(how aggressive it is at responding). Some new aircraft actually use the control surfaces to effectively damp out and reduce the gust loads.
In most transport category aircraft the controls are hydraulic and what you feel is created by a "pitch feel computer" or "artificial feel unit" so you cant feel ice very well.
Its a safety tool 99% of the time.. infact were not allowed to hand fly over 28,000ft in most of the airspace. Yes. hand flying might have produced secondary clues.. like control pressure of an out of trim condition... might have saved the day here. But think: how many times has automation saved the day by keeping both pilots in the loop for decision making and double checking? you will never know.

Yes. I agree.

Don't worry about it man, i'm a layman, you're an expert, and you gave your opinion. I don't mind getting strafed once in a while, it keeps me on my toes. ;)

Feel free to start a company, hire only the best pilots, advertise yourself as the safest and most professional around, grossly "overpay" your crews, and charge a big premium for it.

Maybe it would even work.

PS: How was airline travel in any way a better experience for passengers pre deregulation?

Personally, I am one of the guys who basically always hand flies approaches, for a number of reasons (I like to do it and it keeps my skills sharp). However, let it be clear that I have all of the confidence in the world for the autopilot in the jet I fly. It can do the job more precisely than any pilot could dream of. It is highly capable in turbulence, btw. In fact, at high altitude, a pilot would be a fool to click it off in heavy turbulence because he stand a greater chance of a high altitude upset by hand flying it - such is the nature of high altitude flight and the capabilities of sophisticated transport category autopilots.

As for icing conditions, defined "severe" icing (or the suspicion of it) requires that the autopilot be turned off, for the reasons you stated. However, in light icing, there is no requirement to turn off the autopilot.

less "trash" in the back
http://www.abc15.com/news/local/story/Family-Southwest-Airlines-kicked-us-off-flight-in/6foXicWwK0a74v8okMhz7g.cspx

I do remember when i was in the military the prices for commercial flights were a hell of a lot higher. Didn't take me long to take up the USAF on it's free MAC flight offer.

Do some research. It ain't a hat. It's stupid, but it it's not a hat.

Worked for Swissair. For a while.

Fair enough - I'll buy that explanation. I still would feel a bit uneasy about trusting an autopilot not to overcontrol the airplane in turbulence though. I'm a bit of an anti-technologist when it comes to things like that. I've been in plenty of turbulence and I know how it feels, what Va is and how to make control inputs in such a way as to be effective but not "jerky" in the way that most of the autopilots with which I'm familiar tend to do. I suspect the new, larger, transport-category aircraft have better, more sophisticated autopilots that perhaps are based on much more complex models of human behaviors, performance limits/parameters and other considerations that make them well-suited for this. But they'd need to gain my trust. Based on the stuff with which I'm familiar first-hand, I trust myself way more than I trust the autopilots in either icing or turbulence. And being a bit obsessive about understanding the things that keep me alive in the air, I have a hard time believing in something blindly that is:

1. Designed by computer programmers (usually the lowest-bid ones, from China or India) and
2. Impossible to truly understand (i.e. it's a "black box" and you really don't know the exact algorithims that occur inside of it, just a basic idea of what kind of output you'll get...)

But like anything else, I suppose I could be convinced. It's certainly not my first reaction to technological stuff though. I like (and trust) things like VORs, NDBs, ILSes, localizers and basic nav/comms because I can understand them to a point where I "get it". I trust them. I fully understand that I ultimately have control over them and what their limitations are. Not so with the enigmatic black boxes including fly-by-wire systems, FADEC, etc.

I have been sitting on my hands for a lot of this discussion.

Guys, you missed the most important part of this captains' (yes, no caps) discussion with his SIC. He basically said that his 1600-ish TOTAL hours were inflated by (inferred) a thou. That he had been 'advised' that it was what he needed to get on at Alaska (where he has a 'bud')... (betcha that bud, if he really exists, is sweating bullets in the Alaska CP's office)..... That means that the SIC's time (ASSuming she didn't 'pencil-whip her time as well) was probably the same or she had even MORE than he had.

Sooooooooooo..... I know I have been with one of these type of idiots in a sim, or even worse, in an airplane. Their 'lack of BTDT' shows pretty quickly, and is ALWAYS followed by a call to my CP (if I wasn't it) and my concerns, and the 'event' that led to those concerns were discussed. Always followed by a review of the application and training records.

In 100% of the cases..... not 99.9, not 76%... 100% of the time, the falsehoods were uncovered with only the barest of checking.

Here's the really funny part. A previous employer CANNOT tell a reference checker officially why someone was let go. CANNOT. The only way is thru the lunch chat, or the good-ole-boy-network. The fact that this guy flunked several previous employment checks does not surprise me. The fact that he was hired and promoted to captain at Colgan/Pinnacle does not surprise me.

There is a not-so-funny similarity to checking social security numbers of employees by employers these days. The check is of the number only.... privacy laws (ACLU) do not allow a name match. So the prospective employee simply has to keep guessing until he gets a good SS# to pass the pre-employment check. An employer CANNOT check legal status by name.

The fact that no one that flew with him ever spoke up DOES surprise me. Maybe it's really that bad out there.

I was lucky; the people I worked for over the years (with the exception of corporate flight management companies) actually DID care about what is going on in the field.

The bad apples were rarely let loose in 50 million dollar jets with high profile clientele in back. It did happen, but their careers were short-lived. Until 9-11. Everything changed after that, even at the best of flight departments. Sorry, but is why I got out of corporate.

Murphy, once again, was at work over upstate New York that night. Two newbies ended up in the same plane together, and the simplest of approaches went wrong. For a really stupid reason.

They got slow.

That's it. Icing was not really a factor. They slowed even below the non-icing stall speed (even slower than the icing stall speed), with the engines at idle, and the props at high RPM/high drag.

Because they forgot that a level off ALWAYS needs additional power to sustain flight.

Then they forgot the training. Even the most basic training. The shaker went off. Then the pusher. They overrode the pusher. Never restored the power.

Then they panicked. Flaps were retracted (exactly wrong, in fact, could not have been more wrong).

Then they screamed.

Then they died.

Oh yeah, 48 other trusting souls died with them.



There are lots of theories about how the SIC was actually running the wind-shear recovery memory items. She ASSumed the pilot was on the same plane. He wasn't. There has been some discussion about the role of icing. If the worst case scenario icing was present, it would not have made the difference here. These pilots died when they levelled off, and got slow, icing or not. Basic airmanship. Autopilots...use em if ya have em. The autopilot didn't kill these guys. I suspect if he had been hand-flying that night, it would have been even worse. The stick-pusher disconnected the autopilot anyway.

The kind of airmanship that was needed that night occurrs with BTDT, or around a thousand hours. Seems neither or them had it.

Swissair had all kinds of problems—but I don't think crew compensation was a big factor.

Their big problem was far their far-flung routes and networks and a small domestic market.

I know what it is, but it's still stupid.

Would the autopilot be controlling the throttle?

Some airplanes are equipped with autothrottles (autopilot for the throttles). This one was not. Usually not seen on turboprops because the power is controlled with a combination of 'throttle' and prop speed controls (referred to earlier as 'condition levers'). Think of the prop speed as a 'transmission' of sorts, it controls how the power developed by the engine is transmittted as thrust. As prop speed increases, is like lower gear in a transmission.

Not in that aircraft, no auto throttles. It's been a long time since I've flown anything with auto throttles but I don't remember the computer having a function to add thrust in a stall situation. Maybe the newer Airbus designs have something along those lines but I don't think so.

Anyone who thinks compensation has nothing to do with the quality of the pilots is suffering from rectal cranial inversion. Not to say that it is a direct correlation because pay does not automatically equal competence. The pilots I know who have been "the best", ie instructors, interviewers, or just great pilots, have all gone to FedEx, UPS, or Southwest. A few have also gone to Alaska or Delta but the best pay and work rules attract the best pilots. Thanks to the realities of proper management your boxes and your cheap seats will have the best up front.