Graduation Speakers

[Asher]

In another solid piece of journalism, CNN stands tall.

Since when was the Buffalo plane on an ILS approach?

[Wiglaf]

Obviously it was. It was on autopilot you patsy

[Asher]

Autopilot is not necessarily the same as ILS.

[Wiglaf]

They lowered the gear and flaps. They were on final approach descending to the runway at 1600 feet. The only way that works with autopilot on is if the autopilot is configured to ILS approach. Not a pilot, No holiday Inn express last night, I'm just smarter than you

[Asher]

They lowered the gear and flaps. They were on final approach descending to the runway at 1600 feet. The only way that works with autopilot on is if the autopilot is configured to ILS approach. Not a pilot, No holiday Inn express last night, I'm just smarter than you

I haven't seen anything from the NTSB indicating they were on an ILS approach. 1600 feet 3 miles from the airport could very well indicate the autopilot was on for level flight until they got a bit closer.

The actual facts we know of illustrate that the pilot PULLED UP when he got the stall warning, which is a clear error -- ILS or not. Further, ILS approaches typically do not alter airspeed and the indications (see my quoted article from yesterday) are that the plane itself reached a slow speed to reach stall, indicating also pilot error. Further still, there's no indication the nose went up on its own -- the article seems to state that the pilot pulled up which causes the nose-up, not the ILS system.

Your article is based on a statement by a PILOTS UNION who are understandably trying to protect their own. It doesn't necessarily (or even probably) apply to the crash based on the public data.

[Wiglaf]

It's based on an alert issued by an airline regarding the specific runway in the crash, warning about ILS approaches resulting in stalls due to signal malfunction. It takes the work of a very bitter man to try to taint that. Keep your taint off my legitimate sources.

ILS approaches can alter airspeed if the glideslope is wrong due to the signal malfunction. If it tells the plane it needs to climb to remain lined up with the runway, it will climb -- and lose airspeed, and stall. The point is that maybe the pilot didn't pull up. Maybe the autopilot was the one doing that for him. Regardless, pulling up in a stall condition isn't necessarily stupid if you're too low to go into a dive. Diving at 1600 feet to recover from a stall is almost a guaranteed crash. Thats what she said lol

[Asher]

It's based on an alert issued by an airline regarding the specific runway in the crash, warning about ILS approaches resulting in stalls due to signal malfunction.

But the alert was not valid for the direction the crashed plane was coming in from.

Let's face facts, here, Wiggy. I was right again.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/19/buffalo.crash.ils/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Just weeks before a Continental Connections commuter plane crashed near Buffalo, another airline had reminded its pilots about safety issues with so-called instrument approaches at the airport.

However, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday said it was extremely unlikely the February 12 crash and the warning were related.

She also pointed out, though landing on the same runway, Southwest Airlines flights approach runway 23 from the north, turning right, while the Colgan Air flight that crashed was approaching from the south turning left. Rutherford called that distinction important.

The issue is caused by a geographic feature at the airport, a valley, "something we can't do anything about," said FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown. She said the "altitude reading makes it look like you're a lot higher than you are, because there is a valley there."

The feature has been noted on FAA charts for years, she said.

"As far as we can tell, there is no way this had any role in the accident," Brown told CNN. "It's not a navigation aid that would have applied to the approach."

Damn it feels good to be a gangster.

[Traianvs]

No idea, never bothered to attend the ceremony of my degrees because I was backpacking in Spain at the time. Was a lot more fun.

[Alinestra Covelia]

I went to my brother's graduation, and the student who gave the graduation speech was so bad I was sorely tempted to get up and leave. He left no cliché unturned.

At one point my brother's then-girlfriend* wanted to get up and leave too. She and I spent a fair amount of time whispering snarky comments to each other about the badditude of the speaker. A bit like passing notes in class, I guess.


* Now-wife.

[Asher]

Back on the real subject!

The Wiglaf is wrong still.

Buffalo crash probe tilts toward crew error

Re-creation of flight's final seconds shows startled crew likely overcorrected problem

Matthew L. Wald
New York Times

A re-creation of the last moments of a flight that crashed near Buffalo last Thursday night shows that the crew might have overreacted to an automatic system that was trying to protect the aircraft from flying too slowly, going into a stall and crashing, a person familiar with the re-creation said.

By using information from the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, the so-called black boxes, to create a computer animation of the final seconds of Continental Connection Flight 3407, investigators are theorizing that after the automatic system lowered the nose of the plane to generate speed, the cockpit crew may have overcorrected, yanking back on the yoke to raise the nose and pointing it too high, the source, who was not authorized to speak for publication, said Wednesday.

The nose then plunged, and the airplane rolled and crashed into a house in Clarence Center, N.Y., killing all 49 people on board, including one Canadian, and one man in the house.

The Wall Street Journal reported on its website Tuesday that the investigators were looking at crew action as a possible cause of the crash.

The plane, a Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 turboprop, en route from Newark, N.J., to Buffalo, was flying on autopilot until just before the crash. In that aircraft, the autopilot can control altitude and course, but not the throttle, according to aviation experts.

The plane has an emergency system called a stick pusher that activates when it anticipates the plane is going to stall, or move too slowly to generate enough lift to keep flying. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, when the system took control of the plane and pointed the nose down, the autopilot deactivated itself. The crew then pointed the nose up and tried to increase power.

At about 500 metres above the ground and expecting to land at Buffalo Niagara International Airport in about one minute, a startled crew may have overreacted, investigators said, and pulled the nose up to 31 degrees. Evidence seems to indicate, though, that the plane had not stalled when the pilot or co-pilot first pitched the nose up.

Steven Chealander, the member of the safety board assigned to the crash scene, said the plane had experienced a downward force twice the normal strength of gravity, something that experts said would happen only if the wings were generating lift at the time.

It has not been established whether the plane was dangerously slow and dangerously close to stalling speed, according to people involved in the investigation. The minimum safe flying speed might have been somewhat higher that night, because the aircraft was accumulating ice as it flew.

But with the nose that high, the wings would have stopped generating lift, and stalled the plane. The nose fell to a steep angle and the plane rolled over.

Meanwhile, Colgan Air, the Pinnacle Airlines subsidiary that operated the Continental flight, defended its training programs and the pilot of the doomed plane. Colgan Air said its "crew training programs meet or exceed the regulatory requirements for all major airlines."

While the new analysis of information from the flight data recorder raised questions about crew performance, investigators said they were still not ready to cite human error for the crash.

Among the issues they are exploring is whether the stick pusher activated appropriately. Intended for use at relatively low speeds, it would have come on at a somewhat higher speed in this circumstance, because when the automatic system knows that ice protection systems are in use, as they were on the Dash 8, it tries to provide an extra margin of safety by activating at a higher speed. Investigators are still trying to figure out how fast the plane was moving at the moment the stick pusher activated.

Investigators said they believed the pilot at the controls was the captain, Marvin Renslow, who had begun flying the Dash 8 in December. He had previously flown a smaller turboprop, the Saab 340. That plane is subject to a problem in bad weather called tailplane icing, in which the tail, which applies downward pressure at the back of the plane and holds the nose up, suddenly ceases to function. Renslow may have been alert to the possibility of the nose dropping in icing for that reason, one investigator said. But safety board personnel at the crash scene have said the Dash 8 is not susceptible to tailplane icing.

If the theory of pilot overreaction to the activation of a safety system survives the weeks of analysis ahead, it will raise questions about training and airplane design, but relegate ice to a minor role.

The crash last week could renew a debate about how much authority the crew should have over an airplane.

In fly-by-wire aircraft – in which the crew's control is through a computer rather than a direct mechanical link to flight control surfaces – one manufacturer, Airbus, interposes computer logic between the human and the machine.

If the pilot's manipulation of the controls is too severe, the computer will specify a more moderate path.

"If you want to roll a Boeing 777 upside down, you can do it, but you can't roll an A320 if it's functioning properly," said one safety expert formerly with the National Transportation Safety Board whose employer would not let him speak for attribution.

But a nose-up angle of 31 degrees, which the Dash 8 reached, might be needed to avoid a mid-air collision, he said.

"I can only imagine wanting to do that if you had the performance to do that, and you needed to get over a mountain or around another airplane," he said.

[Wiglaf]

Yes, let the computers rule everything. The author of that article somehow forgot no machine would have successfully ditched in the Hudson

Your cpu brain assumes the pilots are just retarded and let the gear and flaps down with too little airspeed because they did not major in computer science NEWSFLASH NOT EVERYONE WHO DOESN'T MAJOR IN COMPUTER SCIENCE IS NOT SMART. These people could probably find their way through a maze with or without cheese at the end, so it's worth assuming that maybe there were EXO-GENOUS FACTORS TO SLOW THE PLANES AIRSPEED. It's people like you who are slowing down research.

[Kuciwalker]

NEWSFLASH NOT EVERYONE WHO DOESN'T MAJOR IN COMPUTER SCIENCE IS NOT SMART

Yeah, hard science majors, math guys, and the engineers are smart too.

[Krill]

So long as you don't class biology as a hard science I'd agree with that...

[Wiglaf]

I find you people's penchants ridiculous. The reality is that I can solve a rubiks cube faster than most computer science majors I know. If they had online rubiks cubes I could prove this - I give you there fact.

[Zkribbler]

The last gradulation of mine I attended was my high school graduation. Superintendant of Schools Mudge spoke. I remember nothing, except we were going to be the next generation of leaders.

I did go to a friend of mine's law school gradulation. Sandra Day O'Conner spoke. I remember she did very well, but I what stuck more with me was a fact from her introduction. After she gradulated at the top of her class from Stanford, the only job she could get was as a legal secretary. WTF?!?