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Safety Team Eyes Additional AF447 Recommendations
AF447 final report to address human factors, data transmission The relatively low rate of commercial aircraft accidents in recent years has meant that crashes may trigger individual safety recommendations but not shake up the entire aviation system. However, the ripple effects from Air France Flight 447 may defy that axiom.
As investigators drill down into the sequence of events that led to the crash of the Airbus A330-200 on June 1, 2009, during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, they are putting the spotlight on a range of concerns that had not yet received close scrutiny.
The preliminary report has already highlighted the susceptibility of airliners to pitot tube icing, which results in inaccurate airspeed information. Icing of the speed probes is considered the triggering event that set into motion the sequence that led pilots to enter a stall from which the aircraft did not recover.
But with the French air-accident investigation office (BEA) now working on its final report, other issues are under the microscope, including why the pilots failed to properly respond to the stall condition while the aircraft plunged from 38,000 ft. at a high rate of descent.
Particularly puzzling is why the proper control inputs were not made to recover the aircraft, especially since there was ample warning of an impending stall and enough time for corrective action. By year-end, the BEA expects a newly convened human-factors expert group to scrutinize these issues, in the hope of providing relevant safety recommendations in the final report, due next year.
The focus will be on issues such as cockpit ergonomics, human-machine interface and the actions of the crew. Effectively, the panel is supposed to determine what the pilots thought was happening, versus what was actually happening.
The BEA says the seven-member panel comprises three of its own human-factors specialists, a psychiatrist, an outside aviation human-factors expert, a test pilot and an airline A330 pilot. Airbus and Air France specialists also may be consulted during the review.
The investigation has been particularly contentious in France, where pilot representatives claim that the flightcrew is being blamed for the accident when technical issues were key factors. The deliberations also are important for Airbus, whose officials-in an effort to deflect any questions about potential equipment shortcomings-have been quick to point out that the crew failed to make proper nose-down inputs to regain control of the aircraft
The BEA also has been sponsoring work to explore how accident data can be recovered more easily. The AF447 probe was hobbled because it took almost two years to recover the cockpit voice and flight data recorders.
As part of the final report, French investigators plan to propose that aircraft be able to broadcast key position and flight information in case of emergencies to help in accident inquiries. The recommendation builds on a BEA-sponsored study that assessed the benefits of such a system. The working group, while looking at the feasibility of using automatic triggers, determined that a system can be set up so information is broadcast in all cases when something goes wrong without a large number of false alarms.
In most cases, or 80% of accidents, at least 15 sec. pass between when a fault occurs and an accident ensues; more than 30 sec. transpire for 57% of cases, the BEA says. For the rare accidents occurring during cruise, all have more than 10-sec. warning time.
Furthermore, a review found that for 85% of the cases globally, data transmission is possible via Inmarsat satellites and that this information could limit the search area for wreckage to a radius of 4 nm in 82% of the events. Iridium satellites also could be employed in most cases, although in extreme conditions data could be lost.
Moreover, the BEA says that by transmitting only position data every minute, a crash location could be pinpointed to within 4 nm in 85% of the cases; this would greatly ease recovery operations. The search team for AF447 had to scour a huge area because the precise impact point was unknown.
Also potentially factoring into the final report are data to emerge from other Airbus widebody events. Air France confirms that one of its A340s recently experienced an incident when it hit turbulence, with the aircraft rapidly climbing and the autopilot disengaging. The sequence of events appears to be similar to what initially transpired on AF447.
http://www.aviationweek.com |
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