Comments on: The story behind the story

By: Random Jottings

Random Jottings — Fri, 30 May 2008 21:46:44 +0000

“News blackout”…

Regular readers will know that it’s not my habit to mock and ridicule the various “oppressed” peoples of the earth. It’s not Political Correctness, which I hate and despise; rather, it’s just not my style. But this is…..unbelievable! Morons!……

By: expat

expat — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:56:13 +0000

I sometimes think German engineers design products for other engineers. I’ve had problems with simple household items that were too complicated for daily use. Just yesterday I saw a report on tests for the newest car feature: computer-guided self-parking. That should be a big seller in France, where the people don’t use parking brakes so that other parkers can bump the car forward or backward to create a new space.

By: Bookworm

Bookworm — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:39:33 +0000

Thank God, jj, that the driver was aerodynamic. That’s an amazing piece of footage.

By: jj

jj — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:28:54 +0000

Oh, by the way, it should be noted the driver was fine. Undoubtedly surprised – but fine.

“By ze vay, Fritz, ve haff ze slight aerodynamical problem, hein?”

By: jj

jj — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:26:14 +0000

Sometimes reading the manual doesn’t help. This is a Mercedes-Benz CLR at LeMans in 1999.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y65oUlBMSUs&feature=related

Now – talk about your brilliant engineering! The German geniuses at Mercedes tested the car at race speeds extensively – on a banked track. Banking produces downforce owing to centrifugal force caused by the banking itself – thereby giving the engineers a set of wholly false assumptions about the car’s aerodynamic performance at speed.

Now – these were GERMAN engineers and designers, often considered to be the best in the world. Wouldn’t you think, in months of testing, it might have occurred to one of them to say: “wait a minute, don’t you think we should do at least one run on a normal road?”

Nope…

By: Oldflyer

Oldflyer — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:41:16 +0000

Well, here is one. Not as expensive or ridiculous, but bizarre.

In 1991 I was in Brazil demonstrating a British Aerospace Airliner to a Brazilian company. Prince Charles and “the Princess” came to Brazil on a tour, and BAE and the Embassy worked out a deal to use our airplane to haul the press which would follow her around the country. (They didn’t give a damn about him and ignored him when he traveled alone, but that is another story)

We were about to depart from Brasilia to Sao Paulo when we were delayed by a message that an airplane had gone down the hill adjacent to the VIP terminal at Sao Paulo and there was concern about a fuel spill near where the Royals would deplane. Well, we were finally cleard to go, and were delighted when we arrived to see that the plane was one of our competitor’s (Fokker 100) and it was sitting on the side of the hill for the large press contigent to view.

We later learned that the plane was under tow; but the fellow who was supposed to be in the cockpit to use the aircraft brakes in event of an irregularity, was actually in the aircraft lavatory when it broke loose from the tractor.

This was at the Congenehas airport in downtown Sao Paulo. The same one where the bad crash occurred last year when an airplane ran off of the runway and hit a building. The airport sits on top of a hill and has some fairly steep taxi ways, and sheer drops at the ends.

I don’t doubt the story of the AirBus. France has over engineered their airplanes to protect against pilot mistakes–and it obviously can backfire. Nearly all companies require that their mechanics have some training, often in a simulator, before they can do engine starts or taxi. But the world is full of fools.

By: Danny Lemieux

Danny Lemieux — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:56:31 +0000

I guess you would have to understand the French.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:13:50 +0000

If it’s true this story has been suppressed by the French media, that of course is suspicious. But I can’t believe we have the all the facts here: the sequence of events, as reported, are just too ridiculous to be credible.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:49:08 +0000

These days, pilots usually practice on a simulator prior to actually flying an airliner or other large/sophisticated aircraft. It would be interesting to know if that was done in this case…if not, why not, and if so, why did the simulator training not give them a better sense for the aircraft systems.

Independent of the performance of this particular crew, it would also be interesting to know if the scenario:

1)high-power run-up
2)desire to suppress irritating beep caused by flight control system’s belief that the airplane is in takeoff mode
3)automatic brake release triggered by FCS’s opinion that airplane is in the air, as a result of pilot’s action to suppress the irritating beep

…is discussed in the Pilot’s Operating Handbook or the training courses, or indeed if it was ever envisaged by the human factors people at the manufacturer.

By: socratease

socratease — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:42:27 +0000

I’m having a hard time verifying some of the critical aspects of the story. It’s clear from reports of the injured that there were Airbus personnel on-board during the test, they certainly should have known the run-up procedure, and not to disable the ground proximity system. Other reports claim there was a failure of the brake system. I wonder if we will ever learn the truth, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the ruling Abu Dhabi family paying Airbus a boatload of money to ‘admit’ it was due to a fault in their airplane.