New England Cable News wants to interview me regarding AirAsia 8501, which motivated me to search Google News to find out what is known about this missing Airbus A320. So far the most significant piece of information is that the pilots were seeking a deviation from their planned route to avoid clouds at 32,000′. In latitudes closer to the Equator there is more energy pumped into the atmosphere by the sun and therefore thunderstorms are more intense and cumulonimbus clouds that generate thunderstorms extend higher in the atmosphere, e.g., to as high as 60,000′. Airliners typically fly no higher than 40,000′ and therefore must divert around, rather than fly over, the most severe thunderstorms. By far the best Web page on this incident that I could find was the Wikipedia page, showing thunderstorms and the flight path on the same map. Also see the video at CNN, which says that the T-storms during that particular flight were forecast to extend up to 52,000′.
What’s bad about flying into a thunderstorm? Turbulence can be severe, exceeding the 2.5G load factor for which airliners are designed (light planes must tolerate up to 3.8Gs by regulation, but heavier airplanes have more inertia and are therefore less likely to experience heavy G loads in turbulence). Lightning can damage the electrical system, without which a modern airplane simply cannot be controlled (you need the electrics to run the hydraulic pumps that actually move the ailerons, elevators, and rudder against the heavy airloads; the Airbus A320 is also a fly-by-wire system that gets rid of the traditional mechanical connections from pilot yoke out to the hydraulic controls near the flight controls (truly light airplanes don’t have hydraulics; there are simply cables or pushrods out to the flight controls and pilot muscle power is used to move them, though sometimes with the help of trim tabs that are powered by air rushing over the flying plane)). Hail can slam into the airplane and damage windshields, wing leading edges, etc. (most hail-damaged airplanes remain flyable, however) Thunderstorms can also generate airframe icing, which, if severe, may exceed an airplane’s anti-ice/de-ice capabilities. An airplane covered in ice cannot climb and cannot fly at slower airspeeds without entering an aerodynamic stall. (De-icing on a heavy turbojet-powered airplane such as the Airbus A320 is generally accomplished with compressed (“bleed”) air from the engines fed into metal tubes on the leading edges of the wings, tail, and engine cowlings.)
How does a pilot avoid dangerous weather like this? It is relatively easy flying over heavily settled regions such as North America and Europe where ground-based RADAR can see the rain and that turns into a map (example). If the airplane has a datalink of some sort, a slightly delayed version of the map can appear on a multi-function display along with the airplane’s planned course. There are some limitations of such maps, starting with the fact that the map is two-dimensional and there is no fine-grained information on cloud or thunderstorm tops. I have been at 20,000′ in clear New York air flying over a line of solid red and yellow (heavy rain) but the same flight in Texas over the same map image might have resulted in being in clouds/turbulence/rain/ice/etc. Airliners also have on-board weather RADAR that can look ahead and see if there is rain in a cloud, but these images require a lot of experience to interpret. Someone who flies at low altitudes around the Caribbean and Florida would be great at this. A modern jet pilot usually isn’t because, most of the time, jets climb out of the bad stuff so quickly. If you’re out in the middle of the ocean and can’t get an accurate map from ground-based stations, you might have to rely on the on-board RADAR (not sure if that was a factor here; the plane was never all that far from land, though I am not sure if Indonesia has invested in as many RADAR stations as we have (air traffic control RADAR is not set up to paint an accurate weather picture)).
So the specifics of the incident remain a mystery but even a modern airliner is no match for a real thunderstorm and there is some evidence that this flight encountered one.
Related:
- my June 2009 posting on Air France 447 (post-crash speculation including “The autopilot tripped off in response to a failure or disagreement. This is normal behavior, though much more common in light airplanes than in jets. A couple of pilots who were tired and deprived of a natural horizon by the darkness, open ocean, and clouds, turned out not to be heroes, at least not this time. There is probably more to it, but this is my best guess.”
- a May 2011 follow-up after the flight recorders had been recovered
- thoughtful article by a retired 747 captain
I enjoyed the highly detailed book about AirFrance 447. It looks like this is likely to be the same accident again. Stick and rudder skills and a better understanding of large weather systems (and their effects on large aircraft) would have made a difference.
One of the pilots is *extremely* high time, but so was one of the AF447 pilots (he’s in the recording saying, “What’s happening?”).
Sad thing about this incident is that even though it happened almost 22 hrs earlier, the search teams arrival at the exact spot happened almost 8-10 hrs later. Given the spot isn’t too far away from land, and how close it is from the national capital, very hard to fathom. Also, the whole area is a fairly busy shipping lane.
My 2¢ — Asian culture played a significant role in these events:
1) Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (off-course, Russian shootdown)
2) Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (lost?)
3) AirAsia Flight 8501 (lost, weather?)
Asian Culture (This applies to any leadership position.): Unhealthy deference to authority. Captain is god. Copilot not dare question the captain. Captain’s ego does not permit asking for help (sign of weakness). Best guess, each captain stonewalled confidence right up to the crash.
moi: age 66; retired engineer, nuclear operations; worked in S. Korea as part of technology transfer and nuclear plant startup
Barkhamsted, Connecticut
Paul: It does seem to make Americans feel better about themselves to posit the inferiority of Asian culture (see http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety , for example). Having just watched a group of trained American electricians put light switches on the wrong sides of doors, walls, etc. (because they couldn’t be bothered to look at the architect’s drawings) makes me question the idea that Americans and American culture are inherently superior.
Anyway, if we blame every mishap in Asia on their culture and every mishap in the U.S. on bad luck or an unusual individual we can feel better about ourselves with every passing year. Example: The Korean crew of the Asiana 777 that crashed in San Francisco were afflicted by a defective culture; the American crew of the airport vehicle that ran over and killed a passenger following the plane crash were simply unlucky.
I’m not sure what it can be attributed to but you couldn’t pay me to fly
in those skys until somebody can figure out what the heck is going on!!
Philg, sounds like your electricians are incompetent and lack competent supervision. Both an increasing performance problem in the American economy and government. Trust me, I am no fan of the “American culture.” If there ever was such a thing. It’s quite fragmented now. I interview my contractors. Explain my expectations in plain English, including my personal “I want you to do it this way” quirks or off-normal procedures. And I try to leave them with the notion that I know the difference between a conscientious good job and simply going through the motions.
“…Americans and American culture are inherently superior.” that’s quite a leap from my comment. All cultures have character traits, some of which tend to improve performance, while others get in the way of performance. Asian work ethic is tops in the world. But Asian willingness to go with the flow and comply (don’t rock the boat) can get in the way of innovation and need for corrective action. Of course I can only speak in generalities here. And I’m well aware that things (cultures) are changing all over the world. India is slowly coming out of its cast system and stultifying bureaucracy.
1980s I spent 10 years training nuclear control room crews on a full scope simulator. Crews came from all over the USA and S. Korea. At the time my company had 1 of only 2 or 3 simulators in the country qualified for the task. Now each plant has their own simulator. Anyway, I had chance to observe communication up and down the chain of command in the control room during high workload, high stress situations. The idea that Asian crews tend to adhere to a strict hierarchy *more than* American crews is not an open question. This was also quite evident at Fukushima.
Paul: The electricians are not “incompetent” by American standards. They represent the American standard, as far as I can tell, or maybe slightly above. They are being supervised by a general contractor and an architect, neither of whom seems surprised that they don’t bother to read the drawings or exercise common sense (e.g., they put recessed outlets behind one wall-mounted TV and flush-mounted outlets behind another one (thus preventing it from actually being wall-mounted); when it was pointed out that very likely the difference indicated an error they defended themselves with “nobody told us to put recessed outlets behind the second TV”). These guys just accept that with the American workers that are in fact available a substantial amount of stuff will have to be torn out and redone.
Back to AirAsia… The copilot of this particular airplane wasn’t Asian (he was French). Could he have acquired the “Copilot not dare question the captain” culture you posit above by eating too much ayam goreng kalasan?
And Fukushima is relevant because Japanese and Indonesian/French cultures are supposedly similar? I am not sure that Fukushima shows that Asians have a defective culture. Their nuclear power plant got hit by a tsunami. With our superior culture we managed to cause a nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island after a single valve got stuck.
Incompetence seems to exist in every culture but different cultures are incompetent in different ways. Gladwell has written about problems with deference in Asian cultures:
http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2008/12/04/malcolm-gladwell-on-culture-cockpit-communication-and-plane-crashes/
This is a real phenomenon and not just something that Paul made up in order to feel superior to Asians. It’s really unfair that you accuse him of this. Koreans have a lot to be proud about, but sometimes the very things in your culture that are strengths most of the time turn into weakness in extreme situations. The fact that Korean high school students are usually obedient to their elders is good but when they obeyed the crew instructions not to leave their cabins even as the water was seeping in, in the ferry disaster, it was bad. Likewise, the American tendency to question authority may also be good most of the time but not if it involves passengers failing to obey crew instructions in an emergency so that they insist on retrieving their overhead luggage before leaving a burning aircraft.
Although you probably are right that weather played a part in this accident, it’s really too soon to say for sure. For all we know, there might have been a bomb on the aircraft or some catastrophic mechanical failure or one of the pilots intentionally dove the plane into the sea – until the flight recorders are recovered it’s all speculation.
The thing that we know from other accidents is that most tragedies involve multiple failures – A. the place flies into a storm and then B. pitot tubes ice up because they were not properly designed and THEN C. the captain performs some act or omission which makes things even worse and THEN D. the co-pilot fails to speak up and tell the pilot that he is doing the wrong thing or they start to argue with each other or get distracted troubleshooting a failure and don’t notice that they are flying into the terrain or stalling the aircraft, etc. When A. happens, the situation, although bad, might still be salvaged with quick and proper action but instead B. , C. and D. happen and the ship is lost. It’s possible that the weather alone brought the plane down but it would not be at all surprising if the flight crews actions or inactions as well as unforseen limitations in the design of the aircraft systems contributed to the tragedy once the situation became dicey.
If I say Japan is effectively bankrupt ($12 trillion of public debt, a world leading 230% of GDP), that does not mean the US is somehow superior and not subject to the same problem. You seem to interpret any criticism of one culture as a statement of superiority of the US culture. Phil, read the words that are there. If I want to say the US is superior in some respect I’ll say it. Example: The US has safer cars because our First Amendment protects people like Ralph Nader. More, China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc. would not tolerate a person like Ralph Nader. Because Ralph Nader rocks the boat.
Fukushima was a disaster beyond the damage done by the tsunami. Fukushima operators’ accident mitigation strategy after the tsunami was worse than marginal. And pointed to a glaring cultural problem within the Japan nuclear industry. Japan was dominated by a policy-culture of “nuclear infallibility.” The US nuclear industry is the safest in the world and the US NRC reactor design requirements (10CFR50) are the standard for the world. Which does not mean Pilgrim Nuclear Plant can’t melt its core tomorrow. Core melt is simply not likely within the current statistical standard of “reasonable assurance.”
TMI was a testament to robust reactor design and fault tolerance. As well as pointing to critical weaknesses in operator training and emergency operating procedures (EOPs). Post TMI EOPs must include a “safety function based recovery strategy.” Where operator actions are directed toward maintaining safety functions within limits whether the cause of accident is known/diagnosed or not. This was a US innovation, and now accepted around the world.
I hope they find enough of AirAsia Flight 8501 to autopsy the event. And unless it was hit by a missile, I have no doubt that “cockpit culture” played an important role in its demise.
ps: Construction Problems — “Supervised by a general contractor and an architect, neither of whom seems surprised that they don’t bother to read the drawings or exercise common sense.” — If poor performance is tolerated as a matter of standard practice, the root cause is a cultural problem. You need to find somebody you trust and have them rock the boat. And maybe throw a few people overboard until you have a construction crew that performs like a Formula 1 race team. Wildly optimistic, yes. But F1 team performance is a good standard to strive for. Good luck.
Izzie: As noted in http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety, Gladwell was comparing U.S. pilots and foreign pilots with very different levels of experience. He could just as easily have concluded that pilots with more experience are less likely to crash airplanes but instead he concluded that Asian culture is inferior to American culture, at least when it comes to operating aircraft. Gladwell’s conclusion may have been largely due to the fact that his research was so sloppy that he didn’t realize he was comparing pilots with different levels of experience (see http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/teaching/p7536_heurbias/p7536_readings/kruger_dunning.pdf ).
I’ve found the best sources for valid information on accidents involving foreign air carriers is pprune dot org. There are a lot of professional airline pilots there who have useful information and first hand experience in the area.
From there I learned that the accident first officer was French.
Having said that, it’s pretty clear that our host suffers from at least a mild case of oikophobia.
I served a year with the Korean Air Force, and worked in software development with Asian companies fairly often.
The Asian culture does in fact have a very strong tradition of deference to authority figures. This deference to authority can and does reduce flight safety, I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
Most Asian aircraft operators know this and try to train their pilots to use good CRM, but it’s hard for those guys.
The way a Korean pilot explained it to me is by asking me how I’d feel if I extended my hand to shake that of another officer, who then turned away. It’s that strong of a cultural insult to question authority figures in most Asian cultures.
That doesn’t mean Asians are somehow inferior, because clearly they are not. But it’s unsafe denial to ignore this aspect of their culture.
Flight hours alone are not the best measure of experience any more than miles are the best measure of truck driving experience. A local route UPS driver has more valuable driving experience than a long haul truck driver in snooze control with 10 times the mileage.
San Francisco seawall crash — The pilot at the controls (left seat) of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 had more than 9 thousand hours, while the pilot in command (right seat, instructor pilot) had more than 12 thousand hours. A third relief pilot was observing from the cockpit jump seat. Three seconds before the crash, someone in the cockpit called for a “go around.” Then 1.5 seconds before impact, a different crew member again called for a “go around.” The landing gear hit the seawall short of the runway. A year later the NTSB determined that the flight crew mismanaged the approach. Weather was not a factor. NTSB video of the approach and crash here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVaQYhd_Qy0
Assertion (plausible best guess) — If this crew had half the number of flight hours and twice the number of landings the risk of this accident happening would be greatly reduced. If I were Czar, I would require that a ‘coefficient of correlation’ be applied to all long haul flight hours in snooze control to account for the limited experience value of time in autopilot. Not zero value. Limited value.
Izzie, Jim Howard — Through much of the early 90s I worked in S. Korea consulting with their version of Oakridge Lab and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The strength of their cultural biases is hard to imagine unless you’ve spent some time there. I’ve been in meetings with super smart PhD women engineers who were asked to empty the ashtrays and get coffee. Worse – My company hosted an annual outdoor office party at a nice rural park area with picnic pavilions located high on a hilltop. We invited all our staff (mostly Koreans) and their families. Most men would not allow their wives to come up to the picnic area. Wives waited in their cars below in the parking lot.
I know that Seoul is westernizing. But 1000 year old cultures die hard.
Paul: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/air_asia_8501_when_will_we_learn.html is another voice in favor of more hand-flying. The author, a retired 747 captain, notes “Is this a unique Asian airline problem that has no bearing on American or European carriers?
Unfortunately not. Air Asia pilots have precisely the same training and skill requirements as any other airline in the world. What happened to them can happen to any other operator. And has happened.
The degradation of flying skills is endemic throughout the airline industry.” (he cites the Air France 447 crash as well)
Phil, I think that Gladwell’s explanation (safety depends in part on cultural factors) and yours (safety depends on the level of pilot experience) are not mutually exclusive. I suppose it might be possible to handicap airline accident rates by level of pilot experience and see if that explains 100% of the variance between US and foreign accident rates, but AFAIK, that statistical work has not been done (and would be difficult to do because there are so few incidents involving major carriers). Even if pilot experience correlated strongly, there could be other factors involved as well – the same airlines that hire inexperienced pilots also may maintain their aircraft less well or work their pilots harder with less rest, or fly shorter routes with more takeoffs and landings, or into smaller airports with shorter runways, using smaller aircraft, etc. – you would have to correct for those factors in order to isolate the cause down to SOLELY pilot experience. I don’t think (thank God) that we have enough data points to really do this. It COULD be that you are right and that pilot experience alone is fully explanatory, but it seems to me that you have not really proven that in your article – your beef is that Gladwell relies on anecdotes but you don’t really supply any statistical evidence either. You give very detailed comparisons on the number of flying hours and you assert that these correlate with safety (and it makes sense that they do) but you don’t really prove it. It’s true that regional carriers, with their less experienced pilots, do clearly have a higher accident rate but again regional carriers also have many other factors going against them. In fact, not only do you assert that pilot training correlates with safety but is FULLY explanatory such that we can exclude the Gladwell hypothesis entirely. But I don’t see that you provide any real proof that this is so.
William Langewiesche article about Air France 447 in case you missed it:
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash
nipper, thanks for the link. Painful, but a good read. Disappointing and scary that 3 pilots did not recognize a stall and take corrective action to recover control. The cockpit decorum was controlled chaos:
— utter lack of leadership: Who is in command calling the shots?
— communication skills bordering on criminal: It was never clear that all pilots understood what others “were trying to do” and “what they were doing” (control inputs) to make it happen.
— no agreed upon operational vector (recovery procedure)
I can only hope that this crew performance is not the mean.
I would like to give my own two cents as a pilot of Airplanes and Helicopters myself. I initially suggested that this accident could be similar to the Air France 447 that crashed off Rio in the Atlantic but new information has prompted me to suggest something different. The fact that some people had lifejackets on suggests that the passengers knew what was going to happen and that the pilots may be attempting to ditch into the sea. Other information stating that sonar imaging shows the aircraft to be relatively intact at the bottom of the ocean also suggests that the pilots may have tried to perform a controlled landing in the ocean. So in this regard my latest theory suggests that the A320 entered severe thunderstorms that actually caused both engines to flame out and thus leaving the pilots no option but to ditch. Radio signal in such severe weather would be close to impossible and this is why the pilots could not transmit a MAYDAY call.
Thats my own opinion anyway