Tuesday, April 1, 2014

PIlot Error?

The San Francisco Crash was also a 777. People want to call this pilot error but the pilots said that the software led them to believe that they were flying fast enough. Now, the 777 is Malaysian Air Lines and before the recent flight there was another that had trouble disengaging their autopilot and almost crashed. Malayasian Air Line still hasn't said whether the software patch for the computer or computers in the autopilot had the new software patch installed. In the 777 in San Francisco 3 people died when the tail was sheared off on landing because the pilots said that the software misled them in regard to altitude on the autopilot.

Though I believe the Air France Crash in the Atlantic ocean was a different sort of problem it still was related to an autopilot with an airspeed pitot outside freezing over and giving the wrong reading to the autopilot. The pilots never understood soon enough that the pitot froze over giving the autopilot incorrect air speed readings. The plane's autopilot computer slowed the plane down until it started dropping from the sky in a storm. If it hadn't been a storm they were in possibly the pilots would have noticed that something was wrong with the autopilot soon enough not to crash into the ocean.

So, we are now talking about 3 different situations with 777s and their autopilots misbehaving and  in one of these situations the  pilots were  barely able to correct the situation without dying along with 
the passengers.

The San Francisco crash killed 3 passengers and injured many more (I believe one of the deaths in the San Francisco Asiana flight was a stewardess that fell out and died when the tail came off during the crash). 

Now we have another flight with a 777 and this time it is another Malaysian air lines flight like the one that almost crashed before. So, we now have at least 3 documented problems with the autopilot. 

When you look at GM and the problems and deaths that occurred since 2001 that are just now being addressed I think we are dealing with the same kind of issues with Boeing that wants to pass all this off on pilot error.

However, as a person who was a computer programmer in the 1960s and early 1970s this sounds a lot more like a programming error or autopilot computer glitch than a pilot error in all 4 these cases.The Air France I believe was built by Air Bus in Europe but I think this problem isn't limited to one builder of passenger planes. What do you think?

My thought is that the problems with the autopilot in air lines that don't get the software patch for the 777 autopilots could cause more problems like this in the future. Also, I think the main problem is them not being able to disengage the autopilot properly. So, not being able to disengage the autopilot in an emergency is one of the things that pilots don't appear to be trained to do in various air lines regarding the 777.

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