Air Asia flight climbed too quickly

Air Asia flight QZ8501 went missing over 3 weeks ago, having found both black boxes from the aircraft the data has been analysed. Reports from just a few hours ago say that Air Asia flight climbed too quickly, so as a result stalled the aircraft.

But going off this, wouldn't a plane be able to recover from a stall from 32,000 feet? The weather was awful at the time, but I think there might be more to the story. Do you think this was down to pilot error?

Here's what people have been talking about before!

Share your thoughts here..

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 1

InnerTemple

20

Original post by Jeanlucpicard

Air Asia flight QZ8501 went missing over 3 weeks ago, having found both black boxes from the aircraft the data has been analysed. Reports from just a few hours ago say that Air Asia flight climbed too quickly, so as a result stalled the aircraft.

But going off this, wouldn't a plane be able to recover from a stall from 32,000 feet? The weather was awful at the time, but I think there might be more to the story. Do you think this was down to pilot error?

Here's what people have been talking about before!

Share your thoughts here..

I think the Air France plane stalled. In that case, the pilots fought to regain control when all they had to do was let the plane take care of itself

Maybe something similar happened here?

Who knows? Not me that's for sure.

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Reply 2

Pickles

OP

20

Original post by InnerTemple

I think the Air France plane stalled. In that case, the pilots fought to regain control when all they had to do was let the plane take care of itself

Maybe something similar happened here?

Who knows? Not me that's for sure.

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In the case of Air France, they didn't realise until it really was too late - maybe you're right, maybe they should have let the aircraft take care of itself.

Reply 3

Joinedup

20

well on the face of it they should have been able to drop the nose and recover.

air france 447 stalled at high altitude and didn't recover - also an airbus design with sidestick.

with the airbus sidestick, if one of the pilots is calling for nose up it's not fed back to the other pilot through the position of the other stick so it can result in the pilots getting confused.

Reply 4

Jammy Duel

21

Shortly after the incident there was a senior FAA investigator writing in the Telegraph (and I think a few other papers too) saying it was most probably bad weather followed by pilot error because the compulsory training is about 15 years out of date and too few airlines do the recommended training because, obviously, it's expensive (thankfully the likes of Virgin and BA do do the training). Consequently, what you get is weather causing a problem with the plane and then the pilots mess around trying to sort out the flight computer rather than actually flying the plane. Same with the flight that crashed in the Sahara last year, and of course AF447.

The question "was pilot error involved?" can almost certainly be answered with "yes".

Reply 5

ConcordeBA

12

Original post by InnerTemple

I think the Air France plane stalled. In that case, the pilots fought to regain control when all they had to do was let the plane take care of itself

Maybe something similar happened here?

Who knows? Not me that's for sure.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Let me explain.

AFR447 - Computer data was erroneous due to pitot tubes freezing over. Aircraft went into a mode that hasn't been experienced before. Pilots got confused with all the warnings, and whilst they should have pushed the nose hard down to get speed instead the kept on climbing a buffeting aircraft into the stall. This was a recoverable incident. Always was, but with someone pushing the sidestick up (having had priority over the LHS pilot who was indeed pushing down), the RHS pilot continued to put the aircraft into a stall.

With

QZ8501 - You often get temp changes in CBs, however it could also be sensor icing and autopilot pitchup or pilot error. There's not enough data yet to factor out all the possibilities. Enter an updraft which by definition has higher temperature than the surroundings and is already carrying you up fast and then the aircraft does an 'assist' by climbing at 6000fpm inside the updraft. All IMC (Instrument flying)

I've also just read that the radome (Aircraft radar) was found some distance away from the aircraft. More on that hopefully soon..

It's all in the open. Not one thing causes and aircraft incident/accident.

Reply 6

Good bloke

19

For an airliner to rise at 6,000 feet per minute something odd has to happen and it is probably unable to achieve that rate of climb in normal flight. I do not think it was pilot error; I think the storm forced the plane suddenly upwards so fast that it suffered catastrophic damage. The pilot is innocent.

Reply 7

nulli tertius

21

Original post by Good bloke

For an airliner to rise at 6,000 feet per minute something odd has to happen and it is probably unable to achieve that rate of climb in normal flight. I do not think it was pilot error; I think the storm forced the plane suddenly upwards so fast that it suffered catastrophic damage. The pilot is innocent.

Possibly, but more likely something odd happened and the pilots lost situational awareness and rather than recovering from the problem, they added to it.

Since the 1980s, when the last generation of planes that fell apart ceased service and it became almost impossible for pilots to get lost, an awful lot of non-take off, non-landing crashes have been due to pilots failing accurately to diagnose a mechanical or other problem.

Reply 8

Jammy Duel

21

Original post by Good bloke

For an airliner to rise at 6,000 feet per minute something odd has to happen and it is probably unable to achieve that rate of climb in normal flight. I do not think it was pilot error; I think the storm forced the plane suddenly upwards so fast that it suffered catastrophic damage. The pilot is innocent.

If the air around it also rose several thousand feet per minute (and it basically had to) it wouldn't necessarily be too bad for the plane, it would have been some pretty nasty turbulence for those on board but the plane should have been able to hold up to it easily, structurally at least.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 9

ConcordeBA

12

Original post by Jammy Duel

If the air around it also rose several thousand feet per minute (and it basically had to) it wouldn't necessarily be too bad for the plane, it would have been some pretty nasty turbulence for those on board but the plane should have been able to hold up to it easily, structurally at least.

I'm not sure of the rate of updrafts but at low levels we get a climb rate of 1500fpm from small Cb's. This was a tropical thunderstorm presumably in it's mature stage or strengthening stage.

Question is why did this rate of climb lead to a complete loss of control.

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Reply 10

Good bloke

19

Original post by ConcordeBA

Question is why did this rate of climb lead to a complete loss of control.

My hypothesis is that the over-fast climb broke something vital - like the tail or a wing falling off - or maybe turned the plane over (few pilots could cope with either in an airliner).

Reply 11

InnerTemple

20

Original post by Good bloke

For an airliner to rise at 6,000 feet per minute something odd has to happen and it is probably unable to achieve that rate of climb in normal flight. I do not think it was pilot error; I think the storm forced the plane suddenly upwards so fast that it suffered catastrophic damage. The pilot is innocent.

The Air France A330 climbed at around 7,000ft/pm before it crashed. One of the odd things there was that the climb was so steep the aircraft kind of gave up warning the pilots.

The stall warning only reactivated when back pressure on the side stick was released thus returning the aircraft to a 'normal' stall angle. This confused the pilots a great deal as doing the right thing (lowering the nose) seemed to activate warnings whilst doing the wrong thing (trying to climb) canceled them and "fixed" the problem.

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Air Asia flight climbed too quickly

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