Hardware can't guarantee that one knows what the other is doing.

Post #400,417 by Another Scott 3/26/15 8:15:46 AM Reply	Hardware can't guarantee that one knows what the other is doing. As long as there is a pilot and a co-pilot and each are tasked with being able to fly the plane, the controls must permit it. The side stick vs yoke issue is red herring, IMO. What matters is conversation in the cockpit and the training (and mental stability) of the people. Remember what Scully said in his Airbus over the Hudson? "My airplane." That's all it takes. The Space Shuttles had sticks: FWIW. Cheers, Scott. (Who hopes the initial story about what happened doesn't end up being incorrect - we don't need wild speculation in cases like this.)
Post #400,419 by boxley 3/26/15 9:26:40 AM Reply	especially when one pilot is locked out the cockpit and the other has no response Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
Post #400,425 by mmoffitt 3/26/15 11:21:06 AM Reply	Coupled controls do help, though. Tragically not in this case, but in general.
Post #400,426 by pwhysall 3/26/15 11:50:15 AM Reply	[citation needed] When have coupled controls actually averted an actual disaster that was actually happening? Or is this a tiger-repelling rock? Genuine question.
Post #400,430 by mmoffitt 3/26/15 12:59:51 PM 3/26/15 1:01:47 PM Reply	Read with comprehension much? Read the Subject Line of the post to which I was responding and then try to tell me that I need a citation. Er, okay, maybe I do for people on your side of the Atlantic. I keep forgetting that English is a foreign language to you. Edit: In case you still don't get it. Having coupled controls does let each pilot know what the other is doing with the control stick. How can you not see that? Edited by mmoffitt March 26, 2015, 01:01:14 PM EDT Edited by mmoffitt March 26, 2015, 01:01:47 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #400,432 by pwhysall 3/26/15 1:21:03 PM Reply	Just answer the question. I'm not disputing that coupled yokes are coupled. Clue: snark is best delivered without a massive helping of comprehension fail.
Post #400,434 by mmoffitt 3/26/15 2:59:27 PM Reply	Okay. I'll play. Have coupled controls ever saved lives? You bet your ass they have. There is no question they have saved lives, hundreds if not thousands of them. Ask any primary flight instructor.
Post #400,445 by pwhysall 3/26/15 3:47:09 PM Reply	Assertion. Dude. Facts. Please. This is just you saying words. I notice you've broadened the scope to training, which is of course a speciality area and one unrelated to what we were talking about, which is regular commercial flights.
Post #400,453 by mmoffitt 3/26/15 4:50:23 PM Reply	You brought up a question I did NOT make a comment about.
Post #400,439 by Ashton 3/26/15 3:34:05 PM Reply	'The side stick vs yoke issue is red herring, IMO.' [Fail] Are you (too..) actually not grasping the necessity that BOTH 'operators' need the clearest/quickest INPUT-info of what each is 'doing' ??? ..that any 'speaking' ... is slow, imprecise and useful only when you--in FACT--have the time for filling-in other details (like switch flipping elsewhere, and such as have no tactile input.) Q. for you, too: Ever fly a light plane, however briefly? How did that compare with what (any old eidetic memory had amassed from) n-second-hand descriptions? Boggled at your two opening didactic sentences: as. if. you. really Knew :-/ This ain't bloody physics/all by-itself.
Post #400,447 by Another Scott 3/26/15 4:12:07 PM 3/26/15 4:15:31 PM Reply	Flying - no. As a kid I knew a scout leader who was a pilot. He took me up in his Pipe[r] Cub (or similar) for a brief jaunt around the airport, but I don't recall handling the controls (if that were even possible). It was a weird sensation, being so close to being exposed (just a thin skin of aluminum...). If you have two people operating the same controls, there's a problem. That's why "my airplane" is vital. The only example that MM can point to where the non-coupled sticks in an Airbus was an issue (AFAIK) was the Air France 447: In a July 2012 CBS report, Sullenberger suggested that the design of the Airbus cockpit might have been a factor in the accident. The flight controls are not linked between the two pilot seats, and Robert, the left seat pilot who believed he had taken over control of the plane, was not aware that Bonin had continued to hold the stick back, which overrode Robert's own control.[237][238] Reference 238 says: "CBS News aviation and safety expert Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger explained that he believes that the disappearance would have been less likely to have happened if the plane had been a Boeing instead of an Airbus. This is because the control wheels [in the Boeing] are larger and more obvious. Sullenberger showed CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann the difference with an Airbus simulator. There's a small movement on the Airbus flight controls called a sidestick, which raises the nose of the plane and instructs it to climb. Pilots rarely perform the maneuver at high altitudes because it can be very dangerous, but that is exactly what the pilot of Flight 447 did." (Emphasis added.) If you have two pilots manipulating the stick/yoke, you're doing it wrong. No matter how the two yokes are designed. Robert should have said, and meant, "my airplane". And a pilot who pulls back on the stick/yoke at high altitude is doing it wrong. Having coupled controls wouldn't have prevented him from doing so. IOW, the problem isn't the design of the plane, it's the training and communications of the pilots. Yes, of course, one can try to design around mistakes and miscommunications like these, but it's not going to fix the underlying problem. The money spent on hardware would be better spent on training and evaluation and implementing best-practices. IMHO. Cheers, Scott. Edited by Another Scott March 26, 2015, 04:15:31 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #400,451 by drook 3/26/15 4:39:05 PM Reply	And doing that makes all the planes safer -- Drew
Post #400,454 by mmoffitt 3/26/15 5:02:01 PM Reply	Nobody's ever claimed that! And a pilot who pulls back on the stick/yoke at high altitude is doing it wrong. Having coupled controls wouldn't have prevented him from doing so. No, it wouldn't have. BUT if the control sticks were coupled, there would have been a tactile indication to the pilot in the left seat that the pilot in the right seat had yanked the control stick back. That would have led to the left seat pilot taking corrective action. Because there was no indication coming from the decoupled control sticks, the left seat pilot wasn't clued into the primary problem. You do understand that, right? You further understand that it is right and proper to call an engineering decision that reduces safety "a design flaw", yes? It's not the only design flaw with an Airbus, but it is a spectacularly stupid one.
Post #400,456 by Another Scott 3/26/15 6:20:21 PM Reply	You did read the rest of my post, right? :-) Wikipedia on the A320 Family: From 1959 through 2013, the Airbus A320 family of jets experienced 14 fatal hull-loss accidents for every million takeoffs, one of the smallest fatality rates of any family of jets included in the study. These incidents are very, very rare. They are tragic, but it's not a dangerous airplane so it can't be a dangerous design. Every airliner has engineering compromises. Money spent linking the sticks and providing feedback, and so forth, is money that can't be spent on other things - like more rigorous training about cockpit communications - that may cover many more types of pathologies that can lead to accidents. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #400,473 by mmoffitt 3/27/15 8:50:39 AM Reply	So coupling the controls was too expensive? You are really reaching on this one, Scott. ;0) I'd be willing to bet there are a couple of hundred families that might disagree with you.

Welcome to IWETHEY!