Unbelievable story sent around by the local soaring club... Its amazing the pilot continued to pull the nose up on a stall.
"Bonin's behavior is difficult for professional aviators to understand. "If he's going straight and level and he's got no airspeed, I don't know why he'd pull back," says Chris Nutter, an airline pilot and flight instructor. "The logical thing to do would be to cross-check"that is, compare the pilot's airspeed indicator with the co-pilot's and with other instrument readings, such as groundspeed, altitude, engine settings, and rate of climb. In such a situation, "we go through an iterative assessment and evaluation process," Nutter explains, before engaging in any manipulation of the controls. "Apparently that didn't happen."
Almost as soon as Bonin pulls up into a climb, the plane's computer reacts. A warning chime alerts the cockpit to the fact that they are leaving their programmed altitude. Then the stall warning sounds. This is a synthesized human voice that repeatedly calls out, "Stall!" in English, followed by a loud and intentionally annoying sound called a "cricket.""
Read more: Air France 447 Flight-Data Recorder Transcript - What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 - Popular Mechanics
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877
The third interim report stated that some new facts had been established. In particular:
The pilots had not applied the unreliable airspeed procedure.
The pilot-in-control pulled back on the stick, thus increasing the angle of attack and causing the plane to climb rapidly.
The pilots apparently did not notice that the plane had reached its maximum permissible altitude.
The pilots did not read out the available data (vertical velocity, altitude, etc.).
The stall warning sounded continuously for 54 seconds.
The pilots did not comment on the stall warnings and apparently did not realize that the plane was stalled.
There was some buffeting associated with the stall.
The stall warning deactivates by design when the angle of attack measurements are considered invalid and this is the case when the airspeed drops below a certain limit.
In consequence, the stall warning stopped and came back on several times during the stall; in particular, it came on whenever the pilot pushed forward on the stick and then stopped when he pulled back; this may have confused the pilots.
Despite the fact that they were aware that altitude was declining rapidly, the pilots were unable to determine which instruments to trust: it may have appeared to them that all values were incoherent.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
"Bonin's behavior is difficult for professional aviators to understand. "If he's going straight and level and he's got no airspeed, I don't know why he'd pull back," says Chris Nutter, an airline pilot and flight instructor. "The logical thing to do would be to cross-check"that is, compare the pilot's airspeed indicator with the co-pilot's and with other instrument readings, such as groundspeed, altitude, engine settings, and rate of climb. In such a situation, "we go through an iterative assessment and evaluation process," Nutter explains, before engaging in any manipulation of the controls. "Apparently that didn't happen."
Almost as soon as Bonin pulls up into a climb, the plane's computer reacts. A warning chime alerts the cockpit to the fact that they are leaving their programmed altitude. Then the stall warning sounds. This is a synthesized human voice that repeatedly calls out, "Stall!" in English, followed by a loud and intentionally annoying sound called a "cricket.""
Read more: Air France 447 Flight-Data Recorder Transcript - What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 - Popular Mechanics
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877
The third interim report stated that some new facts had been established. In particular:
The pilots had not applied the unreliable airspeed procedure.
The pilot-in-control pulled back on the stick, thus increasing the angle of attack and causing the plane to climb rapidly.
The pilots apparently did not notice that the plane had reached its maximum permissible altitude.
The pilots did not read out the available data (vertical velocity, altitude, etc.).
The stall warning sounded continuously for 54 seconds.
The pilots did not comment on the stall warnings and apparently did not realize that the plane was stalled.
There was some buffeting associated with the stall.
The stall warning deactivates by design when the angle of attack measurements are considered invalid and this is the case when the airspeed drops below a certain limit.
In consequence, the stall warning stopped and came back on several times during the stall; in particular, it came on whenever the pilot pushed forward on the stick and then stopped when he pulled back; this may have confused the pilots.
Despite the fact that they were aware that altitude was declining rapidly, the pilots were unable to determine which instruments to trust: it may have appeared to them that all values were incoherent.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447